institutions to an undue strain, must have been vaguely foreseen by many; but that it should ever assume the proportion of a veritable migration of nations, amounting in a single year to more than threequarters of a million people, and in sixty-seven years to fourteen millions and a half, was surely never dreamed of by the founders of the Republic; and if it had been dreamed of, some effective safeguard would have been devised to protect their cherished institutions from the dangers to which they would inevitably be exposed in the hands of a semi-alien race, in conflict with an alien spirit.

The Constitution of the United States was framed by men of Anglo-Saxon origin for their own government; and it presupposes the long political evolution to which that race has been subjected in the mother-land during eight or nine centuries. It presupposes the Anglo-Saxon virtues of moderation, self-restraint and sense of fair play. It is only a high civilization which exhibits these civic virtues; and to impose free institutions upon a people which does not possess them, is to endanger the social order and bring the free institutions into unmerited reproach. There are no institutions which are so inherently excellent that they fit all nations; just as there is no diet so nourishing that it will agree with all stomachs in all zones and climes. A republic can only be carried on by republicans (I do not mean, of course, in the party sense), and if it is carried on by other than republicans, it will lose its original spirit and degenerate into a disguised despotism, retaining nothing of the republic except the name. And a republican, gentlemen, is not made in a day, nor in a year-nor in fifty years. It takes generations of intelligent, self-restrained and self-respecting ancestors to make a man fit to govern himself-fit to be entrusted with the guidance of a state, whose existence and progress depend upon his vote, and, above all, upon the sentiments that lie behind his vote. We see in France, to-day, what an unstable and insecure thing a republic is without republicans, or, perhaps I should rather say, without the republican temperament. And the Gallic temperament, whatever it may become in the future, is not to-day the republican temperament. The republic is there a mere accident, a temporary truce of hostile parties, none of which has power enough to assume the government. The republic is in a state of perpetual anxiety regarding its existence, and has to strain every nerve to preserve order, to keep the hungry from flying at the throats of the prosper

ous.

That the United States have hitherto been exempt from anxiety on this score, is chiefly due to the fact that prosperity has until recently been within the reach of the many, and there has accordingly existed no very strong inducements to plunder the few. In no less degree, perhaps, has it been due to the fact that the country has been governed, in the main, by its peaceful and conservative citizens, both of American and of foreign descent; although the alien element has, in national affairs at least, played a very subordinate part. But we have no guarantee that this state of things will continue to last. A large proportion of the foreigners who come to us now are hungry malcontents, who arrive with the avowed purpose to overthrow our institutions. A considerable number of them are men who, on account of moral or intellectual defects, do not fit into any orderly society, and who in consequence are imbittered against all order; men whom Europe is fortunate. in getting rid of, and America correspondingly unfortunate in receiving; men who are bent upon avenging here what they suffered there. There are at present unmistakable indications that unless some drastic remedy is applied to check the influence of this class of foreigners, the relation of political and economic forces which has hitherto prevailed will be reversed, and the future will be fraught with perils which it is the part of prudence to foresee, and which it is too late to avert when they are already upon us. It behoves us, therefore, to apply the remedy before the evil is beyond control-before the elements of discontent and disorder shall have transplanted to the New World the very conditions to escape which they fled from the Old.

What I propose to show in the present address is that, unless some such restrictive measure is before long passed by Congress, a crisis is at hand, in a not very remote future, which will seriously affect our national destiny. The immigrant of to-day is not the same as the immigrant of ten and twenty years ago. He is, as statistics prove, largely drawn from a lower stratum of European society. Before the days of steam navigation, a considerable degree of courage and enterprise was required to induce a man to break up from his old home and associations, and seek an uncertain future in an unknown land, which the imagination pictured as little better than a wilderness. The mere sea voyage, in a small sailing vessel, with its attendant dangers, sufficed to keep the fainthearted from contemplating so risky an undertaking. Those who

did migrate were, therefore, likely to be the strongest and most energetic-the very ones most fitted to grapple with the hardships of pioneer life on the border-line of civilization. As a matter of fact, the immigrants whom we received previous to 1840, when the first regular steamboat connection between New York and Liverpool was established, were of a very acceptable class, and increased our prosperity without perceptibly deteriorating our character. It was not until the year 1820 that a record was kept of arrivals; but it is estimated that the entire immigration from 1796 to 1820 did not exceed 250,000, of whom the greater portion came from Great Britain and Ireland. A great many came under indenture, and were obliged to labor from three to ten years to pay the cost of their passage, which had been advanced by agents, until Congress, in 1819, passed a law which largely remedied the evils of this system. Very ample statistics are at hand, showing both the character and the numbers and ages of the immigrants during the last sixty-seven years; but I will not weary you with a repetition of what is so easily accessible. A mere general summary will suffice for my purpose.

The number of foreign-born in the United States, according to the census of 1880, was 6,679,943, and their present number is not far from nine millions. There are, accordingly, about three times as many foreigners now in the country as there were Americans in the thirteen colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence. Nay, more immigrants have arrived during the last seven years than the colonies contained. If we count the children of aliens, we have at the present time an aggregate of more than fifteen millions, or about twenty-six per cent. of the total population. Rev. Dr. Strong, in his admirable book, "Our Country," estimates that, if immigration is left unrestricted, our foreign-born population in 1900 will be over nineteen millions, and if the proportion of foreign-born to native-born children of foreign parents continues the same, we shall then have a total alien or semi-alien population of forty-three millions. The undoubted fact, that the more prolific foreigner is continually gaining numerically upon the native, and year by year becoming a greater power politically and economically, contains an ominous augury for the future of the Republic. But still more precarious becomes the outlook when we consider a circumstance not sufficiently emphasized by writers on this subject, viz.: the recent deterioration in the quality of the immigra

tion. Any man, uniess he be a pauper, can now obtain the paltry sum necessary for buying a steerage passage to New York, and if he cannot, the chances are that he is so undesirable a character that it is worth while for the community to raise the sum to get rid of him. That this is actually done on a large scale in Ireland, England and Switzerland we all know, and no remonstrance from our Government has sufficed to stop the practice. There are yet so-called benefit societies in Great Britain, whose object it is to reform Ireland by exporting the Irish to the United States; and it is not very long since Lord Salisbury, in a public speech, declared that the solution of the Irish problem was assisted emigration. In other words, the only solution of the problem was to transfer it to the United States.

The Canadians, who have had their hospitality abused by such "assisted guests," have recently sent a vigorous protest against the continuance of this policy, and have, at the same time, imitated it, by "assisting" a large number of the imported paupers across the boundary line to the United States. There is no possibility of preventing this, as long as we permit the belief to go uncontradicted that we the natural cess-pool for the reception of the human offal and rubbish of the entire world. It is but a few months since the Danish Government pardoned a notorious and dangerous forger on condition that he should go to the United States; and to the United States he went. Whether our Minister in Copenhagen reported the case to Secretary Bayard, I do not know, but the Scandinavian papers were full of it. Nevertheless, as far as the public knows, nothing was ever done about it. The Danish Government will be encouraged to repeat the successful experiment of exporting its criminals instead of entertaining them at public expense. We have, indeed, a species of investigation at Castle Garden, but it is not carried on thoroughly, nor even in good faith. Occasionally a pauper is returned to Ireland or England, but a hundred are admitted for every one that goes back. As long as public opinion is not aroused on the subject, the officials can scarcely be blamed for interpreting the law in the laxest spirit. And public opinion is fatally sanguine, prone to the belief that whatever we do whatever fatal blunders we commit-we shall come out all right in the end. It is supposed that God is personally responsible for the future of the United States, and that he cannot afford to let our experiment of self-government fail.

But surely the same causes produce the same effects in this country as they do elsewhere? You cannot gather figs from thorns, or grapes from thistles, in a republic any more than you can in a monarchy. We know now that society is governed by laws as surely ascertainable as those of electricity and gravitation. It would, to my mind, argue no right trust in God to violate the laws, in the operation of which His power is made manifest, in the hope that He would interpose to save us from the consequences. What strikes me with amazement, whenever I undertake to discuss this question with my American friends, is their utter indifference or supine optimism.

"Don't you worry, old fellow," said a very intelligent professional man to me recently, when I told him of my observations during a visit to Castle Garden. "What does it matter whether a hundred thousand more or less arrive? Even if a million arrived annually, or two millions, I guess we could take care of them. Why, this country is capable of supporting a population of 200 millions, without being half so densely populated as Belgium is to-day. Only let them come; the more, the merrier !"

I believe this state of mind is fairly typical. It is the sublime but dangerous optimism of a race which has never been confronted with serious problems. Our national domain has seemed practically boundless, and we have never troubled ourselves greatly about the class of people who undertook to occupy it, as long as they added to our prosperity. But, gentlemen, even prosperity may be bought at too high a price. If material increase involves a menace to our institutions and a deterioration in character, it is, to my mind, too dearly bought. And can there be any question that such is actually the case? If, as is easily capable of demonstration, our political life sinks, year by year, to a lower level; if the men we send to our national and state legislatures exhibit a lower average of intelligence and morality than twenty or fifty years ago does it not show that the constituencies which are responsible for their election are degenerating, and are gradually becoming unfit for self-government? Does it not show that the institutions no longer fit the people, or the people the institutions? If the lobby in every State capital, as in our national capital, grows every year more powerful in its influence upon legislation, and bribery and jobbery of all sorts flourish, is it not an evidence of disease in our body politic, which, if not healed, sooner or later must