but it is an example of the general proposition I offer--
the proposition that an enormous amount of modern ingenuity is expended
on finding defences for the indefensible conduct of the powerful.
As I have said above, these defences generally exhibit themselves
most emphatically in the form of appeals to physical science.
And of all the forms in which science, or pseudo-science, has come
to the rescue of the rich and stupid, there is none so singular
as the singular invention of the theory of races.

When a wealthy nation like the English discovers the perfectly patent
fact that it is making a ludicrous mess of the government of a poorer
nation like the Irish, it pauses for a moment in consternation,
and then begins to talk about Celts and Teutons. As far as I can
understand the theory, the Irish are Celts and the English are Teutons.
Of course, the Irish are not Celts any more than the English are Teutons.
I have not followed the ethnological discussion with much energy,
but the last scientific conclusion which I read inclined on the whole
to the summary that the English were mainly Celtic and the Irish
mainly Teutonic. But no man alive, with even the glimmering of a real
scientific sense, would ever dream of applying the terms "Celtic"
or "Teutonic" to either of them in any positive or useful sense.

That sort of thing must be left to people who talk about
the Anglo-Saxon race, and extend the expression to America.
How much of the blood of the Angles and Saxons (whoever they were)
there remains in our mixed British, Roman, German, Dane, Norman,
and Picard stock is a matter only interesting to wild antiquaries.
And how much of that diluted blood can possibly remain in that
roaring whirlpool of America into which a cataract of Swedes,
Jews, Germans, Irishmen, and Italians is perpetually pouring,