Note 316:1 — Chapter XVIII

For condensed statistics of American immigration, see "Encyclopædia Britannica," 9th ed., s. vv. "Emigration" and "United States." For the facts concerning the Roman Empire one naturally has recourse to Gibbon. From the indications there given we do not get the impression that in the three centuries of the struggle of the empire against the barbarians there was ever such a thirty years' flood of invasion as the immigration into the United States from 1840 to 1869. The entrance into the Roman Empire was indeed largely in the form of armed invasion; but the most destructive influence of the barbarians was when they were admitted as friends and naturalized as citizens. See "Encyclopædia Britannica," vol. xx., pp. 779, 780.