May 14, 2004

Palatine Boors and their Maryland descendents

In connection with the fuss over the anti-multi-culti remarks by Maryland Governor Ehrlich and Comptroller Schaefer, an Op-Ed piece in today's Baltimore Sun quotes Benjamin Franklin complaining about the influx of Ehrlich and Schaefer's ancestors:

"Why should Pennsylvania ... become a Colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us, instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion?"

-- Benjamin Franklin, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc., 1751

The context of this quotation (assuming the various copies of it on the internet are accurate) is more shockingly chauvinistic, to modern ears, than Erhlich and Schaefer's unpleasantries or even Samuel Huntington's recent screeds:

And since Detachments of English from Britain sent to America, will have their Places at Home so soon supply'd and increase so largely here; why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion?

"Swarm"? "Herding"?

In fact, it was not until 1923, some 172 years after Franklin's complaints, that the U.S. Supreme Court determined that "mere knowledge of the German language cannot reasonably be regarded as harmful." And now, 253 years later, the collateral descendents of the Palatine boors in question (i.e. peasant farmers from south-central Germany) have apparently lost track of their history.

Posted by Mark Liberman at May 14, 2004 10:46 AM