tional legislation. More and more it assumes form of evasion and compromise and barining, or undisguised action in favor of some ss. It busies itself about trifles in order to roid questions of real importance. In municigovernment the main feature is jobbery, ad in national government, patronage and ention of power. The only steady and compromising force in politics is the saloon, institution of American origin but now alst wholly in the hands of foreigners of the mit or second generation,- the bright, connmate flower of the policy of unrestricted migration. Such processes cannot go much ther without causing paralysis of legislative ion. The strong point in Mr. Gladstone's ome Rule policy is his plea that the Irish estion blocks legislation. But several quesns of like nature are looming up in our rizon,- questions based on race or religion deep-rooted prejudice; questions which w their support from ignorance or climatic nperament, or from long-endured wrongs, e agrarian abuses. Such questions produce state of things quite different from that ased by the rivalry of political parties in a mogeneous state. These are normal, and cessary to healthy political life. But the Irish ember not only votes for Ireland every time, t votes against everything else; and Mr. rnell commands the situation. The example fraught with instruction. The struggle of gland since those early conflicts which ilton describes as the "wars of kites and Ows" has been to govern a heterogeneous ople. This history is to be viewed favoraonly on Pope's principle that "whatever is right," but is not a history that statesinship should aim to repeat.

The statistics of foreign immigration and e sources of it are so well known that they arcely need mention. In the last thirty ars, seven and a half millions of immigrants ve come to us,- a considerable fraction of e present population. They and their chilen number fifteen millions, or one-fourth of e people. During the decade ending in 84 the immigration numbered about four illions. Much of this is in the same racial e with our own English, Teutonic, and andinavian — and so far as blood goes reforces the national type. But whatever is ined in this respect is more than offset by e blacks, and the mixed Spanish and Indian pulations of the South-west, so that we still ive from ten to fifteen millions utterly alien our stock, and for the most part unfit for tizenship. Generalizing these statistics, we ave the grave fact that one-fifth of our populaon is either of blood outside of the national rain or defective in political capacity.

It now costs thirty dollars or less to transport a Bohemian or Italian from his home to our ports, and five dollars more will place him in the middle of the continent. Absolute paupers cannot make this journey, and there are laws shutting them out, the only penalty of which is the trouble of taking back those who may be detected as paupers or insane. The feebleness of the legislation is exceeded by the weakness of its enforcement. Consequently, we are already burdened with a large element of European paupers and insane. Our beggars are nearly all foreigners, and nearly one-third of our insane are immigrants, a fact that emphasizes nearly every point that has been named. This proneness to insanity among immigrants reveals their worn-out vitality, their ignorance, and their inability to endure so great a change; it is the protest of nature against it. But there is a class just above that of the pauper, and into which it is constantly slipping, hardly more desirable, which now avails itself of this cheap transportation. The foreign element is not only increasing, but it is deteriorating. It is beneath the dignity of argument to contend that much of the immigration from Southern and Central Europe, and some also of that from England and Ireland, is unfit, on physical, moral, and political grounds, for incorporation into American life. It is equally beyond dispute that it constitutes a large factor in labor troubles, crowding the market and depressing wages below the American living point. Mr. Carroll D. Wright, in his first annual report as Commissioner of Labor, tells us that already 31.9 per cent. of our mechanical laborers are immigrants, and, while recognizing their value in some respects, finds in the fact a main cause of overproduction and excessive competition. His wise inference is that this immigration should be restricted for the sake of a sound industry. Equally weighty considerations of a political and moral nature could be urged. Baneful as the process and the degree of it are, it seems likely to go on in geometrical ratio. Larger and swifter ships, cheaper railway transportation, the crowding out in Europe, its military laws, the increasing attractions on this continent, and especially the fact that overproduction here through immigration reacts on the labor market there,- such are the forces that swell the current. Thus, the greater the immigration the faster will it increase, and without possibility of end till the balance in populations and resources is reached, and America becomes, in one brief, rapid rush of changing population, another Europe,-a work which, if done at all, should fill centuries. Europe is steady and strong, so far as it is so, be

ght be his duty to risk or endure as an invidual. If the house of Victor Hugo's good shop had held a wife and children, it would t have been right for him to open his doors Jean Valjean; something more than the loons would have been endangered. The law mercy and humanity which justifies a man taking his life in his hand and encountering e last degree of risk and sacrifice does not quire him to drag others along his path. It not asserted that a nation should not be herciful and humane, nor that there are two nds of morality, but only that the enforceent of even the highest principles has limtions that become moral standards. A rporate body cannot go so fast and so far in crificial ways as an individual. The spirit humanity and mercy is to be always chered by political bodies, but the degree of enforcement should be regulated and demined by inseparable circumstances. The ad of man may touch the stars, but his feet st on the dust of the earth.

But it is a question if this nation is pursuga merciful and humane course in permitig a nearly unrestricted immigration. What the function of this nation as related to her nations? Chiefly that it shall offer to em the spectacle and example of a true

tion. This we have done so far as institutions go, d the sight has moved the world. We can Il render the nations no better service than making our own homogeneous in blood d sentiment, intelligent, moral, harmonious d strong in unity. Such an example is an hievement of mercy and humanity far bend any spasmodic and sentimental embrace suffering humanity; it says to the nations, Go, and do thou likewise." We thus start the rrents of mercy and good-will where they ost need to flow, and where also are their tural channels. But small service is renred to the cause of humanity by relieving her nations of their proper duties. The odus of immense populations from Europe is delayed healthful and necessary processes hich otherwise would there have gone on. he pressure against existing evils has been ken off, when it would have been better if it ad been continued. The spectacle of a heteroeneous and discordant nation staggering uner heavy burdens of ignorance and crime nd political corruption and unenforced laws, ad bewildered by unsolvable problems of ace, serves to strengthen institutions and sages in Europe that need to be modified or wept away. The evils from which we suffer rough excessive immigration react in favor f the very causes that produce it. It is not nly wiser, but more humane, to return these

VOL. XXXV.—109.

problems to their sources, and thus force each nation to bear its own burdens and work out its own salvation. What mercy, in the larger view, is there in permitting an immigration which encourages the hideous military system of Europe? It is far easier for a nation to deplete itself of a population whose miseries drive it to threaten the injustice and oppression that render it miserable than to correct the abuses. That which makes the municipal government of our larger cities intolerable contributes to a peace in Europe which it does not deserve. Chicago has had the expense and trouble of trying and executing several men whose careers ought to have been run in the land where they were born. So long as we receive this fugitive and crushed-out immigration, we are playing into the hands of institutions and usages against which our nation is, by its nature, a protest. More than this: we are playing into the hands of organized inhumanity by fostering that combination of throne and class and land-monopoly and military service which drains the life-blood of the European populations. If it is humanity that seems most to justify the present immigration, the tide should be reversed and sent back where it will compel the nations from which it comes to give their own children land and bread, justice and equality. The resources of Europe are not exhausted, but are either monopolized or undeveloped, often one and the same thing. Let England break up her parks and game preserves, and give Ireland a good land-bill; let Ireland drain her bogs, and cultivate the deep-sea fisheries that Lord Churchill proposed to foster and the industries that Home Rule will reëstablish. Let Scotland send Winans home, or to Australia, and restore the deer preserves to the crofters, and so rectify the most inhuman wrong of the century. Let Russia either exterminate or pacify her revolutionists. Let Prussia and Italy and Austria disband the armies which starve one part of their populations by keeping the other part in enforced and costly idleness. Let the Great Powers form alliances in behalf of their people instead of the dignity of their crowns. Instead of emigrating, these oppressed multitudes should stay and hammer at the doors of palaces and the gates of hedged forests and untilled parks, and cast their burdens of military despotism, and taxation, and groaning want upon the floors of Parliament and Reichstag,demanding relief, and taking it if it be not granted. Here is a field for the exercise of humanity worth considering. The time has come when this nation can best fulfill its lofty mission of mercy and good-will by transferring the field of their action beyond its shores. There can be no act of humanity until there

is a standard of character; the moral, the fit, the necessary underlie all beneficent conduct. Such a standard this nation once had, but it is a question if it can long be retained.

The only restrictive legislation now in force is that which forbids the immigration of Chinese, paupers, and insane, and "an act to prohibit the importation and migration of foreigners and aliens under contract or agreement to perform labor in the United States, its Territories, and the District of Columbia." These restrictions are easily evaded. There might be more stringent laws of the same sort, and possibly an honest commission might be secured to enforce them, but evasion and deception are so easy that it is doubtful if much would be gained. The question of legislation is confessedly one of great difficulty, and any new measures are suggested only in a tentative way. I venture, however, to name a method which the free and independent American has been accustomed to associate with "the effete and crumbling monarchies of Europe" as, perhaps, the completest symbol of their tyrannical disposition,-namely, the passport. There are many American citizens who, if they should search the archives of their households, would find a document so named, secured at a cost of five dollars and some trouble, regarded first as a jest but later as an occasion of profane ejaculation in the streets of Italian and Austrian cities, and preserved as a memento of foreign wanderings and despotic governments. The passport, however, is not necessarily a symbol of tyranny. It represents a political necessity in the past, and it may be a useful political instrument in the future. It is not tyrannical in its nature; it contravenes no right; for it does not follow that because a man has feet he may go wherever he chooses. It may be a limitation of personal independence, but it is not different from, nor greater than, many others which are necessary to social welfare, and it is less severe and arbitrary than the requirements of vaccination or military service. The passport simply indicates that the time has not yet come when men may go from one country to another without some guarantee of good intention, worthy character, and general fitness to make such a change. It is better for society that some people should stay at home. The political value of the passport is not to be set aside by crude talk about the freedom of God's earth and international hospitality and the right of a man to go wherever he sees fit. Its use in immigration would emphasize the gravity of a transfer of citizenship from one nation to another. It is not a slight thing for a man to change continents, language, citizenship, institutions, customs, hereditary surroundings, and

present ties and throw himself into an environment new in every respect save the sky above him. Such an act should be made difficult, so that men shall not rashly undertake it, and it should be suffered only on the ground of entire fitness. The most fit are those whose intelligence renders them least dependent upon environment; and the least fit are those who are still the creatures of environment. Immigration is largely tragical, as is shown by the statistics of insanity. The ratio of insane foreigners to native born is about three to one; of those born of foreign parents to native born, nearly four to one. These facts do not show that the insane come hither, but that the coming makes them insane. The reasons are evident and full of warning significance. Immigration is an act fraught with tremendous risks, not only to those who undertake it, but to those among whom it is consummated. It is not only a religious but a political truth that the bounds of our habitations are appointed. No man should break over them without the best of reasons and distinct fitness; least of all should the weak and the ignorant, for the simple reason that they most need a molding and restraining environment. When such come hither, they are practically without environment, being too ignorant to perceive and come under that which exists. Concretely stated, such immigrants do not become Americans. Hence that social and political condition which now so obtrudes itself upon public attention,-anarchism, lawlessness, hoodlumism, pauperism, boycottism, labor strikes, and a general violation of personal rights such as the Anglo-Saxon race has not witnessed since Magna Charta. The combined tyranny of Europe during the last half-century does not afford such a spectacle of cruel and unreasonable tyranny, of trampling upon personal freedom, as that witnessed in the United States during the last three or four years. This hor rible tyranny is wholly of foreign origin,-the plain and simple fruit of ignorance of Amer can institutions and of the meaning of the word rights. If we suffer from this, we have ourselves to thank for it. We invoked ignorance, and it is tormenting us with its proper weapons. negro problem aside, there is scarcely a great public evil in this nation but has its roots in this indiscriminate immigration. It is the foreign element that poisons politics, blocks the wheels of industry, fills our prisons and hos pitals and poor-houses, defies law, perplexes our schemes of education, lowers the grade of public virtue, atheizes the state, confuses la bor, supplants the caucus by the saloon, feeds the drink-evil, and turns municipal government into a farce and a shame.

The

It is getting to be felt in many quarters that

is process has gone far enough, and that it May be well to exchange our grand idealism r a little common sense and practical statesanship. The passport seems to be the only ailable means of restricting immigration so to exclude that which is undesirable. No rutiny by a commission in our ports will turn tack any considerable number. The restricson must be made before the journey hither gins. For this purpose the consulate could sily be employed. It is not proposed to rohibit foreign immigration; but it is prosed to make it, at least, not so easy a 022 atter as it is at present. To this end it is ggested that laws be enacted requiring ery person to show before an American ficial his fitness to become an American tizen,-laws strong on the negative side, utting out the grossly degraded and ignort, the physically degenerate, the criminal; d still stronger on the positive side, requirg some inceptive preparation for entering to American life, and some real intention to

Since these pages were written, the subject has enged the attention of Congress, and bills have been troduced which call for the use of the consulate to termine the fitness of emigrants. The press, and pecially the New York" Evening Post " in its able colans, criticise this feature of the bills as unworthy of nsideration on the ground of the utter inability of nsuls to do the required work. I would not insist on this or any other specific method, but only that me method shall be adopted which will shut out a rt, at least, of the undesirable and already illegal migration. It would seem that a commissioner in Te ports of departure would find no greater difficulty an a commission in the ports of arrival; that it is as sy to determine embarkation as disembarkation. would also seem that a consul or a commission in Tueenstown could more easily ascertain if Irish emiants are discharged criminals than a commission in ew York. The difficulty in all cases would not be ith the consul or commission, but with those who De required to produce the proper and sufficient cer

fall into the current of the national life and to support its institutions.

We are aware that a government cannot do everything that needs to be done for its people; also that human society, as distinct from government, must work out many of its problems without the aid of law, and that, being an organism, it is fitted to do this. We are also aware that social regeneration must be largely left to science and ethical teaching and religion. Society has laws and forces of its own which work towards the elimination of evil and the creation of good and require no aid from the civil law. But these social forces presuppose a normal constitution of society,potentially, at least. When society is suffered by law, or by the absence of law, to become abnormally constituted,-heterogeneous, illbalanced, overweighted with bad elements alien to itself, then civil law may be invoked to take off the hindrances, and thus make the way clear for society to enforce its own redemptive methods.

tificates of good character,- that is, the emigrants themselves.

An "Ex-Consul," in the New York "Evening Post" (December 24), ridicules the use of the consulate for the purpose named, but suggests that "it might be well to require of every one [emigrants] a certificate of good conduct from the local authorities of the place from which he came, and this might be legalized by the consul at the place of shipment, or the consul nearest the place from which he came, as in the case of merchandise.

The suggestion is well worthy of consideration as suggesting the ground upon which a consul or commission might grant a passport. The humanity of checking paupers and insane in the ports of departure rather than in ports of arrival is too obvious to need mention.

I will add that this paper was written nearly two years ago, and before the suggestions as to the use of the consulate, now so frequently heard, were made. T. T. Munger.