BY W. LEWIS.
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From Putntmes Magazin
AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS
An individual, masked under the vulgar
name of Sam, furnishes just now . a good
deal more than half the pabulum wherewith
certain legislators and journatOs are fed.—
Whether he is a mythical or real personage
—a magus or a monkey—nobody seems to
know, but we are inclined to regerd him as
real, because of his general acception among
Dalgetty politicians, and because of the itre
sistiblo merriment his occasional "coming
'down" on something or other affords the
newspapers. We saw a punchy old gentle
men the other day, with a face like the sun,
only more red, blue and spotty, and a dismally
wheezy voice, who came near being carried
off with a ponderous apoplectic chuckle,
which seized him when somebody causually
observed that "Sam was pitched into the po
lice," and he was only relieved from the fatal
consequences by a serious of desperate move
ments, which resemble those of a seventy
four getting under way again after the sudden
stroke of a typhoon. Now, if Sam was not
unquestionably a real personage, and this old
gentlemen unquestionably areal disciple of
his, we are at a loss to account for the reality
of the phenomena thus exhibited.
But whether real or mythical, it has been
impossible for us to raise our admiration of
Sam to the popular pitch. After due and dil
igent inquiry, we have arrived at only a mod
erate estimate.of his qualities. In fact, con
sidering the mystery in which he shrouds
his ways, we are disposed to believe that he
is more of a Jerry Sneak than a hero. The
assumption of secrecy on the par! of any one
naturally starts up suspicion. We cannot
see why he should resort to it if he harbors
only just or f.renerous designs. We associate
darkness and night with things that are foul
and we admire the saying, that
even though a favorite with love's, is also
favorable to thieves. Schemes which shrink
from the day, which skulk behind comers.
and wriggle themselves Kato obscure and
crooked places, are not the schemes we love
na a venture. And all the veiled prophets,
we apprehend, are very lunch like the one we
read of in the palace of Merin), who hid his
face, as he pretendeAl to his admirers, because
its brightness would strike him :lead, but in
reality because it was of an ugliness so mon
strous-that no one could look upon it and
live.
There is an utterance, however, impnted
to this impervious and oracular Sam, which
we cordially accept. He is said to have said
that "Amenca belongs to Americans," just
as his immortal -namesake, Sam Patch, said
that "some things could be done as well as
others:" and we thank him fur the conces
sion. It is good, very good, very excellent
,good, as the logical Touchstone would have
exclaimed—provided you put a proper mean
ing to it. •
what is America. and who are Ameri
cans ? It all depends upon that, and accord
inly as you answer will the phrase appear
very wise or very foolish. If you are deter
mined to consider America as nothing more
than the two or three million square miles of
dirt included between the granite hills and
the Pacific, and Americans as those men ex
clusively whose bodies happened to be fash
ioned from it, we fear that you have not pen
etrated to the real beauty and significance of
the terms. The soul of a muckworm may
very naturally he contended with indentify
ing itself with the mould from which it is
bred, and into which it will soon be desolved,
but the soul of a man, unless we are hugely
misinformed, claims a loftier origin and looks
forward to a noblFr destiny.
America, in one sense of the word, em
braces a complex idea. It means not simply
the soil with its coal, cotton, and corn, but
the nationality by which that soil is occupi
ed, and the political system in which such
accupants are organized. The soil existed
long before Vespucci gave it a name—as
long back, it may be, as when the morning
stars sane together—but the true America, a
mere chicken still, dates from the !est few
years of the 3.8,th century. It picked its
shell from the first time amid the cannon-vol
leys of Bunker Hill, and gave its first peep
when the old State-house bell at Philadelphia
rang out "liberty to all the land." Before
that period, the straggling and dependent
colonies which were here were the mere
spawn of the older natiot:s—the eggs and
embryos of America, but not the full-fledged
bird. It was not until the political constitu
tion of 'B9 had been accepted by the people
that America attained a complete and dis
tinctive existence, or that she was able—
continuing the figure with which we began
—to spread her "sheeny vans," and shout a
cock-a-doodle to the sun.
It would be needless, at this cay, to state
what are the distinguishing'prinziples of that
political existence. They have been pro
nounced ten thousand times, and resumed as
often in the simple formula which every
school-boy knows—the government of the
whole people by themselves and for them
selves. In other words, America is the dem
ocaratic republic—not the government of the
people by a despot, nor by an oligarchy, nor
by any class such as the red-haired part of the
inhabitants, or the blue-eyed part; nor yet a
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government for any other end than the good
of the entire nation—but the democratic
republic pure and simple. This is the polit
ical organism which individualizes us, or
separates us as a living unity from all the
rest of the world.
All this, of course, would be too elementa
ry to be recounted in any mature discussion,
if recent events had not made it necessary
to an adequate answer of our second ques
tion—who, then, are Americans ? Who
constitute the people in whose hands the
destinies of America are to be deposited.
The fashionable answer in these times,
-"the natives of this Continent, to be sure!"
But let us ask again, in that case, whether
our old friends Uncas and Chingachgook, and
Kag,-ne-ga-bow-wow—whether Walk-in-the
water, and Talking-snake, and Big-yellow
thunder, are to be considered Americans par
excellence? Alas, no! for they, poor fellows!
are all trudging towards the setting sun, and
soon their red and dusky figures will have
laded in the darker shadows of the night
It is, then, the second generation of natives
they who are driving them away—who
compose exclusively the American family ?
You say yes; but we say no! Because, if
America be, as we have shown, more than
the soil of America, we do not see how a
mere cloudy derivation from it entitles, it
the name of American. Clearly that title
cannot innu re to us from the mere argiliace
ous or silicious compounds of our bodie—
clearly, it descends from no vegetable ances
try it must disdain to trace itself to
that simple relationship to phisical nature
which we chance to enjoy, in common with
the skunk, the rattlesnake, and the cata
mount. All these are only the natural pro
ductions of America—excellent, no doubt,
in their several ways —but the American
man is something more than a natural pro
duct boasting a moral or spiritual gene Sis;
and referning his birthright to the immortal
thoughts, which are the soul of his institu
t ions, and to the divine affections, which lift
his politics out of the slime of state-craft
into the air of great humanitary purposes.
The real American, then, is he—no matter
whether his corporat chemistry was first ig
nited in Kamschatka or the moon—who,
abandoning every other country and fore
swearing every other allegiance, gives his
mind and heart to the grand constituent
ideas of the republic-;-- to the impulses and ends
in which and by which alone itsubsists. If he
have arrived at years of discretion—if he
plodu ces evidence of a capacity to under
stand the relations he undertakes—if he has
resided in the atmosphere of freedom long
etioneh to catch its genuine spirit—then is
he an American in the true and best sense of
the term.
Or. if not an American, pray what is he 1
Au Englishman, a German, an Irishman, he
can no lor.g,er be; he has cast the slought of
his old political relations forever; he has as
serted his sacred right of expatriation( which
;he United States was the first of nations to
sanction.) or been expatiated by his ardent
love of the cause which the United S tales
represents; and he can never return to the
ancient fold. It would spurn him more in
continently than powder spurns the fire.—
He must become, then ; either a wanderer or
a nondescript on the face of the earth, or be
received into our generous republican arms.
It is our habit to say that we know of no race
or creed but the race of mar. and the creed of
democracy, and if he appeals to us as a man
and a democrat ; there is no alternative in the
premises. We must either deny his claims al
together—deny that he is the son of God and
our brother—or else we must incorporate him
in due season into the household. It is not
enough that we offer him shelter from the rain
—not enough that we mend his looped and
windowed raggedness—not enough that we
replenish his wasted midriff with bacon and
hominy ; and open to his palsied hands an
opportunity to toil. These are commendable
charities but they are such charities as any
one, not himself a brute, would willingly ex
tend to a horse found astray on the common.
Shall we do more for our fellows? Have we
discharged our whole duty, as men to men,
when we have avouched the sympathies we
would freely render to a cat? Do we, in truth,
recognize their claims at a'd when we refuse to
confess that higher nature in them, whereby
alone they are men, and not stocks or animals?
More than that, do we not, by refusing to
confess a man's manhood, in reality heap
him with the heaviest injury it is in our
power - to inflict, and wound him with the
itterest insult his spirit can receive ?
We can easily conceive the justness with
which an alien, escaping to our shores from
the oppression of his own country, or volun
tarily abandoning it for the sake of a better
life, might reply to those who receive him
hospitably, but deny him political association:
"For your good will, I thank you—for the
privilege of toiling against the grim inclem
encies of my outc.rst and natural condition,
which you offer, I thank you—for the safe
guard of your noble public laws, I thank you;
but the blessed God,•having made me a man,
as well as yon—vlien you refuse me, like the
semi-barbarians of Sparta, all civil life—
when with Jewish exclusiveness, you thrust
me out of the holy temple, as a mere prose
lyte, to the gate—your intended kindness
scum over with malignity, and the genial
wine-cup you offer brims with worm-wood
and gall."
We are all aware of the kind of outcry
with which such reasoning is usually met.
We know in what a variety of tones—from
the vulgar growl of the pothouse pugilist to
the minatory shriek of the polemic, phrensi
ed with fear of Scarlet Lady—it is
that foreign exfusions into our life are
venomous, and ought to be vehemently re
sisted. Nor do we mean to deny the right of
every community to protect itself froth hurt,
even to the forcible intrusion, if necessary,
of the ingredients which threaten itssdamage.
But that necessity must be most distinctly
proved. The case must be one so clear as
to leave no - doubt of it, as an absolute case
of self-defence. Now, there is no such
overruling necessity with us as to compel ei
ther the exclusion or the extrusion of our al
ien residents. They are not such a violent
interpolation, as when grains of sand, to use
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TrUNTINGDON, JUNE 13. 18551
Coleridge's figdre, have gat between the
shell and the flesh of the snail—=that they
will kill us if we do not put them out and
keep them out. A prodigious hue and cry
against them wakes the echoes of the vicin
age just now, such as it raised when a pack
of hungry foxes stray into the honest henroat;
but the clamor is quite disproportionate to
the occasion.. The foxes are by no means so
numerous or predacious as they are imagined
to be, and there is no danger of them for the
future that we need to be transfigured with
fright, or scamper away in a stampede of
panic terror. The evils which our past ex
perience of naturalization has made known
to us—for there are some—are not unman
ageable evils, requiring a sudden `and spas
modic remedy, arid menacing a disastrous
everthrow unless they are instantly tackled.
The most of them are-like the other evils of
our social condition—mere incidents of an
infantile or transitional state—of a life not
yet arrived at full maturity—and will be
worked off in the regular course of things.
At any rate, they solicit no headstrong, des
perate assault ; only a coonsciousness of what
and where our real strength is, and patient
self-control.
On the other hand, it is a fixed conviction
of ours, in respect to this whole subject of
aliens, that there is much less danger in ac
cepting them, under almost any circumstance,
than there would be in attempting to keep
them out. In the latter case, by separating
them from the common life of the communi
ty- ; making them amenable to laws for which
they are yet not responsible ; taxing them for
the support of a government in which they
are not represented ; calling upon them for
purposes of defence when they have no real
country to defend, we should, in effect, erect
them into a distinct and subordinate class)
on which we had fastened a very positive
stigma or degradation. How lamentable and
inevitable the consequence of such a social
contrast !
The reader, doubtless, has often seen a
wretched Oak by the wayside, whose trunk is
all gnarled and twisted into knots or he May
have passed through the wards of an hospi
tal, where beautiful human bodies are eaten
with ulcers and sores ; or he may have read
of the Pariahs of India, those vile and vermin
ions outcasts, who live in hovels away from
the cities, and prey on property like rats and
weasels; or, again, chance may have led him
through the Jews' quarters, the horrid ghet
tos of the old continental town, where squal
or accompanies ineffable crime; or finally
his inquiries may have made him familiar
with the free blacks of his own country, with
their hopeless degradations and miseries !
Well, if these experiences have been his he
has discerned in them the exponents—in some
the symbols, and in others the actual effects
—of the terrible spirit of exclusion, when it
is worked out in society ; for, it is a uni
versal truth, that whatever thing enjoys but
a partial participation of the life to which it
generally belongs, (Jets, to the extent of the
deprivation, diseased. It is also a universal
truth, that the spread of that disease will,
sooner or later, affect the more living mem
bers. Make any class of men, for instance,
an exception in society ; set them apart in a
way which shall exclude them from the more
vital circulations of that society ; place them
in relations which shall breed in them a
sense of alienation and degredation at the
same time, and they must become either
blotches or parasites, which corrupt it ; or
else a band of conspirators, more or less ac
tive, making war upon its integrity.
Let us suppose that some ruler—a Louis
Napoleon or Dr. Francia—should decree that
all the inhabitants of a certain country, of
oblique or defective vision, should be rigidly
confined to one of the lower mechanical oc
cupations : would not all the squint-eyed and
short-sighted people be immediately degra
ded in the estimation of the rest of the com
munity Would not the feeling of that de
basement act as a perpetual irritant to their
malice, lead them to hate the rest and to
prey upon them, and so feed an incessant
feud—open or sinister, as the injured party
might be strong or weak—between the strab
ismic families and those of a more legitimate
ocularity In the same way, but with even
more certainty and virulence of effect, any
legal distinctions among a people, founded
upon differences of birth or race, must gener
ate unpleasant and pernicious relations,
which, in the end, could only be maintained
by force. Say to the quarter million of for
eigners who annually arrive on our shores
that, like the metoiki and persoika of the
Greeks, they may subsist here, but nothing
more ; that the privileges of the inside of the
city, suffrage, office, equality, ambition, are
closed to them ; that they may sport for our
amusement in the arenas, look on at our
courts, do our severer labors for us, and rev
erentially admire our greatness; but that they
shall have no part nor lot in that political life
which is the central and distinguishing life
of the nation, and so forth ; you convert them
infallibly, into enemies—into the worst kind
of enemies, too, because internal enemies,
who have already effected a lodgment in the
midst of your citadel. Coming as an inva
ding army these thousands, with avowed un
friendly purposes, they might easily be driv
en back by swords ; but corning here to set
tle and be transmuted into a caste—into po
litical lepers and vagabonds—they would de
generate into a moral plague which no human
weapon could turn away. Proscribed from the
most important functions of the society in
which they lived, they would cherish an inter
est_separate from the general interest, and, as
they grow stronger, form themselves into an
organized and irritable clanship. Their just
resentments ; or their increasing arrogance,
would sooner or later provoke some rival fac
tion into conflict ; and then the deep-seated,
fatal animosities of race and religion, exas
perated by the remembrance of injuries giv
en and taken, would rage over society like
the winds of the sea.
History is full of warning to us on this
head. No causes - were more potent in sun
dering the social ties of the ancient nations
than the fierce civil wars which grew out
of the narrow policy of restricting citizen
ship to the indigenious races. No blight has
fallen with more fearful severity on Europe
than the blight of class denomination, which
for centuries has wasted the energies and the
virtues, the happiness and the hopes of the
masses. Nor is there any danger that threat
ens our own country now---escarcely except
ing slavery—more subtile or formidable than
the danger which lurks in those ill-suppres
sed hatreds of race and religion, which some
persons seem eager to foment into open quar
rel. Already the future is walking in to
day. The recent disgraceful exhibitions in
this city—the armed and hostile bands which
are known to be organized—the bitter taunts
and encounters of their leaders—the low
eliminations of the Senate-house—the pugi
listic melee, ending in death—the instant and
universal excitement—the elevation of a
bully of a bar-room into the hero of a cause
—the imposing funeral honors, rivalin gin
pageantry and depth of emotion the most sol
emn obsequies that a nation could decree its
noblest benefactors ;—all these are marks of
a soreness which needs only to be irritated to
suputate in social war.
Our statesmen at Washington are justly
sensible of the dangers of•sectional divisions ;
but no sectional divisions which it is possible
to arouse are half so much to be dreaded as
an inflamed and protracted contrast between
natives and aliens, or Catholics and Protes
tants. The divisions w hich spring from ter
ritorial interests appeal to few of the deep
er passions of the soul ; but the divisions of
race and religion touch a chord in the human
heart which vibrates to the intensest maligni
ty of hell. Accordingly, the pen of the his
torian registers many brutal antagonisms—
many lasting and terrible wars; but the most
brutal of all those antagonisms, the most
lasting and terrible of all those wars, are the
antagonisms of race and the wars of reli
gton.\
It will be replied to what we have hither
to urged, that our argument proceeds upon an
assumption that aliens are to be totally exclu
ded from political life, whereas nobody im
poses such a thing, but only a longer pre
paratory residence.
We rejoin, that the persons and parties
who are now agitating the general question,
because they propose the exclusion of adop
ted citizens from office, do, in effect, propose
a total political disqualification of foreigners.
All their invectives, all their speeches, all
their secret assemblages, have this end and
no other. They agree to ostracise political
ly every man who is not born on our soil;
they conspire not to nominate to any prefer
ment, not to vote for any candidate who is
born abroad ; and these tutreements and con
spiracies are a present disfranchisement, so
far as they are effective, of every adopted
citizen, and a future anathema of every alien.
Whether the aim be accomplished by public
opinion, by secret conclave, or by law, the
consequences are the same ; and the general
objections we have alleged to the division of
society into castes apply with equal force.
We rejoin again—in respect to the distinc
tion made between a total exclusion of for
eigners, and a change in the naturalization
laws—that it is a distinction which really
amounts to nothing ; for, firstly, if the pro
bation be extended to a long period—say
twenty-one years, as some recommend—it
would be equivalent to a total exclusion; and
secondly, it a shorter period—say ten years '
—be adopted, the change would be unimpor
tant, because no valid objection against the
present term of five years would thereby be
obviated. Let us see for a moment.
Firstly, as to the term of twenty-one
years : We say that, inasmuch as the major
ity of foreigners who arrive on our shores
are twenty-five years of age and over when
they arrive, if we impose a quarantine of
twenty-one years more, they will not be ad
mitted as citizens until they shall have reach
ed an age when the tardy boon will be of lit
tle value to them, and when their faculties
and their interests in human affairs will have
begun to decline. Whether they will care to
solicit their right at that period is doubtful,
I and, if they (in, they can regard it as scarce
ly more than a mockery. How many of
them will live to be over forty-five or fifty
years of age, if we leave them to loiter in the
, grog-shops, and amid scenss of vice, as they
are more likely to do if not absorbed into the
mass of citizens ? flow many, having pas
sed twenty-one years of political ban,• and
even of ignominy—for it would come to that
—would be thereby better prepared for adop
tion ? The younger ranks of the emigrants
might possibly bnefit by the hope of one
day becoming citizens, and look forward to it
With some degree of interest, but to all the
rest it would be a fatamorgana, and the pro
tracted test virtually - an interdiction.
Secondly, as to any shorter novitiate—say
ten or twelve years—it would not be more
effective, in the way of qualifying the , pupil,
than the existing term. As the law now
stands, an alien giving threa years' notice of
intention, must have been five years consec
utively a resident of the United States, and
one year a resident of the State and county
in which he applies—must be of good moral
character—must be attached to our constitu
tion and laws—must abjure all foreign pow
ers, particularly that he was subject to—and
must swear faithful allegiance to the govern
ment of his adopted country—before he can
be admitted a member of the State. What
mote could we exact of him, at the end of
ten years or twenty ? If unfit for accep
tance, too—according to these requirements
—at the end of five years, would he be more
likely to be fit at the end of ten 1 In short
is there a single disqualification which zeal
ous nativists are apt to allege against foreign
ers--such as their ignorance, their clanish
ness, their attachment to forei g n govern
ments, and their subjection to the Roman
Catholic Church— which would be probably
alleviated by means of a more protracted em
bargo ? None on the contrary, as we have
intimated in another place all their worse
qualities would be aggravated by the exclu
sive association among themselves for so
many years longer, in which they would be
kept—while they would lose as we shall
show more fully hereafter, the best means of
fitting themselves for good citizenship, in lo
sing the educational influences of our actual
political life.
It is true, in respect to the present laws of
naturalization; that our efforts have shown a
baneful laxity in enforcing their conditions,
and that our leading parties, corrupt every
where, ate nowhere more corrupt than in
their modes of naturalizing foreigners, but
there is. no reason to expect that either courts
or parties will grow more severe under strin
gent laws. They will have the same mo
tives, and be just as eager, to license fraudu
lent voters then as they are now ; and the
few days before the great presidential elec
tion will exhibit the same disgraceful scenes
of venalty and falsehood. No simple change
in the time of the law, at any rate, can work
any improvement. Nor will such a change
render it any more difficult for the dishonest
alien to procure the franchise. Ile can just
as easily swear to a long residence as a short
one while it will happen that the rarer we
make the privilege, the more weincrease the
difficulties of access to it, the longer we
postpone the minority, the greater will be his
inducements to evade the law. In propor
tion as a prize becomes more valuable, the
temptation to a surreptitious seizure of it in
crease, but where an end is easily achieved,
the trouble of waiting till it be obtained in
the regular way is preferred to the hazards of
a clandestine or criminal attempt to carry it
off.
Besides, it is a puerile piece of injustice
towards the alien to inflict him with a disa
bility because of our own ladies. We have
failed to administer our laws as they should
be, and, experiencing some injury in conse
quence, we torn round to abuse the foreign
er, like a foolish and petulant boy who licks
the stone over which he stumbled. The
more magnanimous as well as sensible course
would be to amend our own faults. Let us
make the five years of probation what the
courts may easily make them, by rigidly ex
acting the criterions of the law—an interval
of real preparation for citizenship—and the
present term will be found long enough.—
But whether long enough or not, the ques
tion of time—that is, whether it shall be five
years or ten—is a simple question of internal
police, not of lasting principles, to be deter
mined by the facts of experience, and by no
means justifying the virulent and wholesale
denunciations of foreigners it is the fashion
with some to fulminate.
In fact, the entire logic of the nativists is
vitiated by its discriminating character.—
Because a large number of the Irish and a
! considerable number of the Germans have
been reduced, by the Jong years of abuse
which they have suffered at home, to an in
ferior manhood, it is argued that all the rest
of the Germans and the Irish, and all the
Swiss, English, French, Scotch. Swedes and
Italians, must be made to suffer for it ; but
what a grievous error I The poor exiles and
refugees, many of them, are no doubt suffi
ciently debased—some even excessively in
solent, too—but among them there are oth
ers who are not. Among them are thousands
upon thousands of men of hardy virtues and
clear intelligence, whose industry contributes
vastly to the wealth as their integrity does to
the good order of our society. Laboring .
like slaves for us, they have built our cities
and railroads, piercing the western wilds,
they have coused them to blossom into gar
dens; taking part in our commerce and man
ufactures, they have helped to carry the tri
umphs of our arts to the remotest corners of
the globe. It was from their ranks that our
statesmanship recruited Gallatin, Morris, and
Hamilton; that the law acquired Rutledge,
Wilson, and Emmett; that the army won its
Gates, its Mercer and its Montgomery ; the
navy its Jones, Blakeley, and Barry, the arts
their Sully and Cole; science ;its Agassiz and
Guyot ; the philanthropy its Eliot and Bene
zet; and religion its Withrspoon, its White,
its Whitfield, and its Cheverus:
The adopted citizen, no doubt, preserves a
keen remembrance of his native land ; but
lives there on earth a soul so dead" as not
to sympathize in that feeling ' Let us ask
you, oh patriotic Weissuicht, all fresh as you
are from the vociferations of the lodge,
whether you do at heart think the less of a
man because he cannot wholly forget the
play-place of his infancy—the friends and
companions of his boyhood—the old cabin
in which he was reared—and the grave in
which the bones of his honored mother re
pose? Have you never seen two long separ
ated friends from the Old World meet again
in the New, and clasp each other in a warm
embrace, while their conversation blossomed
up from a vein of common memory, in
"Sweet household talk, and phrases of the
hearth,"
and did you not love them the more, in that
their eyes grew liquid with the dear old
theme? Or is there, in the whole circle of
your large and respectable private acquain
tance, a single Scotchman to whom you re
fuse your hand because his 'affections melt
under the "Auld Lang Syne" of Burns, or
because his sides shake like a falling house
when "Holloween" or 'Tam O'Shanter" is
read I Can you blame even the poor French
man if his eyes light up into a kind of death
less glow when the "Marseillaise," twisted
from some wandering hurdy-gurdy, has yet
power to recall the glorious days in which
his father and brothers danced for liberty's
sake, and with gay audacity towards the
guillotine 1 We venture to say for you
"No !" and we believe, if the truth were
told, that often, on the lonely western plains,
you have dreamed over again with the Ger
man his sweet dream of the resurrection and
unity of the Fatherland ? We have our
selves seen you, at the St. George dinners,
oh Weissnicht, swell with a very evident
pride when some flagrant Englishman, re
counting, not the battles which his ancestors
for ten centuries had won on every field of
Europe, but the better trophies gained by
Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, or Cromwell,
told you that a little of that same blood
coursed in your veins i Tho blood itself, as
it tingled through your body and suffused
your cheeks, confessed the fact, if your words
did not I How then, can you who gaze at
Bunker Hill with tears in your eyes, and
fling op your hat of a Fourth of July, with a
jerk that almost dislocates the shoulder, re
tire to your secret conclave and chalk it up
behind the door against the foreigner that he
has a lingering love for his native country ?-
Why, he ought to be despised if he bad not,
if he could forget his heritage of old renown;
for it is this traditional tenderness, these ge
nial memories of the irnmoital words and
deeds and places, that constitute his patrony
mic glories, which show that he has a hu
man heart still under his jacket, and is all
the more likely, on account of it, to become a
worthy American.
Do not delude yourself, however; into the
shallow belief that the aliens, because of
these sentimental attachments, will be led
into the love of their native governments,
which, having plundered them and their class
for years, at last expelled them to our shores.
Ah ! no—poor devils—they have not been so
chucked under the chin, and fondled and ca
ressed, and talked pretty to, and fed with
sweet cakes, and humored in, all sorts of
self-indulgences by the old despotisms as to
have fallen in love with them forever and
ever. On the contrary, if the reports are
true, quite other endearments were shOWer
ed upon them—such as cuffs and kicks, with
a distinct intimation, besides. as Mr. Rich
arc Swiviller said to Mr. Quill), after poun
ding him thoroughly, that "there were plen
ty more in the same shop—a large and ex
tensive assortment always on hand—and ev
ery order executed with promptitude and de
spatch." Now, these are experiences that
are apt to make republicans of men, and to
fill them with other feelings than those of
overweening attachment to oppressors !
But this is a slight digression, and we re- .
turn to the main =rent of our argument, to
say—what we esteem quite fatal to all
schemes for excommunicating, foreigners, or
even greatly extending their minority—that
the best way, on the whole, for making them
good citizens is to make them citizens.—
The evils of making them a class by them
selves we have already alluded to, and wa
now speak, on the otherhand, of the bene
fits which must accrue to them and to us
from their absorption into the general life of
the community. It is universally conceeded
by the liberal writers on government and so
ciety, that the signal and beneficent advan
tage of republican institutions (by Which we
mean an organized series of local self-gov
ernments) is, that their practical influences
are so strongly educational. They train
there subjects constantly into an increasing
capacity for their enjayrinent.
In the old despotic nations—as we are all
aware—where the State is one thing and the
people another—the State iS'in reality c mere
machine of police, even in its educational
and religious provisions—maintaining a ri
gid order, but acting only externally on the
people, whom it treats either as slaves or
children. It does not directly develop the .
I sense of responsibility in there; nor accbstOni
them to self-control and the exercise Of their
I faculties. But in free commonwealths- -
which abhor this excessive centralizing ten
dency, and which distribute power through
municipalities, leaving the individuals as
much discretion as possible—the people are .
the State and grow into each other as a kind .
of living unity. Thrown upon their own re
sources. they acquire quickness, skill, ener
gy, and self-poise; yet, made responsible for
the general interests, they learn to deliber
ate, to exercise judgement, to re eigh the bear
ings of public questions, and to act in refer
ence to the public warfare. At the same
time, the lists of preferment being open to
them, they cultivate the virtues and talent©
which will secure the confidence of their
neighbors. Every mode of ambition and
honor is addressee to them, to improve their
condition and to perfect their endowments ;
while a consciousness of their connexion
with the State imparts a sense Of personal'
worth and dignity.
In practice, of course, some show them
selves insensible to these considerations,'Ut
a majority do not. The consequence is that
the commonalty of the republic are vastly
superior to the same classes abroad. Com
pare the farmers of our prairies to the boors
of the Russian steppes, or to the peasants of
the French valleys! Or compare the great
body of the working. men in England
,with
those of the "United States ! Now, the Amer
iean is not of a better nature than the Euro
pean, for be is often of the same stock : nor
.
is there any charmin our soil and climate
known to the soil and climate
,of the other
hemisphere; but there is a differerice in in
stitutions. Institutions with us are, made for
men, and not men for the institutions, It is
the jury, the ballot-box, the free public as-;
semblage, the local committee, the legisla-*
tive assemblage, the place of trust,and, as a
result of these, the school and the newspa
per, which (rive Rich a spur to our activities,'
and endow us with such political confidence.
The actual responsibilities of civil life are our
support and nutriment, and the wings where- -
with vve fly.
If, consequently, you desire the foreigner
to grow into a good citizen, , you must sub
ject him to the influences by which good cit
izens are made. Train him as you are your
selves trained, Under the effective tutelage of
the regular routine and responsibility of poli
tics. He will never learn to swim by bei.ig
kept out of the water any more than a slave
can tecome a freeman in slavery. He gets .
used to independence by the practice of' it,
as the child gets use to walking. It is exer
cise alone which brings out and improves all
sorts of fitness—social as well as physical—
and the living of any life alone teaches us
how it is to be best lived. Nor will any one
work for an end in which" he and his have n o '
part. They only act for't he community who
are of the community. Outsiders are always
riders. They stand or sit aloof. They have
no special call to promote the internal thrift
rind order, which may get on as it can, for all
them. But incorporate them into it, and it is'
as dear as the apple of their eye. Choose a
person selectman of the village, and he con
ceives a paternal regard for it instantly, and
makes himself wondrously familiar with its
affaiis. and their practical management.—
Show a rude fellow the possibility of a place
in the police, and he begins to think how
important the execution of the law is. Hang'
the awful dignity of a seat in the justice's'
bench before the ambition of the country
VOL 10. NO. 62,