James A. Bayard, of Delaware, said:

"Aliens cannot be considered as members of the society of the United States. Our laws are passed on the ground of our policy, and whatever is granted to aliens is a mere matter of favor, and if it is taken away, they have no right to complain."

Upon the general principle of discouraging excessive immigration I will on this branch of the question quote but one other authority, and that is from the writings of Thomas Jefferson.

Candor compels me to admit that when Mr. Jefferson became a candidate for the Presidency he relaxed his opposition to foreigners to a very considerable extent, and that after his election he recommended a change in the law of 1798, which had been passed under the administration of his great rival and political antagonist, John Adams, so as to reduce the term of residence to five years.

But it will be seen that Mr. Jefferson's calm judgment in 1781, when he wrote his Notes on Virginia, and his practice whilst President (as I shall hereafter have occasion to show) conformed to the doctrines of the American party. In his Notes on Virginia, he says:

"Every species of government has its specific principles. Ours are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English Constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchy, yet from such we are to expect the greatest number of immigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the government they imbibed in their early youth; or if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to the other. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their numbers,

they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent and distracted mass. I may appeal to experience during the present contest for a verification of these conjectures. But if they be not certain in event, are they not probable? Is it not safer to wait with patience twenty-seven years and three months longer for the attainment of any degree of population desired or expected? May not our government be more homogeneous, more peaceful, more durable? Suppose twenty millions of Republican Americans, thrown all of a sudden into France, what would be the condition of that kingdom? If it would be more turbulent, less happy, less strong, we may believe that the addition of half a million of foreigners to our present numbers would produce a similar effect here."

In 1797 Mr. Jefferson was quite as emphatic and much more practical in his opposition to foreigners. In a petition to the Legislature of Virginia, which he prepared in that year, he said:

"And your petitioners further submit to the two Houses of the Assembly whether the safety of the citizens of this Commonwealth, in their persons, their property, their laws and government, does not require that the capacity to act in the important office of a juror, grand or petty, civil or criminal, should be restrained in future to native citizens of the United States, or such as were citizens at the date of the Treaty of Peace, which closed our Revolutionary War; and whether the ignorance of our laws, and natural partiality to the countries of their birth, are not reasonable causes for declaring this to be one of the rights incommunicable in future to adopted citizens."1

How does this sound in the ears of Democracy?

What would Mr. Jefferson have thought if he could have seen the day arrive when, instead of an aggregate of half a

1Jefferson's Writings, Vol. 9, p. 453.

million foreign population, there would be an annual influx of that number of the worst classes of Europe?

Then indeed would he have uttered with increased earnestness the sentiment which we find in one of his letters:

"I hope we may find some means in future of shielding ourselves from foreign influence, political, commercial, or in whatever form attempted. I can scarcely withhold myself from joining in the wish of Silas Dean that there were an ocean of fire between this and the old world!"

How it must horrify the anti-Americans of the present day to find that the first and most eloquent teachers of the doctrines of the American party were the sages of the Revolution and the framers of our Constitution.

The naturalization laws were changed in many particulars by the acts of 1802, 1813 and 1816. The last named act guarded with peculiar care against abuses by introducing new provisions, which made the identification of the applicant more certain, and required the proof to be matter of record. This was a most valuable feature in the law. It required that the applicant should, when he made his declaration, file a description of himself so minute as to clearly establish his identity, and when he obtained his certificate of naturalization this description was incorporated into it and constituted a part of it. The law also provided that the date of the recorded declaration should be the evidence of the commencement of residence of five years. The effect of this was to exclude parol evidence on this point and thereby to prevent fraud and perjury.

In May, 1828, this law was altered so as to strike out the provisions requiring the application to be entered of record five years before naturalization. The object was to dispense with record evidence and to substitute the parol testimony of witnesses to prove residence. This change in the law was made a few months before an exciting Presidential election. One of those who urged the change was Mr. Buchanan who had, on a previous occasion, admonished his countrymen against the dangers of foreign influence.

That change was doubtless made to conciliate the foreign vote, and in all probability had that effect. As might have been anticipated, it threw open a wide door for fraud, and it has brought upon the country a train of evils the magnitude of which it would be difficult to conceive.

The American party now propose to guard against these frauds, not only by an extension of the time of residence, but by restoring the provision of the acts of 1798 and 1816, requiring record instead of parol proof of actual residence for the time prescribed by law.

No man at all familiar with the proceedings of courts of justice can have failed to be impressed with the facility with which such proof is now obtained, and to be shocked with the perjury in such cases which is hardly disguised. Gangs of men come to the witness box and swear for each other with as much readiness as they would go through any other mere matter of form.

But we are not left to conjecture in regard to the exist ence of fraud of this character. We all remember the celebrated case of the Plaquemine frauds, when 1,044 votes were cast in a district which contained but 400 voters. We also remember the other frauds of 1844, which became the subject of investigation before the Senate of Louisiana on an impeachment of Benjamin C. Elliott, Judge of the City Court of the City of Lafayette. Upon the trial it was discovered that the judge had fraudulently issued 1,748 false certificates of naturalization, and being duly convicted he was removed from office.

Similar frauds have been practiced to a very great extent in Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York.

In 1844, the subject was brought to the attention of Congress, and on the 27th January, 1845, Mr. Berrien, from the Committee on the Judiciary, made an elaborate report, accompanied by voluminous testimony taken at different points, to establish the frauds. This report will be found in Sen. Doc. 173, 2d Session of 28th Congress. Five thousand extra copies of the report were ordered to be printed, and it is a singular circumstance that the printing

of the extra copies of the report was ordered by a strictly party vote-every Democrat in the Senate voting against it.

The commissioners who were appointed to take the testimony reported that they had summoned indiscriminately witnesses of both political parties, but they add "they regret that those subpoened belonging to the Democratic party have generally omitted or refused to attend."

This, to say the least of it, is a significant fact.

With developments like these before us, and when there is reason to believe that the elections in 1844, both in Louisiana and New York, were carried by fraudulent votes, and that the issue of the Presidential election was thereby changed, is it to be wondered at that the citizens of the United States should be aroused to a sense of the danger and degradation to which they are subjected by having the "whole policy of the country regulated and controlled by the fraudulent conduct of aliens ?"

What good man, whether he be a native or adopted citizen, will withhold his aid in correcting abuses like these? It is quite as important to the conservative, law-loving, naturalized citizens, as to the natives of the country; and I am persuaded that it is only necessary to bring the facts to their knowledge to secure their cordial co-operation in the patriotic effort now on foot to guard against similar mischiefs in future.

My next number will be devoted to the consideration of the propriety of giving a preference to native citizens in the exercise of the power of appointment and election to public offices.

I shall endeavor to show that there is nothing wrong in principle in the doctrines of the American party, nothing opposed to the spirit of the Constitution, nothing at war with the cause of civil and religious freedom; but, on the contrary, that their views are sustained by the principles of the Constitution by the practice of the government, and by the opinions of the wisest and best men that this country has ever produced.

MADISON.