The "Scotch-Irish" Shibboleth Analyzed and Rejected

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Excerpt from The "Scotch-Irish" Shibboleth Analyzed and Rejected: With Some Reference to the Present "Anglo-Saxon" ComedyIN these latter days of the Nineteenth Century we are hearing a great deal about this race and that, we are being told of the virtue and genius of this one, of the vice and incapacity of that, and our ears are bombarded with clamor and claptrap as wearisome as it is nonsensical. It is just as well when these matters come before us to keep cool and make use of such com mon sense as God has endowed us with. The ponderous nonsense wasted on the Teutonic, Latin, and anglo-saxon races means absolutely nothing when analyzed, it represents as a rule the vanity or prejudice of the writer and his clientele, and the terminology of race is as misleading as it is unscientific.The number of writers who bring to history and ethnology the same cool, scientific spirit that a botanist or geologist brings to plants and strata can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The average historian seems to hold the present responsible for the past, instead of admitting the common sense logic that the past is responsible for the present, and starting with this stupid inversion he insists upon defending the crimes and blunders of ages long gone to their account.Our knowledge of the different races which peopled early Europe is as vague and fragmentary as our knowledge of the people of Atlantis. The sources of our knowledge appear to be a few allusions in the works of classic writers, who either got their information at second hand from the officers and soldiers serving in the armies of Greece and Rome, or, as camp followers, from the tribes they came in contact with, whose speech they were usually ignorant of, and whose antecedents they knew nothing about. As well might some modern writer seek to base a scientific theory of the origin, language, name, etc., of the American races, upon the story of some vagrant Spanish soldier, returning from the plunder of a Mexican town, or the exploration of some tropical river. Certainly, the soldiers of Cortez and Alvarado were as learned, observant, and intelligent as those of Alexander and Caesar, and their Opportunities for research and study as numerous and satisfactory.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.