observation of every man who has seen large bodies of them assembled on public works, and in populous cities, for the truth of the picture that I have drawn.

Yet such are the people who are imported to this country at the rate of half a million a year, and by fraudulent devices, in a few weeks or months, invested with all the privileges and franchises of American citizens! Such are the men who are to give tone to our politics and to mould our legislation! Theirs is to be the standard of intelligence, and patriotism, and devotion to liberty, which is to be consulted by aspirants to places of honor and trust to be conferred by their suffrages! Each one of these is to weigh as much in the political scale as a Washington, a Henry, a Jefferson, or Madison, of the olden time; or a Rives, or Mason, or Hunter, or Summers, of the present day!

And because our American feeling revolts at this, we are to be taunted with being hostile to the "cause of civil and religious freedom!"

In my next number I will pursue this subject farther.

MADISON.

CHAPTER XVII

MADISON LETTER NUMBER EIGHT-IMMIGRATION: ITS RELATION TO CRIME AND PAUPERISM, AND TO SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ORDER

O qualify a people for a Republican Government, they must not only have intelligence. and virtue, but they must undergo a system of training and instruction in the principles of liberty, and in the practical workings of free institutions. They must learn to reverence the law and to obey it. They must acquire self-respect, and self-confidence, and understand that their well-being is inseparably interwoven with the peace and good order of society. They must comprehend that the restraints of social organization are not the arbitrary impositions of tyrannical power, but the voluntary surrender of a portion of their natural liberty for the more secure enjoyment of the residue. Without such a training the efforts of our ancestors to establish our present form of government would have proved an abortion. For more than one hundred years they were educated in the principles of free government under the fostering care of the mother country. Widely separated from England, the Colonies were necessarily intrusted with the power of legislation, subject, of course, to the supervision of the supreme government of Great Britain. This led the colonists to study the principles of freedom, engrafted during a long succession of ages, on the British. constitution, and to practice them in the regulation of their own affairs. When the crisis, therefore, arrived in their affairs, caused by the attempt of the mother country to violate the rights of the Colonies, they were prepared to understand the wrong that was about to be done them, and to assert the true doctrines of liberty in their own behalf.

The protracted struggle of the Revolution, and the dangers and sufferings incident to it, also tended to enlighten the minds of the people, and to fit them for the high responsibilities of their position. Discussion was the order of the day throughout the Colonies. The ablest men of the country were busily engaged in explaining to the people, in oral harangues, and published addresses, the nature of the evils with which they were threatened. The whole country was aroused to the highest pitch of excitement. Information was greedily sought for by all classes. The works of Milton, Locke, and Hampden were in every hand; and there never has been a day when the mind of a nation was so thoroughly aroused and so well instructed, not only in regard to the particular questions involved, but also in regard to the abstract nature of the rights and duties of the government and the people, as were the colonists at the close of the Revolutionary War.

Thus taught in a seven years' school of trial and adversity, when they came to form a government they brought to the council chamber an amount of knowledge of the true principles of freedom, which, I venture to say, no nation of the present day could equal. But with all these advantages, it was after long trial and tribulation that they were enabled to consolidate their liberties by the adoption of the admirable system of government under which we live.

Is it a matter of surprise, then, that Americans, the descendants of those who accomplished this great work, and who have learned, not only from history, but from the lips of their fathers, the dangers and troubles by which the country was surrounded, and the difficulty with which they were surmounted, should look with jealousy on everything which tends to put their priceless heritage in peril? Is it to be wondered at, that knowing the complexity and delicacy of the great machine intrusted to their charge, they should be unwilling to see it surrendered to ignorant, incompetent, or unfaithful hands?

How is it possible that foreigners can have the same interest in and attachment to our country and its institutions

as Americans? All their early recollections are associated with a far distant land. Their traditions, sympathies, and affections (if they be good men) are all with the homes of their childhood. As Archbishop Hughes remarked, with equal truth and beauty, "I would not exchange the bright memories of my early boyhood, in another land, and under another sky, for those of any other man living, no matter where he was born."

Who does not concur in the noble sentiments expressed by Henry Clay in the Senate on the 7th of February, 1839. "The Searcher of all hearts," said he, "knows that every pulsation of my mind beats high and strong in the cause of civil liberty; wherever it is safe and practicable I desire to see every portion of the human family in the enjoyment of it. But I prefer the liberty of my own country to that of any other people, and the liberty of my own race to that of any other."

Shall we then jeopard the liberty of our own country and our own race by intrusting it to the custody of people of foreign countries and of a race alien to our own?

But let us now turn to the statistics of pauperism, crime, intemperance, and vagrancy, and see what revelations they will make in regard to the virtue and intelligence and capacity for self-government of our foreign population.

The report of the superintendent of the census shows that in 1850 there was expended in the United States, of public money for the support of paupers, $2,954,806. This was, of course, independent of all private charities. The number of paupers supported was 134,972; and of these, 68,538, or more than one-half, were foreigners.

New York had in that year 40,580 foreign paupers, and only 19,275 natives. In that State one in every sixteen of her foreign population was a pauper, whilst of the native population but one of every one hundred and twenty-seven was of that class.

In Pennsylvania, one in fifty-four of the foreign population was a pauper, and one in three hundred and forty-two of the native population.

From other sources, such as the Prison Discipline Journal, American Register, American Almanac, etc., the following facts have been ascertained:

From 1837 to 1840 there were 8,671 persons relieved and maintained in Massachusetts at public expense, and of this number 6,104 were foreigners.

The number received into the Baltimore almshouse in 1851 was 2,150, of which number about 900 were Irish and Germans. In 1854 the whole number received was 2,358, of whom 1,398 were foreigners; 641 being Germans, and 593 Irish.

In Louisville the number of inmates of the almshouse were 164, of whom 135 were foreigners.

In Buffalo, New York, the returns of commitments to the workhouse are as follows:

In Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, the Transcript says that, during a period of nine months, 553 paupers were received at the poorhouse of Franklin county, of whom 522 were foreigners.

In New Orleans the number of commitments to the city workhouse for two weeks ending 3d August, 1855, was 108, of whom 92 were foreigners.

I might extend these details almost indefinitely, but those that I have given must be sufficient to satisfy any reasonable mind of the character of the mass of the immigrants.

I have already, in connection with the letter of Mayor Wood, and to confirm his statements, shown that more than half the criminals of our country are of foreign birth. I will now add a few more specific facts from the different States.