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UNCHANGEABLE LIMITS OF HIGHER RACES
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Greece that has been restored represents a very small portion of the country in which Greeks were superior by numbers, or by social influence and commercial activity, under Alexander, or even under Claudius. In Transylvania the Saxons are being crowded out by Roumanians, and in Hungary the Magyars[1] and Germans can barely stem the uprising nationalities of Slavs and Roumanians. In Northern Africa the Carthaginian, the Greek, the Roman, and the Vandal were successively effaced, and until the French conquest of Algiers the country was given up to Arabs of a not very pure breed, to Berbers, and to blacks. The Irish were reckoned by Petty in 1672 at 1,100,000 in their own country,[2] and there cannot then have been many outside Ireland. They are now probably from 16,000,000 to 20,000,000, counting only those who can be distinctly recognised as of Irish descent. Before the time of their great dispersion to America and Australia, they had increased within the British Isles from being about a sixth to being nearly a third of

  1. As the Magyars are of the same race as the Turks, though with a larger admixture of Aryan blood, it seems desirable I should point out that from first to last I use the words "higher" and "lower" with no reference to the essential value of a race, which it would be hard to determine, but with regard to its actual position in the world. The Slowack may have finer natural capabilities than the Magyar. At present, I believe, it is correct to say that the Magyar population has a larger proportion of educated men, and of men owning property, and is more capable of self-government.
  2. Mr. Hallam calls Petty's conjectures "prodigiously vague" (Const. Hist. vol. iii. p. 392, note y); but Swift in 1729 says, that the popular estimate then was 1,500,000 (" Letter on Mr. M'Culla's project about halfpence"). Macaulay seems to follow Petty, and estimates the Catholics at 1,000,000 in 1686, whom Petty had put at 800,000 in 1672 (History, chap, vi.) I have estimated their present numbers at 5,250,000 for Ireland, 1,000,000 for England and Scotland, 800,000 for Australasia, 1,000,000 for the Dominion of Canada, and from 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 for the United States. They are also well represented at the Cape and in South America.