than a quarter of a century to roll away without acknowledging the wrong, or attempt ing to repair it. He was a Native American—there was no foreign sympathy in his behalf-no foreign votes to conciliate. When General Houston returned to the United States with the laurels of San Jacinto fresh upon his brow, bringing an empire in his hands to lay at our feet, no Congressional invitations celebrated his arrival. No bills were passed to pay his expenses. He was a Native American, and nothing was to be gained by laudations of his chivalry or his patriotism. When General Scott had concluded one of the most wonderful campaigns ever recorded in history, he was recalled almost in disgrace, and his army, which he had found untrained militia and converted into veteran heroes, was transferred to one of his subordinates. Yet Congress offered no word of sympathy, applied no balm to the wounded feelings of the matchless soldier. He was a Native American, and the voice of condolence was mute. Had General Shields received similar treatment, a howl would have been raised from one end of the continent to the other, and half the tongues in Congress would have grown weary lamenting his wrongs. With these facts before me, and all know them to be facts, I must be pardoned for maintaining that there is danger from foreign influence, and the sooner it is boldly met the better. Another cause of trouble consists in foreign born citizens keeping alive, by social and military organizations, their national habits, feelings and prejudices, to the prejudice of our own nationality. In a speech made in the U. S. Senate, on the 25th of January, 1855, James Cooper, Senator from Pennsylvania, referred to this fact, and condemned the practice as follows: I desire to advert briefly to another mischief, not wholly, but, nevertheless, to some extent, the result of admitting into the country the idle and turbulent spirits sent hither in order to relieve their own governments of their dangerous presence. I refer, Mr. President, to the practice now prevalent in the larger cities, of organizing volunteer companies and battalions composed wholly of foreigners, bearing foreign names, wearing foreign uniforms, and parading under foreign colors. In New York, Boston, and elsewhere, you hear of German Yagers, French Chasseurs, Irish Greens, Swiss Guards, &c.; and I am informed that in the first named city there is a brigade composed entirely of Irishmen, and called the Irish brigade. Now, sir, this is all wrong, and would be tolerated by no other government on the face of the earth. When, by the liberal character of our institutions, and the blessings and advantages which our laws confer, the subjects of other governments were invited to our shores, it was never intended they should enter into separate organizations, civil or military, or cultivate an esprit du corps among themselves, calculated to leave them foreigners in feeling and in habits, though dwelling in our midst, and owing allegiance to our laws. Naturalized foreigners should renounce all allegiance to their former governments, both in substance and in form, and identify themselves with the country of their adoption in the most unreserved manner. Let them, if they please, unite with our volunteer and militia organizations for the purpose of acquiring a knowledge of the use of arms; but let them beware of forming separate organizations, by which jealousy may be excited, and doubts of their attachment to their adopted country, and its people, created. Such organizations of naturalized citizens, officered by foreigners in strange dress, and mustering under strange flags, will never be tolerated by the mass of the American people. . Their own banner-the glorious stars and stripes-borne over their own and their fa thers' heads, both by land and sea, on many a bloody day, is, with them, a holy emblem -holy as the Ark of the Covenant to the Israelites of old, and associated with memories that consecrate it in every American heart. No heraldic blazonry, no matter how ancient, no matter who may have borne it, or over what fields of deathless renown it may have floated in triumph, can ever be compared, in our eyes, with the simple "stars and stripes." To raise another is to destroy the idea of the unity which it represents, to intimate a doubt of the perpetuity of that unity, and manifest a preference that is repulsive to every feeling of our hearts. Foreigners, therefore, who have renounced their allegiance to kings, and made themselves sharers with us in the heritage of liberty and all its concomitant advantages and blessings, should cast behind them the insignia of tyranny, and rally with their native brethren in hearty accord, under the banner of freedom-the starry flag of the republic. If they be Americans in heart, it will cost them nothing to organize, and if need be to fight and die beneath its folds. This flag has waved over the heads of heroes; and though it was ridiculed but a few years since, as a piece of "striped bunting," it now floats in every sea, in proud equality with the tri-color of France and the St. George of England; its shadow affording protection to those who have a right to claim it, in every quarter of the globe. Why, then, should naturalized citizens apparently repudiate it by raising another? And why, above all, organize separately when duty and sound policy alike urge them to make their fellowship with us perfect by unity of action in every possible case? If they have brought with them feelings of attachment to their native land, let them cherish them in their hearts, for such feelings are amiable and exist in every generous bosom. No one will find fault with them for indulging in memories which carry them back to the homes of their childhood; and no one will complain, even if they should confess that there are things and places dear to their hearts in the land they have left. All we ask of them is, that, having been received as brethren, they should conduct themselves as such, and not as rivals or enemies. It may be alleged, Mr. President, that these people are none the less attached to our institutions because they have formed military associations, with a view to qualify themselves to defend and uphold them. I do not charge them with a want of devotion to our institutions. I have only complained that they have formed separate organizations; that they have not, as both policy and safety require, associated with them native born citizens; that these separate organizations are calculated to excite jealousy; and that between these foreign organizations and similar native organizations there is danger of collision, and of such a character as is frightful to contemplate. If, instead of being formed of foreigners alone, these companies and battalions had been composed of something like equal proportions of natives and foreigners, the danger that is to be apprehended would cease to exist, or exist only in a modified form. From these organizations there is nothing to be gained, even by those who compose them. On the contrary, the suspicion and jealousy which they excite operates to their disadvantage. And here, Mr. President, allow me to say, that while I have not questioned the patriotism of the mass of those who compose these military organizations, I think there is reason to believe that many of the individuals belonging to them are desperate characters, who would not greatly deplore such a collision as is not improbable in the present excited state of the public mind. The great mass of their own countrymen-those who come here, in good faith, to seek a livelihood and a home, are seldom found connected with these associations as members. Engaged in subduing the wilderness of the far West, or pursuing their avocations in the cities and towns, they have neither time nor disposition to unite with them. But too generally, if the testimony on the subject is to be believed, they are composed of the idle and dissolute, of those who, fond of the excitement of military shows, have no fixed purpose in view, while the number of the substantial men of business, whose thrift would be a guarantee for the preservation of order, is comparatively small. Under these circumstances, it is time that steps were taken to correct the evil. The violence which has characterized the conduct of foreigners at the polls on election day, especially in our cities and towns, and eagerness displayed by them, especially the Irish Catholics, for office, wherever the side they took has been successful, and the success which attended their applications to the exclusion of native born citizens, is another cause of the feeling that now exists against them. Thus a late analysis of the Police of the city of New York, published in the journals of that city, shows that on a recent investigation made under the order of the city authorities, it was found that of 1149 men, composing the police force of the city, 718 only (or less than half) are natives of the United States; and of the foreigners, 305 are Irish. It is furthermore stated, that 39 of the police now in active service have been tenants of a State prison— but whether as convicts or political offenders does not appear. Fourteen of the men declined answering the inquiries on the two points referred to, but whether this circumstance is to be construed to their praise or their prejudice it is not our province to say. That our policemen should be above all reproach is not more clear than that they should be thoroughly conversant with, and intelligently attached to, the laws and institutions of the country. So the conduct of the present national administration; the appointment of Judge Campbell as Postmaster General; the number of foreigners sent as ministers abroad; the undue proportion of foreigners appointed to minor offices to the exclusion of native born applicants; and the proscription from office of all those who had any connection or were supposed to sympathize with the American movement;-all united to give form and direction to the strong and universal sentiment and feeling of opposition to foreign influence, which the other causes enumerated had already created. The feeling was abroad, and it was but necessary to have an exhibition of partiality for foreigners manifested like that by the Pierce administration, to start, as it did, the cry of America for Americans. CHAPTER XXVI. MISTAKEN VIEWS OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT. It has been very correctly said that “to make a government the blessing it ought to be to a whole people, it is necessary, in framing it, to resolve the benevolence of its general scope into two specific aims-one, the present case of men's rights under it; the other, its own preservation, as material to their future safety ;" and that the latter "is by far the most difficult part of the business." This is undoubtedly a truism which was fully realized by the framers of our Constitution. They were however equal to the task before them, and established a government having the aims before stated in view, and possessing all the requisite powers to secure the present rights of its citizens, and to preserve and maintain its vigor with a view to their future safety. Discarding the three forms of political organizations of which it was then supposed all human governments were either pure specimens or mixtures, they adopted neither a democratical, aristocratical, nor monarchial form, but contrived a scheme of their own, materially different from them all, and called it Republican. Foreigners, even the most learned among them, do not seem to comprehend, however, its distinctive characteristics and peculiar features, and therefore hastily jump to the conclusion that it is a Democracy. Even the learned De Tocqueville seems every where to assume it as a recognized and indisputable fact, and Lord Brougham not only ventures so far as to state it to be so, but applies to it the epithet by which it is usual to distinguish the technical form of government known by that name. The truth is, however, otherwise; and it is, perhaps, owing more to this error and misconception of the true character of our government, on the part of foreigners, that all other causes combined, that they come to this country with the views they do, as to the nature and operations of our institutions, and claim for themselves, as a right, what native born citizens have hitherto conceded as a privilege, but never as a right. Many features of the Federal Constitution may be referred to, as negativing all idea, on the part of its framers, of establishing an unlimited and unrestrained Democratic government, into which those illumined with the ideas of European revolutionists, who have sought a refuge in this country, would now convert it. As the discussions in the Convention, and the conclusions at which the framers arrived, abundantly show, no such ideas were then entertained, like those now promulgated by the socalled Free German Association. We demand! say these foreign agrarians 1. Universal suffrage. 2. The election of all officers by the people. 3. The abolition of the Presidency. 4. The abolition of Senates. 5. The right of the people to recall their representatives (cashier them) at their pleasure. 6. The right of the people to change the Constitution when they like. 7. All law-suits to be conducted without expense. 8. A department of the government to be set up for the protection of immigration. 9. A reduced term of acquiring citizenship. 10. Abolition of all neutrality. 11. Intervention in favor of every people struggling for liberty. 12. Abolition of laws for the observance of the Sabbath. 13. Abolition of prayers in Congress. 14. Abolition of oaths upon the Bible. 15. The supporting of the emancipation exertions of Cassius M. Clay by Congressional laws. 16. Abolition of the Christian system of punishment, and the introduction of the human amelioration system. 17. Abolition of capital punishment. In view of these misapprehensions, it may not be out of place to make an inquiry into the peculiar characteristics of our government, and to show wherein foreigners, and but too many natives, misapprehend its scope and power. It is not a democracy, as they suppose, subject to every fickle change and caprice of the people, without constitutional restraints, balances and counterbalances, and incapable of keeping to any course but that of the popular current, however momentarily erroneous. As is very forcibly remarked by Mr. Warner, in an article in the American Review of May, 1849, "the fathers of the country never dreamed of such a thing; and though we are not at present just what they meant us to be, we are still no democrats in the form and theory of our system. At the polls, no doubt, and in the newspapers, an unscrupulous man will say any thing to gain his purpose. In this way democracy has become a word of cant among our own citizens; and so would diabolism, if the people loved to hear it." But "to call the government a democracy, is either to mistake or slander it. To call the people democrats, or to profess, with fawning cant, to be democrats at their service, is to make them objects either of insult or cajolery. The truth appears to be, that to a |