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every adventurer who rushed to Rome was entitled to mingle in the elections, and, in this way, degrade the right of suffrage, both by its easy acquisition, and by the character of the electors. Why should not the name of American citizen be equally respected? Why should he be interfered with by foreigners? It is his government and his country he is supporting, and why should his difficulties be increased by a mass who do not appreciate the institutions-who have neither love nor admiration for the country or the government? These foreigners are people of two countries-the one of their adoption, where their fortunes are cast, and where their interests lie; the other, where their hearts are fixed-the land of their nativity--where the ashes of their fathers repose, and their memory and their affections linger. This creates a divided feeling. They love the place they have left; they have no regard in any way for that in which they live. They are indifferent to it altogether, except so far as it grants them facilities in the improvement of their condition-how then are they to be good citizens? for who that knows human nature can be so weak as to presume that the ties of country are easily and at will torn away; or if any one could do it, and had the baseness to acknowledge it, that such a man was for this reason a fit citizen of the republic? Would not this very facility of casting off his allegiance to the land of his birth, to the laws he was born under, and to the best feelings and sympathies of our nature, be the strongest reason for rejecting him?

We are aware that there is a kind of taking liberality in this universal admission of strangers to the rights of citizens; there is an appearance of enlarged generosity and enlightened benevolence in thus receiving to our bosom the refugees of other nations. There is a kind of off-hand good nature in thus opening to all comers our political lists; but is it wise, and was this country meant to be nothing more than the receptacle for the vicious, the outlaws and outcasts, and the poor and ignorant, of all the nations of the earth? Are we so in want of population as gladly to receive the decrepit gleanings of British poorhouses? and how are we to form a nation of such materials? We see no reason why our empire should be erected on the parts of their population which other nations reject. We have not the wants of Rome, and should not follow her policy. By the theory of our institutions, every man has certain inalienable rights; but does his total ignorance of those rights make him fit to use them? and because he is a man, has nature given him an instinctive power of understanding them? Is there no preparation necessary for their performance? Is no degree of intelligence required for their practical as well as theoretical appreciation? If there is not, how are they a privilege, or what are

these boasted rights of freemen worth? These questions will very naturally occur to one who, like ourselves, has been confronted at the polls by Dutch scavengers, who, begrimed with city filth, and not even speaking the language of the country on whose interests they were to decide, or rather had decided, walked to the lines of their so called fellow-citizens, deposited their brooms, reeking from the gutters, against the trees, and then were counted among the voters of the city. What feeling did this produce? That one was exercising a high privilege, was a citizen of a free community, and supporting, to the best of his ability, what he conceived to be the interests of his country, in an open, manly way? Far from it. The native voter felt that he was degraded; that his voting was a puerile piece of deception, by placing him on an equality with ignorant and half slavish foreigners, and making him feel that he, a native citizen, was no more than the commonest and humblest foreigner. Is this policy, or is it justice? It can be neither the one nor the other; it is the result of a levelling spirit-the romance of infatuated ignorance-founded on the vanity, so peculiar to this country, that an immediate elevation of feeling, a sudden revelation of the spirit of liberty, seizes the dull and tame mass so soon as they tread the shores of the republic. If this were true, it would certainly be a source of congratulation; but that fine result is not immediate. The nature of human beings does not change so rapidly. We allow, however, that some effect is produced on these persons-an important and beneficial one in the end, though not so at first and at once. They go through many changes before their complete transformation. They work off the old slough before the surface of their character assumes the fresh and improved aspect of difference of condition. They throw aside old habits, the garb of mendicancy, and feudal submission, and, after a time, become fitted for their situation and its duties. This does not come to them in an instant, but only after their faculties, that have lain buried and perishing, warm into life-as sleeping adders turn active under the summer's sun-beneath the new influences to which they are exposed. The first discovery that their awakened intelligence brings to them, is, that they are free; that there is neither lord nor landlord standing over them; that they are not tasked to unwilling labour; that their will is their own; and that they are intrusted with perfect freedom of action, and the liberty and opportunity to work out their own fate. This brings a train of entirely new sensations, and, with this, new trains of thought, and increased mental activity, follow as necessary consequences. They are still, even with this great improvement, unfitted for the privileges of republican citizens. In finding themselves free, the first idea is, that they are to obey no law;

that they are totally unshackled, and beyond all submission and all control. They are undeceived as to this in the same way as they are undeceived as to the necessity of industry. At this stage commences the decided improvement that, in its progress, is to fit them for their civil duties.

The first effect of our institutions has been to relieve them from the self-contempt and self-abasement that grow naturally from extreme ignorance. They have been made to feel that they were men that they possessed powers and rights, as such, that were respected, and for whose development and exercise every opportunity was offered, every inducement held out. But from this to the full appreciation of their privileges, and to the understanding that they are parts of the body politic and social, is a long range of comprehension. Time and farther reflection are necessary to reach it. It is just at this point that these new comers are dangerous. From the depths of ignorance they have risen to a little knowledge; from the habit of entire submission to superiors they have come to think that they have none. From being automata, they find they have a will; from mental degradation and servility of feeling, and the enchainment of every energy, they have attained a capacity for thought, and a boldness and freedom in every other particular. In this stirring of the elements of character, the passions strengthen, wants increase, and desires multiply; conceit becomes a strong stimulus, and the individual conceives he is all important. Being allowed to think and act for himself, he fancies that his conclusions, as they are the first results of the movements of his mind, are sound and irrefragable-that he needs no enlightenment-that he knows all a man can know, or need know-and, being able to rely on himself and the domestic produce of his own thoughts, that it is altogether useless for him to extend his enquiries, or suppose he may be mistaken, or that an appeal can lie to a higher wisdom than his. All this creates exceeding obstinacy and overweening presumption, and what is more, a decidedly bad if not dangerous class of men; and such is the class used by individuals for their purposes, for it is at this turning point, between knowing a little and knowing nothing, that they are beset by political desperadoes, and bewildered by noise and declamation and appeals to feeling, which they have no means of resisting. Thence come mobs, the taking fancies of agrarianism, the dark dreams of radicalism, the levelling spirit of democracy, and harangues about aristocracy-which is here but a fleeting and shadowy phantom.

The gist of these remarks is merely to show the absurdity of supposing that any and all men are capable of being citizens, without some preparation-moral as well as mental. We are actuated by no illiberal feelings towards any who come to us

from abroad, though we cannot hesitate to say, that it would have been as well, if not better, for us, if our country had not found such favour in the eyes of the poor and unfortunate. We wish, most profoundly, that our land and its institutions had been left to the management of the men and their descendants which the revolution left to us. The first had gone through an exhausting struggle for their liberties, and were well able to put in order all the arrangements that were to confirm them; the last would have inherited much, if not all of the spirit of their fathers, and preserved and cherished their name and honour, and continued in policy and conduct the true intent of their labours and their councils. We might have then gone through ages, buoyed up by the tradition of their glories, working out, and up to, their desires, fulfilling their hopes, executing their purposes, and thus framing and perpetuating a government, as if under their direction and as they would have done it themselves. But our land (whether unfortunately or not must be left to the decision of the future) has been regarded as the favoured spot, not only of liberty, but license. The character of its institutions was so different from any, either now existing or before known, that they were very imperfectly understood. They were thought so popular as to be beyond the law-that it might be defied and evaded, or overturned that they gave entire freedom to the most lawless will that all opinions, all fancies, all visionary theories, all which gave to the individual uncontrolled command over himself, and allowed him to regulate himself, by himself, and not in conformation and obedience to the society he had joined, were not only tolerated, but even supported. There was a plainness, a simplicity about us, that perplexed the members of the old communities of Europe. They were mistaken for a want of spirit and pride-as embodying all that was low and plebeian— as being a direct confession of something more than liberality— as conveying an invitation to the universe to come here and riot in the luxurious profusion of their own whims. There being no king, nor church, nor aristocracy-none of those checks and balances that had been long wrought into the empires of the old world, and considered as vital-it was presumed that our system was one of an opposite nature, and having made way with these, that we encouraged the existence and the expression of every feeling of the heart of man. It being understood that there was no distinction of classes, but an entire equality of condition, it could not be conceived how that there were rich and poor. In this chaos of confused apprehensions concerning us, vast numbers land upon our shores. The reckless and desperate in morals-the leveller and theorist in politics the broken in fortune--the ruined in character-all

come to seek an asylum from misfortune, crime and infamy, and what they call persecution, in the bosom of this republic. They find in time that law does act here; that the people look with suspicion on, and shake their heads at, strange doctrines; that though it be easier to express all feeling and all thought here, than any where else, yet that opinions are more likely to be examined, and sifted and, scrutinised here, than elsewhere. Fewer obstacles are thrown in the way of uttering the coinage of one's brain and the malignity of one's heart here, than in other countries, but there is, notwithstanding, more difficulty in their diffusion. They must strike through the brain before they reach the passions. Every man's head is here the fortress of his principles. Feelings are not superficial, nor are they so irritable and inflammatory as to be at the mercy of every one who wishes to make use of them. They are guarded by intelligence and information, and can bear the shock of excitement urged by unprincipled ambition or party feeling. Even Tom Paine is obsolete; and other political Vulcans, who are ever forging new links in the chain of men's destinies, and devising new plans and systems of government, find little favour.

Still foreigners do undoubtedly regard us with a considerable degree of contempt. It is not a feeling, however, that is destined to last long. It will only continue to the time when we shall become the object of their fears. Admiration will follow in the track of our power, and the impression we make abroad will not be in proportion to any real claim we may have to respect, but to the number of cannon that bristle in foreign ports. At present, those who speak or write about us do it in a condescending way. They seem to instruct our ignorance, to look upon us as mere children and tyros in politics, and with a benevolent officiousness to desire to suggest a change here or there, a course of conduct on this or that point, some little deviation in policy; or with kind consideration point out radical defects and the errors that are to ruin us. Within a short time two foreign missions have been despatched to us. One from the kennel radicals of England to their anarchic brethren here-though whether accepted or acknowledged we do not know-the other from some anti-slavery association in Scotland to the abolitionists. This person we presume, was both accepted and acknowledged. There is an insolence and effrontery in this that are not easily endured-though it goes to prove our assertion, that we are regarded as such innocents that the world may empty its garbage into our laps without an expression of resentment on our part. We are considered by the aristocratic intolerants of Europe (to use the words of Chateaubriand) as a plebeian republic; and a more humiliating or contemptuous expression could not be employed. All, then, who are smitten with a

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