inherent vigor and virtue. Its surface has been sullied, but with time the taint will wear away. The original sentiment remains intact. As we remarked before, it needs only more propitious circumstances and influences to give it character and definiteness. Such names as Jackson and Clay possess the power to draw it out into expression, because no men have lived who were more American than they. They knew no country save their own. They were of ourselves, the natives of our own soil,-fresh, large, and original; and to such men the American heart will instinctively attach itself, because in their very persons they worthily represent our country and its noble institutions. This impulsive attachment, therefore, betrays the existence of the national sentiment, and tells too plainly what is required to impart to it energy of action. When this great national idea takes complete possession of a people, rooting itself so deeply in their hearts as to defy dislodgment, it will not brook even the most trifling opposition on its own soil. It is a power dwelling with the masses, that cannot be provoked or insulted with impunity. It claims an imperial sway, and exacts the deference demanded by despotism. Nothing is so large that it cannot embrace it; nothing so trifling that it cannot invest with undying glory. It stands for its own right, and feels itself strong enough to be secure. Those who underrate its consequence, must fall beneath power; those who seek to bring it into contempt, shall themselves one day be held up to universal scorn and detestation. its It has been claimed that, as we cannot expect our foreign population to forget the ties that hold them to their native land, and to enter into close relationship with a sentiment for which they possess no qualifications, we ought therefore so far to submit to a modification of our national preferences as to accommodate ourselves to their unfortunate situation. This is the doctrine, though it is not, perhaps, quite so plainly announced. But, by what authority are we bidden to put off our own nationality, and go peddling it about to aliens, strangers, or outcasts? Who commands us to exchange the immortal memories of Bunker Hill, of Trenton, of Saratoga, and of Yorktown, for the mess of pottage which they bring from other shores? What power is it that dares to exercise such authority-but the shameless and irresponsible power of party, that forgets country, that forgets all things, save only its own selfish success ? Our foreign population, as a body, were never induced to come to American shores from the simple love of liberty, or its institutions. It is no deep attachment to us, or our principles, or to the spirit and genius of our government, that brings them here. They can confess to but one motive; and that, the hope of bettering their fortunes. They come to receive more money for their labor, to provide more liberally for the necessities of their families, to hoard wealth, and to be beyond the reach of tyranny. And is it not enough, then, that America offers them the free enjoyment of all these privileges? Is it not enough that each family may have a farm in the heart of our rich domains, on the simple condition of their taking possession? Is it not enough that our laws are as efficient to protect their lives and their property, as to protect our own? Is it not enough, that we freely open to them all the avenues to wealth and happiness that lie open to our own citizens? Is it not enough, that we do all this for them, and do it, not in a grudging spirit, but out of a deep sympathy with their past misfortunes and unhappiness?—that henceforth we stand between them and want,between them and their former oppressors,-between them and all the world? Must we be expected to surrender our entire nationality to them, and to allow them to inoculate it with their customs, tastes, opinions, manners, and prejudices? Must we be asked to give up all that we hold most dear, because, forsooth, in the nature of things, it cannot be as dear to them? Must our hospitality become the means of its own destruction, and our generosity prevent the noble objects for which it is put forth? A thousand times, No! We may say to our foreign population, both in sympathy and sincerity, that they are no more than our guests; we neither compelled nor invited them to come among us, and we do not insist that they shall remain; we offer them equal protection with that given to our own citizens, and equal opportunities for improving their condition. But it is for them to assimilate their ways of thinking to ours; not for us to go over to them. If they are dissatisfied with our opinions, they are free to return again whence they came. But they shall never assume the management of our public affairs while they are yet foreign to us in spirit; and we will insist on exercising the right of passing upon their qualifications to a citizenship so fraught with high responsibilities. Short of this point, it is idle to think of stopping. To pause midway, is to invite untold disaster. In this country, the predominating race is the Anglo-American. It was that invigorating blood, which reddened the battle-fields of the Revolution. That race has stamped its mind upon the nation, and given it permanent character. That mind has built up our liberal institutions, through which passes the course of all our national thought. It is the same heart that sends the life-giving blood through all the members of the vast political body. If other races have united with it, they have, of necessity, merged their individualities in its overpowering current; they have forgotten themselves, and fallen in with the wide stream of American life and manners. It remains for the original Anglo-Americans alone, therefore, to go forward with the work of impressing all national sentiments with their own bold and free peculiarities. They are the dominant race, to whom the possession of the continent has manifestly been delivered. Their native spirit belongs to the soil. It has been strengthened through the storms of war, and it will be nurtured in the long sunshine of peace. Its sceptre will not depart; and it steadily refuses to acknowledge on its own ground any power coequal with its own. The national policy of our country must, above all things, le decided and strong, since the nature and objects of our commonwealth are so widely distinct from the policies of other nations. As a lonely settler among savages must fortify his home, and keep watch and ward against the insidious foe, so must our Republic preserve itself with scrupulous care against the infectious assaults of foreign elements, incompatible with its prosperity or even with its existence. America demands the careful preservation of whatever has given us our national prosperity. Americans must be Americans; Americans must govern America. Under ordinary circumstances, a truth so obvious as this would hardly need assertion. But the true basis of our national existence and success, has for some years been studiously ignored and kept out of sight by a set of wily politicians, who, reckless of the means employed, have only sought their private advantage. These agitators have pandered to the violent and lawless tendencies of a brutal foreign immigration, for the sake of their votes. To win them, they have loudly proclaimed that America is the great receptacle for all fugitives; scarcely making a distinction between fugitives from justice, and fugitives from oppression. They have sought to convince these strangers that they had legislative rights in this country; and by such delusive appeals have, to a very great extent, succeeded in managing the foreign vote, which, in the balanced condition of parties, became a preponderant power. These operations have resulted in preposterous assumptions on the part of the immigrant population, in the degradation of the average character of our own rulers, and, to a lamentable extent, in forgetfulness of the true characteristics of our nationality. But a true nationalism, although not inconsistent with the broadest philanthropy, is altogether opposed to this spurious cosmopolitanism. The laws and foundations of our American freedom are peculiar and separate; nor is any man fitted to govern under them, without an experimental training in them. This fallacious pretence of political benevolence, which studiously avoids mentioning either nationality or patriotism, and which enlarges with many windy generalities upon the human race, the equality of man, and the brotherhood of nations, is the merest sophism. Every man has some equal rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But these must be sought by means not inconsistent with the general good. Nor has the criminal equal rights with the lawful citizen. He has forfeited them. Nor has the beggar, who does not own a foot of land nor a suit of clothes, in fact, equal rights with the millionaire. He has not the right to use as much money or estate, until he gets them. He has the right to earn them, if he can, and then to use them. His attempt to use them without that preliminary, is robbery, or swindling. Degrees of intelligence and morality also determine what extent a man's rights shall have, in practice. What rights he is fit to use, he may have. This false cosmopolitanism which would grant equal rights in all respects to the ignorant and the wise, the barbarous and the enlightened--which would at once confer equal political privileges upon the educated, intelligent, and law-abiding American, and upon the foreign pauper and foreign criminal-upon the German, the Irishman, and by parity of reasoning upon the Croat, the Turk, the Chinese, the Hindoo, the Hottentot, the Australian, the Andaman Islander, who crawls on all-fours like a beast, and has neither clothes, language, nor God, cannot meet with too severe a reproof, or too summary a condemnation. As well talk of equal liberty to the philosophic statesman or the lawyer, intrusted with the destinies of millions of men or the interest of millions of capital; and to the idiot, who cannot put his food into his mouth, nor hide his nakedness. Such dangerous principles have been so industriously inculcated, and have been so greedily accepted by the foreign population; such a criminal apathy in regard to the preservation of political purity and the election of good men has prevailed among native citizens; and foreign emissaries, lay and clerical, are pushing such extended and powerfully contrived enterprises to grasp the control of our educational centres, our political organizations, all the springs of our national life, by schools, hierarchies, and the filthy dregs of European prisons and almshouses, that a great question is this day up before the people of the United States for determination-new at least in form, if not in substance. Under the guidance of a truly patriotic feeling we must answer it. Clear-minded and true-hearted Americans are to-day called upon to decide a question the most momentous that has ever |