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high average--there are twenty foreigners to the hundred inhabit

ants.

What amount of property the foreign incomers bring to the United States, it is impossible to estimate. The average of their wealth, as well as of their morals, has declined for many years; indeed, nearly as their numbers have increased. There are individuals, and occasionally companies, who bring with them capital enough to establish them in business; but this is an exception and not a rule, and an exception more unfrequent now, when so many actual paupers are sent over, who arrive with no money, no clothing, and hardly any rags, and who forthwith fall a dead weight upon the public and private charities of the land. If, however, we suppose that there has been an average of ten dollars of capital added to that already in the country, by each immigrant, the whole addition of wealth would amount to thirty millions of dollars. But there will be no balance left upon deducting from this, or from twice as much, the expenses, public and private, of supporting and imprisoning the paupers and criminals of the number, and the amounts withdrawn from circulation here, and sent to Europe to help out the poverty at home. What these amounts are it is as difficult to state, as to tell the entire property of the immigrants; a few items, however, will suffice to show that their aggregates must be enormous. In four years, from 1848 to 1851 inclusive, the English Commissioners of Immigration alone, made a return of sums sent back from America, within their knowledge, amounting to a total of fourteen millions of dollars, which up to this time is undoubtedly swelled to at least thirty millions. Considering then what must have been remitted since 1790, not to England only, but to Ireland, Germany, France, and other parts of Europe, it is not difficult to see that even to make this amount good, it would have been necessary for immigrants to bring with them twenty dollars per head, besides earning or paying for their living from the day of arrival. Suppose them to have brought, all told, even a hundred millions of dollars, remittances at the rate of thirty millions to England alone in eight years would soon exhaust that. But besides this, there must be

considered the expense of pauperism and crime-items also incapable of satisfactory investigation. Some idea of their extent may perhaps be gathered from the fact, that aside from all public and private charities, the expenditure for public support of paupers of foreign birth, within the United States, during the single year ending June 1st, 1850, even by the imperfect returns gathered, was over one million four hundred thousand dollars.

The paupers so relieved were sixty-eight thousand five hundred in number, while the number of paupers of American birth relieved in the same way was sixty-six thousand four hundred; namely, one seventh as many in proportion to the entire number.

Of the expenses incurred in repressing or punishing the crimes of immigrants, only an extensive and laborious search could supply any account. But criminal proceedings are expensive, and many criminal prosecutions are brought against foreigners. Of the whole number of criminals convicted during the year ending June 1st, 1850, twelve thousand eight hundred were natives, and thirteen thousand seven hundred foreigners; about, as before, seven times as many in the hundred as those of our own population.

That these items of public expenditure, together with the drawbacks already stated, would exhaust more than any amount which immigrants may have brought into the country, is very certain.

Lastly, a few numbers showing the educational comparison between the foreigners and natives, are indispensable in order to a due comprehension of their tendencies and capacities, when domesticated with us. Of the whole number of native whites in the United States, then, one in five is attending school; of the foreign population, only one-third as many-one in fifteen. Of natives, of school age, viz., between five and fifteen, eight in ten are at school; of foreigners of same age, only five in ten. Of the whole number of native whites, about four and a half out of every hundred cannot read or write; of foreigners, nine out of the same number--twice as many. Of natives over twenty years of age, eight and a quarter in the hundred cannot read or write; of foreigners, fourteen and a half in the hundred.

The prospect of future immigration, however, demands some consideration. There seems to be no reason why the exodus from Europe to America should not yet grow and continue. Even if the remainder of the Irish population should stay at home, there are millions and millions on the Continent who will complete the yearly number of immigrants. So far as material interests are concerned, greater and greater inducements are offered by the increasing wealth, enlarged capacity, and demand for labor within our own country. We have abundance of room and of riches. Such inducements have already operated upon so many of the over-crowded and povertystricken European nations, that it is quite certain that they will continue to operate. And on the other side of the Atlantic there are not wanting impulses to co-operate with the attractions here. The future of the European nations is stormy and dark. Revolutionary principles are seething under the apparently smooth surface of her political aspect, and before long, despotism, anarchy, and liberty will be struggling together; wars and rebellions exert their disorganizing and unhappy influence, and increasing crowds will flee from the home misery to the foreign peace upon our territory. Europe then, crowded with people, oppressed with poverty, containing much sterile land, and doomed to the horrors of complicated and obstinate wars, will long send vast and vaster yearly bands to share our free peace, our rich and boundless lands, and our quiet wealth. We shall, apparently, also continue to receive the refuse of almshouses, and the felon garbage of prisons, shipped hither wholesale by European governments and societies.

During the periods of ten years, from 1810 to 1850, the successive totals of immigration have arisen from one hundred and fourteen thousand to two hundred and four thousand seven hundred and eighty thousand, and lastly, one million four hundred and forty tho ansand. Within the ten years now passing, viz., from 1850 to 1860, avall the facts and probabilities indicate that we shall receive four millions of European immigrants of the poorest, and most worthless class e if the population. What the increase will be beyond that time, we have

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no means of estimating. But this number is sufficient to show the vast and increasing importance of the movement, and the certainty of the speedy operation of such a mass of humanity upon our own people in some way, either for good or evil.

We have not here the time nor the space to consider fully the significance of this great movement of the European population. But none can fail to see that an annual irruption into this country of half a million people, who are shown by the merest arithmetical computation to be twice as ignorant as we are, and (perhaps in consequence) seven times as lawless, and seven times as helpless and sick, is a movement of great power. Whether its results are or will be good or evil, of what modifications they are susceptible, what means should be used to modify them, are questions which we discuss in another place. There is, however, one single phenomenon of such vast importance, and so closely connected with our subject, that it may properly bo alluded to in this place. This is the suicidal political action of naturalized immigrants. Whatever may be the object of foreigners entering our country, and our nation-whether they come for peace, for freedom, or for wealth-it is beneath the protection of our nationality, our Constitution, and our laws, that they seek that object. The whole fabric of that Constitution and those laws was erected, and has been and is maintained by free political action, by the intelligent voice of our people, appointing what they thought good. The laws so established and sustained have raised us to a position of such strength and wealth, that we are able to offer an asylum to the oppressed of all nations. This has been freely accepted, and accepted in the majority of cases, until lately, with thankful hearts, and a proper acquiescence in the established institutions of the land.

But, within a few years, an ominous change in the demeanor of our foreign beneficiaries has appeared. They seem to be steadily seeking to overthrow our own institutions, whenever those institutions happen to conflict with the prejudices or hatreds engendered in their own minds in the darkness of their native despotisms. The wise Sabbath laws which are so general in our commonwealths, are a

living evidence of the intimate connection of Christianity with their fundamental policy. That connection is the very basis of their strength and durability. But a band of atheistical Germans, thinking that in this country there is no need, even outwardly, either to fear God or to regard man, get together and call upon the government to abrogate all laws enforcing the observance of the Christian Sabbath.

Our established, wise, and unsectarian mode of distributing State money to public schools, without regard to any religious denomination, is a great obstacle to the Jesuitical views of foreign priests, who desire to control the education of native youth, and unsuspectedly to prepare the way for the complete supremacy of the Romish Church over our free State. All the open and secret arts of the most intriguing class of men in the world are set in motion to secure the discontinuance of this practice, and to effect the distribution of public money to schools distinctly Romanist, for uses wholly sectarian, anti-republican, and anti-American.

This is not the place to enter into any extended exposition of the necessary tendencies and results of such conduct. But the broad fact stands plainly out, that the masses of our foreign population are determined to move steadily forward in a line of their own, without regard to the laws or feelings of the people who have sheltered them. Armed rebellion or secret plot-bribery or bullying-all modes of action or coercion, however wicked, or unconstitutional, are to be unscrupulously seized and remorselessly wielded, to complete their foolish and disorganizing purposes. This suicidal and unaccountable course of conduct, if allowed to be carried through, will sink the vessel that carries themselves and their fortunes. It is the senseless fury of the maniac who attacks his best friend with the same tiger-like ferocity which he displays to his worst enemy. It would necessarily terminate our present glorious and happy era of constitutional law. It would substitute for it one of two things-either an utter anarchy, such as they have striven to create at home, or a centralized despotism, which they have escaped by fleeing hither.

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