CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OP 
 
 HON. WILLIAM S. BARRY, OF MISS., 
 
 DELIVERED 
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DECEMBER 18, 1854. 
 
 The House being in the Committee of the 
 Whole on the state of the Union — 
 
 Mr. BARRY said; * 
 
 Mr. Chairman: I propose to offer some remarks 
 upon a subject which has, for months past, occu- 
 pied a large share of public attention. That 
 subject is, in common parlance, called Know- 
 Nothingism. Opinions the opposite of those I 
 entertain have already been avowed here; and I 
 seize the opportunity, which I did not before enjoy, 
 of declaring my own. 
 
 This society, or association, known by the 
 name of “ Know-Nothings,” is one which has 
 recently sprung into existence. Its founders are 
 unknown; its purposes are unknown, because the 
 purposes avowed by those who are supposed to 
 belong to it — by those advocating it — are con- 
 tradictory in their character. These are to be 
 deduced, not from authorized avowals of those 
 acknowledged to belong to the society, but they 
 are to be gathered by scraps, collected here and 
 there from the declarations of those who are sus- 
 pected of being members, or who have incident- 
 ally acquired information. It is not like other 
 political organizations here, avowing principles, 
 and meeting and daring the responsibility of the 
 avowal. It is not like other associations, which 
 having principles believed to be of vital import- 
 ance to the country, their members are willing to 
 declare those, principles, and to stand or fall with 
 them. ’ If, then, in attempting to find out the 
 purposes of this order, I shall do injustice to it — 
 if I shall ascribe to it that which its advocates j 
 deny, let members upon this floor, if there be such j 
 belonging to the order, rise and correct me. I j 
 shall be willing to be supplied with the informa- j 
 tion — more willing, perhaps, than they will be to 
 give.it. 
 
 This association appeals to that which is strong 
 in every country. It appeals to that feeling of 
 nationality without , which a nation cannot exist 
 as an independent Government, but which, at the [ 
 
 same time, when kindled and maddened, may de- 
 stroy all that is good in government, and subvert 
 the very principles on which it was established. 
 There is no nation in the world — and the more 
 intellectual, socially and politically, the nation is, 
 the less ready it will be to entertain the prejudice — 
 I say that there is no nation upon earth in which 
 this prejudice against foreigners and foreign popu- 
 lation cannot be aroused; and the most beautiful 
 and soothing effect of civilization, the loveliest in- 
 fluence of our own institutions, has been to mollify 
 this prejudice against those outside our borders, 
 and to bring the whole family of nations, as it 
 were, into a common brotherhood. According to 
 the degree of a nation’s civilization, according as 
 it is high, or low, you will, as a general rule, find 
 this prejudice and hostility tto foreigners. In pro- 
 portion as a nation is elevated in its consciousness 
 of power, and in its knowledge oT the high duties 
 of civilization, will it receive and treat with re- 
 spect those who spring from a foreign soil, or are 
 reared under the influence of different ideas; and 
 as it sinks in the scale of self-respect and civiliza- 
 tion, in the same degree do you find this prejudice; 
 and as a nation is possessed of a rabble instead of 
 a people, it will be seen that its fury can be aroused 
 against all who cannot pronounce its Shibboleth. 
 
 One of the most frequent justifications of this 
 organization, Mr. Chairman — the one which I 
 have heard alluded to here and elsewhere — is 
 that there are secret associations of foreigners 
 which must be counteracted in this manner. If 
 such political associations exist among the foreign 
 population of this country, it certainly seems a 
 strange method to rebuke the error by forming 
 other associations, in which are embodied all that 
 is wrong in those we condemn. We give dignity 
 and consequence to their conduct by imitating it, 
 and lose all the advantage of honest principles by 
 leveling our own conduct to the standard of those 
 we reprobate. If the foreigners have adopted 
 rules of action incompatible either with social 
 
2 
 
 order or political rights, there can be no duty 
 more consistent with pure philanthropy or elevated 
 patriotism, than the attempt to correct their error, 
 and infuse into their minds juster views of the 
 duties of the citizen, both to his neighbor and to the 
 State. W e have adopted the humane and tolerant 
 opinion of Mr. Jefferson, the great apostle of the 
 Democratic party, and who infused into it that 
 generous and trusting faith in man, whether native 
 or alien born, which has been the germ of the 
 chief differences between the two great parties of 
 the country, “ That little is to be feared from error , 
 while reason is left free to combat it.” The evils that 
 we see are not to be cured by persecution; the 
 faggot and the stake are exploded arguments; 
 and having discarded the more open, manly, and 
 responsible instruments of torture, we will not 
 now turn to seize upon those which are secret, 
 sinister, and irresponsible. 
 
 A few Germans, so goes the story, have formed 
 an association whose purpose is, among other 
 heterodox things, to abolish the Christian Sab- 
 bath, and straightway the alarm is given, and 
 men who never seemed to care for Protestantism 
 before, have become disturbed. We have a body 
 of Christians, numerous, zealous, and devout; 
 we have a press, able, skillful, and ever ready; we 
 have a clergy, watchful, learned, and pious; and 
 more than all, we have a Revelation on which, as 
 on a rock, is based the institution of the Christian 
 Sabbath; yet neither, nor all of these is thought 
 sufficient to save the Sabbath from the assaults of a 
 few nameless foreigners, and the aid of the civil 
 authority is invoked to devise some policy by which 
 the tideof German infidelity may be stayed. That j 
 remedy is worthy of Rome herself three hundred 
 years ago. It is to disfranchise three millions of 
 people, to reverse the policy of the freest Govern- 
 ment on earth, and while there are indications of 
 progress in every nation of the civilized world, to 
 present ours as the only one which is going back- 
 ward. If the efforts of a few hundred foreigners 
 can put Christianity in peril, it has a feebler hold 
 upon the human heart, and is less closely inter- 
 woven with the wants and principles of our 
 nature than I had supposed. 
 
 There have been meetings held publicly in New 
 York city, and, doubtless, will be again, where 
 the Bible, the Church, and the whole scheme of 
 Christianity have been denounced and held up to 
 reprobation. These meetings were composed of 
 native-born citizens, and yet no remedy has been 
 proposed for the evil which required the disfran- 
 chisement of all native-born citizens on account of 
 the insane vagaries of a few, or which struck at 
 the root of the dearest privileges of the citizen, to 
 eradicate a transient, though crying evil. The 
 Boston Investigator has for years avowed and 
 advocated principles utterly at war with Chris- 
 tianity; yet. no body of men that I know of, has 
 leagued together, by solemn oaths, to disfranchise 
 the editor or his readers of their civil rights. The 
 Unitarianism prevalent in and about Boston is as 
 little acceptable to the great body of Christians in 
 this country as Catholicism; but the truly noble 
 tolerance of the people has not thought it just or 
 politic to attempt the extinction of heresy or infi- 
 delity by imposing civil disabilities. The best, 
 the only proper, remedy for erroneous opinion, is 
 argument and truth, offered in the spirit of respect 
 and kindness; and a party which, in a free coun- 
 
 try, attempts to drive men by secret or open 
 proscription, and to punish freedom of thought 
 by covert assaults of intolerance, can achieve only 
 a temporary success, and escape for but a little 
 while the condemnation which enlightened men 
 visit upon every form of persecution. Wherever 
 thought is free it will run riot in error. The great 
 truths which the consent of man has adopted, are 
 but grains of wheat winnowed from bushels of 
 chaff. It is only by the widest excursions of 
 thought that the treasures of the universe are gar- 
 nered, and the vagaries of error are often sug- 
 gestive of the finest discoveries of truth. Your 
 freedom and mine, Mr. Chairman, to think right, 
 rest upon the same guarantees as the German’s 
 right to think wrong. His right to the abuse of 
 his freedom of thought cannot be assailed through 
 the medium of law, or the more criminal agency 
 of a secret oath-bound association without peril- 
 ing our right to the proper use of our freedom. 
 
 Secret political associations have heretofore 
 existed in Oppressed countries, for enlarging the 
 rights of the citizens, and limiting the powers of 
 rulers; but, this is the first, so far as my read- 
 ing extends, in which the effort has been made, 
 through such an organization, to narrow the 
 liberty of man, and. graft an oppressive principle 
 upon the Government. There has been a strong 
 repugnance to these political associations in this 
 country from the earliest period of our history. 
 The society of the Cincinnati, formed immediately 
 after the Revolution, and composed of men fresh 
 from the baptism of fire and blood in that holy 
 struggle, has decayed, and almost expired, under 
 the distrust felt by the American people of secret 
 associations, which might be wielded to the detri- 
 ment of the public liberty, or to serve the ambi- 
 tious purposes of those who would make the 
 association the instrument of their own advance- 
 ment. The times are not so improved, nor men 
 grown so patriotic, that a power which was denied 
 by public opinion to the best patriots of the purest 
 days of the Revolution, can safely be intrusted to 
 the hands of those who can show no peculiar 
 claim, either of service or purity, to special confi- 
 dence. 
 
 But, sir, the purposes of this order and its 
 organization are distinct. The end to be accom- 
 plished and the instruments may be dissimilar 
 and inconsistent. When the advocates of this 
 religious and political intolerance talk to me of 
 securing the independence of our country, of 
 having our character truly American, of rejecting 
 utterly all foreign influence and dictation, though 
 1 have been deluded with the belief that we have 
 long enjoyed all these blessings, still my heart 
 glows as l listen to these patriotic sentiments, 
 urged with such warmth and eloquence; but when 
 I ask for the means of effecting these desirable 
 ends, and am pointed to a secret political associa- 
 tion which the traditions of our fathers, yet glow- 
 ing with the life-blood of the Revolution, and the 
 instincts of my republican nature, and the creed of 
 the Democratic party whose truths I have been 
 taught to act upon and to revere, all warn me to 
 shun; when I am urged to join in proscribing 
 one portion of my fellow-citizens because of their 
 birth, and another because of their religious opin- 
 ions, I naturally inquire, can the purpose of those 
 be good who employ such means for its accom- 
 plishment? I am far from charging upon the 
 
3 
 
 advocates of Know-Nothingism any wish to inflict 
 evil upon their country; yet they are justly to be 
 held responsible for all the consequences, moral, 
 social, and political, which flow from their doc- 
 trines. 
 
 Thus, Mr. Chairman, two distinct questions 
 are presented in examining this subject— first, the 
 purposes which the order has in view ; and secondly, 
 the means by which they are to be accomplished. 
 
 These purposes, as gathered from supposed 
 members, from newspapers professing to advocate 
 the views of the order, and from the writings and 
 speeches of those affecting to sympathize with it, 
 are — 
 
 First. The exclusion of all foreigners from office. 
 
 Second. The extension of the term of naturali- 
 zation from five to twenty-one years, or some 
 other period longer than five years. 
 
 Third. The entire repeal of the naturalization 
 laws. 
 
 Fourthly. The exclusion of Roman Catholics 
 from office. 
 
 The means by which these things are to be 
 accomplished, are a secret political association, in 
 which the members are bound by the most solemn 
 oaths to obedience, to silence, and to mutual fidelity. 
 
 I shall speak, first, of the organization, and 
 then of the purposes the order has in view. 
 
 I can but believe that a secret political associa- 
 tion is dangerous, to the rights of the people and to 
 the stability of the Government. In a free Gov- 
 ernment, where every man is entitled to declare 
 his opinions, and there is no punishment for 
 the avowal of whatever doctrines he may enter- 
 tain, what excuse can there be for a resort to 
 secrecy? When the people are oppressed by a 
 tyrannical Government, and the penalty of death 
 awaits every man who dares to speak or think 
 against the power that is crushing him, there may 
 indeed be an excuse for patriots scheming in the 
 darkness of midnight, and in the security of 
 unknown places of meeting; but, in the midst of 
 a people who enjoy every liberty that the most 
 liberal institutions can bestow, where freedom of 
 thought, of speech, of action, and of the press, 
 are the birth-right. of every man, how can a secret 
 proscriptive organization be allowed to take root, 
 and rights, the dearest that man can exercise, or 
 Government protect, be taken from the people by 
 means so insidious and so fruitful of danger? 
 
 The Constitution allows no oaths to be forced 
 upon the voter, nor tests to be imposed in the use 
 of that franchise. The sense of duty and the per- 
 sonal stake of each man in the welfare of the com- 
 munity were thought sufficient to insure its faith- 
 ful exercise. But this secret association attempts 
 to bind men by the most stringent oaths to exercise 
 the right of voting only as certain native patriots 
 shall determine, in the secrecy, and perhaps 
 in the darkness, of midnight. The citizen who 
 assumes these oaths and obligations parts with his 
 individual freedom, abandons his personal inde- 
 pendence, and comes to the polls, not an untram- 
 meled voter, but a mere machine to carry out, by 
 his suffrage, the elections and the purposes which 
 others — perhapsagainst his consent — havedeterm- 
 inedon. He barters away his freedom who makes 
 any pledges or swears any oaths which impair his 
 right to modify his ticket at any time prior to de- 
 positing it in the ballot-box. The electoral fran- 
 chise is one which is conferred on each individual 
 
 I who exercises it, and which he has no right to 
 1 trammel the free, judicious use of, by private oaths 
 1 and secret combinations; and his duty is to his 
 I country and the Constitution, not to midnight 
 ! caucuses of ambitious and crafty men, who glaze 
 ! over their schemes of selfishness with well affected 
 j anxiety for the public good. 
 
 I It is not to be supposed that an order so exten- 
 1 sive and numerous as the Know-Nothings could 
 | exist a great while without a revelation or betrayal 
 j of its secrets, despite the strenuous efforts made 
 j to preserve them. A publication was made a few 
 | weeks since, in the Boston Post, of the constitu- 
 ] tion, ritual, &c., of the order in the State of Mas- 
 j sachusetts, and those of other States are believed, 
 j so far as they have been revealed, to be essentially 
 ; alike. A witness, who was being examined in a 
 court of justice in Massachusetts, was asked if 
 he belonged to the order, and after much equivo- 
 cation, he admitted it, and being asked further, if 
 the publication in the Post was an authentic copy 
 of the records of the order, he replied that it 
 was. Thus we have reliable information as to 
 the method of initiation into the order, the signs, 
 pass-words, &c., the oaths the members take, and 
 the purposes they have in view. 
 
 I have here the oath of the candidate for ad- 
 mission into the second degree council, as given, 
 and, so far as I know, uncontradicted, in the 
 Pennsylvanian, extra, of October 6. It is as 
 follows: 
 
 “ Obligation. — You, and each of you, of your, own free 
 will and accord, in the presence of Almighty God and these 
 witnesses, your right hand resting on this Holy Bible and 
 Cross, and your left hand raised toward heaven, or, if it 
 | be preferred , your left hand resting on your breast, and your 
 | right hand raised toward heaven, in token of your sincerity, 
 do solemnly promise and swear, that you will not make 
 known, to any person or persons, any of the signs, secrets, 
 mysteries, or objects of this organization, unless it be to 
 those whom, after dufe examination, or lawful information, 
 you shall find to be members of this organization, in good 
 standing; that you will not cut, carve, print, paint, stamp, 
 stain, or in any way, directly or indirectly, expose any of 
 the secrets or objects of this order, nor suffer it to be done 
 by others, if in your power to prevent! it, unless it be for 
 official instruction ; that so long as you are connected with 
 this organization, if not regularly dismissed from it, you 
 will, in all things, political or social, so far as this order is 
 concerned, comply with the will of the majority, when 
 expressed in lpwful manner, though it may conflict with 
 your personal preference, so long as it does not conflict 
 with the grand, State, or subordinate constitutions, the 
 Constitution of the United States of America, or that of the 
 State in which you reside; and that you will not, under 
 any circumstances whatever, knowingly recommend an 
 unworthy person for initiation, nor suffer it to be done, if 
 in your power to prevent it. You furthermore promise and 
 declare, that you will not vote nor give your influence for 
 any man for any office in the gift of the people, unless he 
 bean American-born citizen, in favor of Americans-born 
 ruling America; nor if he be a Roman Catholic; and that 
 you will not, under any circumstances, expose the name of 
 any member of this order, nor reveal the existence of suck 
 an organization. To all the foregoing you bind yourselves, 
 under the no less penalty than that of being expelled from 
 this order, and of having your name posted and circulated 
 throughout the different councils of the United States, as a 
 perjurer, and as a traitor to God and your country, as being 
 unfit to be employed and trusted, countenanced, or supported 
 in any business transaction, as a person totally unworthy 
 the confidence of all good men, and as one at whom the 
 finger of scorn should ever be pointed. So help you God !” 
 j (Each answers, “ I do.”) 
 
 ! There are several things in this oath well calcu- 
 lated to excite the apprehension of judicious, con- 
 scientious men. It is easy to perceive in how 
 many instances it may happen that . adherence to 
 Jit will conflict with a member’s duty as a citizen. 
 
4 
 
 It may very frequently occur that a member may 
 be required to testify in a court of justice of his 
 own membership, as in the instance before alluded 
 to, which arose in Massachusetts, in which the 
 witness endured the most painful and harassing 
 struggles of mind in determining where the obli- 
 ation of duty lay, whether to obey the oath taken 
 eforethe court, or the one sworn in a midnight 
 association; which claim was paramount, that of 
 his country, to whom he owed duty and allegi- 
 ance from his birth, or that of a secret proscriptive 
 society, which had entangled him with oaths, and 
 digged pitfalls about him for his conscience. Has 
 a citizen the moral right, and if he has the right, 
 is it a worthy and judicious use of it thus to per- 
 plex his sense of duty by assuming, unnecessarily, 
 vows of the most solemn character, and which he 
 cannot disregard even in obedience to that higher 
 and more ancient duty which rests upon us all, 
 without incurring the censure, and, perhaps, the 
 punishment of those with whom he had associ- 
 ated ? In my judgment, sir, a man who is a mem- 
 ber of an. established Government, from which he 
 receives the amplest protection of person and 
 property, and to which, in return, he owes the 
 amplest measure of fidelity and obedience, has not 
 the moral right to take such an oath as that I have 
 quoted. He may as well owe allegiance to a for- 
 eign sovereign, and be ready to obey his com- 
 mands, as assume obligations to any society of 
 his countrymen which place him in collision with 
 his own- Government. So plain, and almost self- 
 evident is this truth, that a year since no one in 
 this country could have been found to question it, 
 as no one will a year or two hence, when this bub- 
 ble, with its tints that delude some eyes, shall 
 have passed into oblivion, with its elder brothers, 
 the alien and sedition laws, and the public mind, 
 swayed from its self-poised equilibrium by a tem- 
 porary excitement, shall have recovered its just 
 position. 
 
 Many who have joined this association, under 
 the best of the thousand inducements by which 
 good men have been seduced into a connection 
 with it, \vhen they come to estimate calmly and 
 justly the false position in which they have placed 
 themselves, will do, as thousands of others have 
 done already, abandon it; and feeling that the 
 laws and the Constitution of their country are a 
 safer measure of public duty, and surer guardians 
 of public right, and honor, and interest, than the 
 murky resolves of any association that ever 
 adopted persecution for its creed, and an irrespon- 
 sible secrecy for its means, can be, they will 
 renew their open associations with their fellow- 
 citizens, and abjure thenceforth, as the worst 
 enemies of freedom, all political organizations 
 "which employ oaths, or secrecy, or persecution. 
 An oath such as this it is culpable to lake , but it is far 
 more culpable to execute it. An oath to do wrong, 
 to violate a known duty, sworn to in excitement 
 or heedlessness, it is safer for the soul manfully 
 to abjure, than, under the delusive promptings of 
 arrogance and pride, to persist in its completion. 
 
 Tne oath provides that the member shall “ not, 
 under any circumstances, expose the name of 
 any member of this order, nor reveal the exist- 
 ence of such an organization.” This portion 
 of the oath, perhaps, explains why those not 
 in the order have never met a man who confessed 
 that he belonged to it. And, sir, we have heard 
 
 men deny connection with it, whom we have every 
 reason to be satisfied were members. Has any 
 man the right to take an oath binding himself to 
 the continuous statement of an untruth. Can that 
 institution be good whose first fruits are thus 
 evil? No, sir; it is wrong, radically wrong. Nor 
 can the guilt of the deception be escaped by the 
 flimsy evasion that the real name of the order is 
 not “ Know-Nothing,” and that, consequently, a 
 man may safely say he does not belong to one of 
 that name, though he really is connected with the 
 order which the public have designated by that 
 title, and he well knows it is the one alluded toby 
 the inquirer. Since his intention is to deceive, he 
 is responsible for the deceit. Nor can he escape 
 by the plea that the querist has no right to put 
 the question, and that he is, therefore, at liberty to 
 disregard the truth in his ans\ver. It is by no 
 means certain that each citizen has not the right 
 to ask every other any question he may see fit, in 
 reference to public matters, without being liable 
 to the charge of inquisition or impertinence; and 
 though the person asked may have the choice of 
 silence or speech, he is under the common obliga- 
 tion that rests on all men, if he answers at all, to 
 tell the truth. No oaths sworn, however solemnly , 
 nor with the direst penalties that a secret midnight 
 association ever devised, can discharge a citizen 
 from the eternal duty of veracity. The difficul- 
 ties in respect to truthfulness, in' which a member 
 is involved, arise from his oath to conceal the 
 existence of the order, and his own connection 
 with it. If he were allowed to confess that there 
 is such an order, and that he belongs to it, he 
 then might frankly and consistently refuse to tell 
 anything further. But the object seems to be to 
 protect the members from the odium with which 
 secret political associations have been viewed in 
 this country, and to secure the benefits of such 
 an organization, while they escape the responsi- 
 bility of a connection with it. There is more of 
 wily cunning, than of republican frankness and 
 manhood, in such a course. 
 
 But this secrecy necessarily destroys all confidence 
 between men. Till this new order sprung into 
 existence, with its frightful demands upon the 
 conscience of its members, there existed among 
 the citizens of our country such mutual trustful- 
 ness that the statements of men of good character 
 were received without distrust upon all subjects; 
 but since it has come to be admitted that some 
 men, of hitherto unquestioned veracity, have 
 falsely denied their connection with the order of 
 the Know-Nothings, and it has even been more 
 than suspected that some of those from whom we 
 have a right to expect an especial purity of life, 
 and by whom we have been accustomed to be 
 taught that it is better to die than to stain our lips 
 with untruth, have taken the oath before quoted, 
 and which requires of them conduct so much at 
 variance with their teaching, it is not to be won- 
 dered at that some have become skeptical of the 
 existence of human veracity. The whole social 
 fabric rests ppon the belief of truth among men; 
 and the strongest bond of faith in an individual’s 
 truthfulness, is the well-founded opinion that he 
 has never once voluntarily defiled his soul with 
 falsehood. To conceal effectually their connection 
 with the order, the members may be, and some 
 possibly have been, driven to aline of conduct, in 
 my opinion, more reprehensible than a direct 
 
5 
 
 denial of the truth — the acting of a protracted and 
 systematic falsehood. Having formerly belonged 
 to the old Whig and Democratic parties, and not 
 daring to excite suspicions, or to confirm those 
 already entertained, of their belonging to the 
 Know-Nothings, by separating themselves openly 
 from their old friends, they still affect to retain 
 their interest in party action and party success, 
 allow themselves to be treated as members of their 
 old parties, become possessed of information, which 
 is given to them, as they well know, on the belief 
 of their being still faithful to their former friends, 
 and yet, while acting thus, they are under oaths 
 which bind them to different parties, different prin- 
 ciples, and different candidates. 
 
 That this is no idle supposition of my own, as 
 some credulous persons, who think that such 
 things cannot be in a free and manly country like 
 oitr own, may be tempted to exclaim, I will quote 
 from the resolves of a Know-Nothing Council in 
 Brooklyn, New York. The preamble to those 
 resolves declares that, “ good men and true had 
 already been nominated by the great political par- 
 ties of the State, the nomination of some, of 
 
 WHOM WAS EFFECTED BY THE DIRECT ACTION OF 
 
 this order.” If any man, Whig or Democrat, 
 had smuggled himself into a meeting of the other 
 party, by pretending to belong to it, the judgment 
 of all men would reprobate the act as perfidious 
 and disgraceful. The contempt of all honorable 
 men would follow him like a curse. What rule 
 of morals can tolerate in members of this order, 
 that which is condemned in all other parties? 
 Their first departure from sound principles in join- 
 ing the order, involves subsequent delinquencies to 
 conceal it, and make it effectual. If trade and 
 commerce require good faith and sincerity in those 
 who follow those callings, how much more are 
 they indispensable among those who are acting for 
 the public, and whose conduct may influence for 
 years their country’s welfare. 
 
 It is to be expected, with absolute certainty, 
 that an institution thus organized , and pursuing 
 such purposes, will be despotic, will trample all 
 those sacred rights, which the contrivers of the 
 order, and those who profit by the delusion, pre- 
 tend it was established to secure. This is one of 
 the wicked consequences which the most untu- 
 tored sagacity could not fail to predict. But all 
 that could be anticipated is more than realized by 
 the declarations of the Brooklyn council, which I 
 find in the New York Herald, a paper friendly to 
 the order, and which treats the whole proceeding 
 as authentic. 
 
 “ Whereas the action of the Grand Council of the State 
 of New York, at their late session in October last, in 
 making an independent nomination for State officers with- 
 out instructions to that effect from the subordinate councils 
 of the State, and without giving them an opportunity to 
 participate in the selection of such candidates, and when 
 no necessity existed for such a course, inasmuch as good 
 men and true had already been nominated by the great 
 political parties of the State, the nomination of some of 
 whom was effe'cted by the direct action of this order, was i 
 a departure from the true interests and objects of this order, 
 an unwarrantable assumption of power, and in direct vio- 
 lation of resolutions adopted by the same Grand Council in 
 June last ; 
 
 “ And whereas the said Grand Council adopted resolu- 
 tions presented by Chauncey Shaffer, putting an unwar- 
 rantable and ex post facto construction upon the obligations 
 of the members of this order, thereby endeavoring to coerce 
 and compel them, by threats and penalties, to vote for 
 the candidates so nominated by said Grand Council, in 
 direct violation of the Constitution and laws of the laud, 
 
 and subversive of the genius and spirit of our republican 
 institutions ; 
 
 “And whereas the said Grand Council, at their recent 
 session, adopted a resolution originally suggested by H. A. 
 T.Granbury, requiring the members of this order, under 
 certain pains and penalties, to confess, under oath, how 
 they voted at the recent election, in palpable violation of 
 the rights and privileges secured to, and so highly prized 
 by, every true American : Therefore, 
 
 “ Resolved , That we repudiate and condemn the afore- 
 mentioned action ofthe Grand Council as anti American, 
 anti republican, and the most unwarrantable, abom- 
 inable, and DANGEROUS ASSUMPTION of DESPOTIC power 
 ever attempted in this Republic; in its confessional, 
 penance, and threats of excommunication, only equaled 
 by the holy Inquisition of Spain, and only worthy of imi- 
 tation by the grand council of Cardinals at Rome. 
 
 “ Resolved, That any American, assenting or yielding 
 obedience to such degrading and inquisitorial requisitions, 
 inherits not the spirit of his revolutionary sires, and is 
 unworthy the name of a son of ’76, and descends to the 
 level of an ignorant Papist. 
 
 “ Resolved, That we recommend our brethren to pause 
 and calmly reflect before they aid in centralizing so danger- 
 ous a power in the hands of a body who, however pure 
 they may now be, may, at some future time, be composed 
 of unprincipled men who, regardless ofthe public interests, 
 will wield it for their own personal aggrandizement. 
 
 “C. J. SHEl’ARD, President. 
 
 “ W. C. Heaton, Secretary.” 
 
 Thus, the council, not satisfied with the oath 
 that required each member to vote for the nominee 
 of the order, attempts to impose a new one, to 
 discover whether the first was violated, with the 
 penalty of disgraceful expulsion to each mem- 
 ber who confesses that he voted any other than 
 the regular ticket. Mark in what language the 
 Brooklyn council describes the iniquitous inter- 
 ference with the rights of suffrage. See how it 
 quotes the precedents of Roman Papish oppres- 
 sion to stigmatize their own brethren, united with 
 themselves in a crusade against the freedom of 
 suffrage, the freedom of conscience, and the equal- 
 ity of the citizens. If you, sir, or I, had used such 
 terms, it might be said that we were denouncing 
 what we did not understand, but coming from 
 those who know the purposes and the system of 
 the order, and who have smarted under the rod of 
 its intolerance, who have tasted the first fruits of 
 this graft of their own culture, it may be received 
 as true. 
 
 It has been claimed, in support of the order, that 
 both of the old parties are corrupt, and that it was 
 necessary to form a new party, of purer principles 
 and better material. An architect who should 
 pronounce both of two buildings which he had 
 examined, unsound and unsafe, in structure and. 
 detail, would hardly be thought reliable if he 
 should attempt to construct another edifice of the 
 brick and stone which he had just condemned as 
 useless and unworthy. Yet this order assumes to 
 form, out of the corrupt members of the old par- 
 ties, a society of immaculate patriots. A few of 
 the old partisans get together and rate themselves 
 above reproach, and then adopt such other citi- 
 zens, members of the old corrupt parties, as are 
 willing to unite in asserting the knavery of all other 
 men, and their own purity. This Pharisaical 
 assumption of superiority is worthy of all rebuke 
 and contempt. When I weigh the characters, 
 when I ponder upon the course of those understood 
 to be of this new faith, I confess I find little to 
 mortify my self-esteem or extort my admiration. 
 I find them to be but as other men, having like 
 infirmities as ourselves, neither purer nor wiser, 
 nor more patriotic, than their fellow-citizens. I 
 discover in them quite as much lust of place and 
 
6 
 
 pelf, quite as much resignation in allowing the 
 weight of office to be thrust upon themselves, and | 
 to the full as much of partisan and uncharitable 
 feeling as others who affect a less degree of ex- j 
 emption from the ordinary frailties of their race. | 
 Those of this order supposed to be in this House, j 
 I must say, in all courtesy, I cannot rank one whit : 
 above the average of their fellow members, in the 
 qualities of citizens or legislators. Self-canonized 
 saints, and self-elected patriots, are of questionable 
 stuff. There is a spontaneous distrust of the 
 assumption that arrogates to itself a Benjamin’s 
 portion of the common stock of human virtue and 
 excellence; and the claim of imposters is usually 
 extensive in proportion as it is groundless. 
 
 In a free Government , I hold , sir , that there is no j 
 right in a portion of the people, whether a minority or | 
 a majority, to adopt a secret political policy, nr pursue 
 it by secret means. The Commonwealth is the j 
 joint product of the thoughts and wills of the ; 
 people who compose it. They have risked their j 
 mutual interests in a common venture. Counsel. | 
 and service are due from each to all. Whatever 
 pertains t to the common benefit is the proper sub- 
 ject of mutual deliberation. The thoughts and j 
 reflection of each are proper tribute to the com- i 
 mon fund of knowledge; and when contributed 
 and weighed, the deliberate judgment of , the so- 
 ciety becomes the rule of action to the members, 
 both as to what purposes of common good they 
 shall pursue, and how they shall accomplish it. 
 
 I, as a member of society, may justly expect its 
 protection in every right which the laws or the 
 Constitution give me — protection not only against 
 foreign invasion, but also against domestic vio- 
 lence; against the man who assaults my person, 
 or wrests my property from me; but not a whit 
 less against those who, by means of secret cabals, 
 midnight assemblages, unnatural oaths, and mali- 
 cious combinations, would peril, impair, or destroy 
 any one of my civil or political rights. Society 
 can only protect me, can only protect itself against 
 the effects of these secret political associations, by 
 extirpating them. They are the fruits and the off- 
 spring of revolution ; they are the storm-birds that 
 portend the tempest, and make it horrible; but 
 putrid bodies which the thunder of anarchy lifts 
 from the deep in which they slumbered. 
 
 All citizens, I think, sir, are under obligations 
 of candor and sincerity towards each other in 
 matters political. I think the very nature of a 
 free Government requires it of them. The ballot | 
 of each voter is intended to be secret only so far 
 as to protect him against violence, or any undue 
 influence in preparing and casting it. This right 
 to absolute freedom in performing this high civil 
 act, is not clearer than the corresponding obli- 
 gation of every other man to refrain from all 
 attempts to disturb, oppress, or intimidate him in j 
 the exercise of it. But when the ballot is put j : 
 into the box, it ceases to be a mere private act, j 
 and becomes a part of the public history. An j 
 attempt at concealment provokes inquiry, and j 
 justifies it. There can be but two reasons for [ 
 keeping a vote secret — timidity, if we think our- 
 selves right, or shame and conscious guilt, if we | 
 believe ourselves wrong. And a man must be j 
 deficient in some of the better qualities of citizen- 
 ship, who is willing to assign either of them as an * 
 excuse for a secret vote. And the motives that I 
 prompt the vote, since he has no right to be il 
 
 I influenced by any but those of the public good, 
 i are also proper subjects of inquiry, and if the voter 
 be a man, of free and truthful answer. No man ever 
 cast a secret vote, even if his purpose were as 
 kindly a one as to avoid making a preference 
 between rival friends, but felt his self-respect 
 lowered, and that he had not acted up to the full 
 I dignity of citizenship. There is, and there should 
 be, no penalty attached to the exercise of the right 
 of voting, but the estimate which the public may 
 attach to a man’s character, according as he is 
 thought to have used his privilege well or ill. It 
 is simply an item going to make up the aggregate 
 of character. Nor should there be laws compel- 
 ing him to declare how he voted ; in free countries, 
 the great mass of men being independent, in fact, 
 as well as name, will spurn concealment in the 
 matter; and I do not know, in all history, of more 
 than one inquisitorial attempt, by an ex post facto 
 law, to compel the citizen to declare for whom he 
 had voted; and this attempt, so tyrannical, was 
 made, not by foreigners, who, ignorant of the 
 genius of republicanism, might, unconsciously, 
 have violated its principles; nor by the old parties 
 of the country who, immersed in senility and 
 corruption, might be indifferent to the forms of 
 liberty, but by the conclave of patriots who assem- 
 bled in New-York as a Know Nothing Council, 
 representatives of those who are to regenerate 
 America; who, mourning the decay of public 
 spirit, and the corruption of national virtue, have, 
 by self election, and the imposition of their own hands , 
 set themselves apart for the work of reforma- 
 tion. I have said, and I repeat it, that I think 
 there is the strongest obligation among freemen 
 to be open and candid in all political matters. 
 Among slaves, or those who approach the ser- 
 vile condition, even though they have the forms 
 of freedom, secrecy is to be expected. But its 
 use is an unwholesome regimen for the growth 
 and nurture of the manly virtues. I am sure, 
 sir, you would hardly be willing to continue a 
 privatepartnership — and society has often, and not 
 inaptly, in many important respects, been likened 
 to one — in which you knew a portion of the part- 
 ners had formed a secret league, in reference to 
 partnership business, confirmed by oaths, guarded 
 by mysterious ciphers, grips of the hand, pass- 
 words, signs of recognition, and all the machinery 
 of secrecy by which the men of disorder have, from 
 time immemorial, guarded their schemes against^ 
 the peace and the welfare of society; I am sure 
 you would be justified in the suspicion that your 
 rights were very insecure, and in taking prompt 
 steps for their preservation. And yet we, sir, 
 the people of a free country, are told that there is 
 a political association in our midst, secret as the 
 grave, except when accident has betrayed it, and 
 as inexorable in the proscription of all not con- 
 nected with it. If your rights are safe from it to- 
 day, will they be so to-morrow; or from some secret 
 association to be formed next week ? If the 
 right to create such is recognized now, how can 
 it be denied in future, when other isms will be seek- 
 ing the aid of secrecy to accomplish their schemes, 
 or wreak their revenge? Free Governments are 
 controlled greatly by precedents and general rules, 
 and if, for a temporary purpose, or a scanty good, 
 you abandon wholesome principles, you have 
 broken down the most effectual barriers against 
 despotism. 
 
7 
 
 Public. opinion is one of the most efficient re- 
 straints on human action. The punishments of 
 this world seem, with but too many, more terri- 
 ble than the retribution of that which is to come. 
 The criticism, the censure of men often restrain 
 evil-disposed persons, and an enlightened public 
 opinion guides and sustains the virtue of individ- 
 uals. We find the action of political parties is 
 purest when it is most under the public eye; and 
 as the veil of secrecy is thrown about it, there is 
 a culpable laxity of conduct. A private caucus, 
 though there is no obligation of secrecy, is thought 
 less free from corruption than a public convention. 
 Meetings, of which there is no record but the un- 
 safe memory of those present, are likely to be less 
 judicious than those in which every thing is re- 
 corded and published. A railroad, or other cor- 
 poration directory, which gives its proceedings no 
 publicity in a twelvemonth, is the subject of dis- 
 trust, and too often falls into downright knavery. 
 These things we all see and know; and yet it is 
 maintained that it is possible for an association, 
 secret, irresponsible, its members unknown, and 
 denying their connection with it, to select its can- 
 didates and elect them, and to control the Govern- 
 ment of a great country without danger to the 
 rights of the people, or of corruption among the 
 members. Where this secrecy begins, freedom 
 ends. When the streets of Paris streamed with 
 blood; when the guillotine was the only engine 
 whose activity was not palsied by the general ter- 
 ror that pervaded the land, the orders that plunged 
 France into such frightful calamities issued from 
 the midnight, secret, irresponsible association of 
 the Jacobins. A career that begins in religious and 
 political proscription may well end, like theirs, 
 with the lamp-post and the guillotine. 
 
 These new political doctors object to the secrecy 
 which prevails in an ordinary convention, yet se- 
 crecy is not the rule, but the exception, in such 
 assemblies. They know that the corruption which 
 attends them is proportioned to the privacy witl) 
 which they are conducted; that men commit acts 
 in the safety of midnight caucuses, which they 
 would not dare in the light of day, and the remedy 
 they offer is an association in which all is caucus, 
 all secrecy, all irresponsibility. The evil excep- 
 tion which they denounce in others, they adopt 
 as the rule of their own conduct. 1 f a little secrecy 
 works such harm in ordinary politics, what must 
 the whole machinery of oaths, and grips, and pass 
 words, do for this new association. I believe it 
 will work everywhere, as it has wrought in the 
 instance of the New York Council already quoted, 
 its abundant harvest of tyranny, deceit, and per- 
 jury. The order employs more secrecy in a single 
 night than is used in preparing and conducting 
 both the national conventions of the Whigs and 
 Democrats. How, then, can this terrible poison 
 fail to work its natural effect of corruption on 
 them. Perhaps, on the principle that one poison 
 sometimes neutralizes another, the proscription 
 and intolerance which they swear to practice are 
 an antidote to the secrecy which is found neces- 
 sary in accomplishing their purposes. . 
 
 The first avowed purpose of the order which I 
 shall discuss is the exclusion of foreigners from 
 office. The pledge of the member on entering the 
 order is, that “ he will not vote, or give his influ- 
 ence, for any man for’any office in the gift of the 
 people, unless he be an American- born citizen.” j 
 
 A judicious man, it seems to me, will hardly deny 
 that it is equally criminal to do, by indirection, 
 as to do openly, that which we are forbidden 
 under the Constitution. That instrument provides 
 that no man shall be a Senator in Congress who 
 “shall not have attained to the age of thirty 
 years, and been nine years a citizen of the Uni- 
 ted States,” &c.; that no man shall be a Repre- 
 sentative “ who shall not have attained to the age 
 of twenty-five years, and been seven years a citi- 
 zen of the United States, ”&c., (art. 1, sec. 2 and 
 3.) These clauses of the Constitution confer on 
 alien-born citizens a complete eligibility to seats 
 in the House of Representatives and Senate, when 
 the respective periods of age and citizenship have 
 been completed, as upon native-born citizens. No 
 man will deny that Congress possesses no power 
 to add, by law, to the age or period of citizenship 
 fixed by the Constitution, and that such a law 
 would be unconstitutional and void. Any attempt 
 to do so would be an assault upon a right which 
 the framers of the Constitution thought of suffi- 
 cient importance to guard by a special provision, 
 and I can see no distinction in justice between 
 attempting to rob them of the rights by a law and 
 by a secret association. The first is the bolder 
 and manlier way of assault. The men who do 
 the injury in that case are known and responsi- 
 ble; they hold themselves amenable to criticism, 
 to discussion, and to the public judgment. They 
 plant themselves upon the merit of their action, 
 and not upon the force of numbers and the chances 
 of escape from detection. All men admire candor 
 and sincerity in political as well as other conduct. 
 Until now all Americans despised secret political 
 associations, midnight juggling, and the hatred 
 that would strike, and yet fear to avow the blow. 
 
 There is no obligation, in my judgment, to vote 
 for a foreigner to any office more than for any 
 other citizen ; but there is an obligation not to form 
 a combination against him by which he is to be 
 disfranchised, or stinted in the enjoyment of any 
 constitutional right. 
 
 If it be true that foreigners are less fit for office 
 than native citizens, it is a gross distrust of the 
 national common sense to suppose the people will 
 not act upon it, and a poor commentary upon pub- 
 lic spirit, that special oaths, and the terrors of a 
 secret inquisition are needed to urge them up to 
 the discharge of an obvious duty. I cannot but 
 believe that true policy and justice are, in this case, 
 harmonious. These foreigners are in our midst; 
 they have come under our invitation, and have 
 trusted to the liberal spirit of the age, and the gen- 
 erous provisions of our laws and Constitution, 
 and our purpose should be, by acting up to the 
 full measure of good faith, to encourage them to 
 the highest standard of republican citizenship. 
 They are citizens, with the right to vote, and 
 policy dictates that they should be so treated as 
 soonest to nationalize them, that the peculiarities 
 of their birth, education, language, and ideas may 
 be lost in the character of our own people. There 
 is no safety in a course that excludes them from 
 any right which is theirs by the Constitution and 
 laws, and which induces them, from wounded 
 pride, to perpetuate the distinctions which separate 
 them from the native-born citizens. 
 
 To a foreigner of just self-respect, the equality 
 implied in voting, and the right to be elected to 
 every office, even though he may never desire any, 
 
8 
 
 is one of the strongest ties that can bind him in 
 love and interest to the fortunes of the Republic. 
 And if, at any time, it becomes necessary to dis- 
 franchise him of either, in the name of manhood, 
 and justice, and republicanism, let it be done in 
 the open light of Heaven, let it be done with the 
 forms, the sanction, and the solemnity of a na- 
 tional act, and let him not feel himself the victim 
 of a nameless persecution, tried, condemned, and 
 punished, unheard, in the hateful manner of the 
 inquisition, by those who blush to avow their 
 connection with the deed. Justice would teach us 
 that foreigners should receive a share of offices 
 proportioned to their number, if the subject be- 
 comes a matter of mathematical division; but it 
 would be more fortunate for the peace of the 
 country if the question of nativity and religion 
 were never raised, and if selections to office were 
 made according as Mr. Jefferson’s strong ques- 
 tions are answered, “ Is he honest? Is he compe- 
 tent ? Is he faithful to the Constitution ?” 
 
 Second. The extension of the term of natural- 
 ization to twenty-one years, or some other period 
 longer than five years. 
 
 When our country was weak, and there was 
 apprehension that we might be attacked by for- 
 eign Powers, anxiety was felt to secure an influx 
 of immigration. The time for that apprehension is 
 past. I, sir, as an individual, have never cherished 
 or expressed the anxiety which I have witnessed in 
 others, to see our country goaded into premature 
 growth and population; though I have rejoiced to 
 see those who came here, either from choice or to 
 escape oppression, sitting, in due time, at the na- 
 tional board, and sharing equally the abundance 
 of our unstinted hospitality. The vision of a 
 splendid Government, which has such fascination 
 for many, to me is without a charm. I know 
 that its magnificence, the pomp of its officials, the 
 number and equipment of its fleets and armies, 
 are but so much wrung from the scanty subsist- 
 ence of labor. Wherever I witness the reckless 
 pageantry of wealth, I know that the gaunt shadow 
 of poverty is near by. I doubt if our rapid 
 increase in numbers, in wealth, and power, how- 
 ever gratifying to our pride, have been attended 
 with a proportionate increase of those robust and 
 homely virtues, on which alone permanent na- 
 tional greatness is founded. It is the effect’ of 
 great and sudden prosperity to disturb the ordi- 
 nary action of the public mind, and to introduce 
 false and deceptive standards of conduct. The 
 whole nature of man runs wild, in a variety of 
 excesses, and this inundation of prosperity sweeps 
 away many of the established and respected land- 
 marks. Seasons, such as these, try the national 
 character more than whole years of calamity. 
 This has produced that exuberance of intellectual 
 movement, that redundance of activity, that Egyp- 
 tian fecupdity of isms, which distinguish our 
 country to-day. At such times, a recurrence to 
 honored and established principles is the most 
 wholesome regimen for the public mind. 
 
 I believe, sir, it had been better for us if we 
 had never received, since our independence, more 
 foreigners than could be readily assimilated to the 
 general condition and character of our native-born 
 population. I do not question that the inter- 
 mingling of races here is one potent element of 
 our growth and success. Those nations have 
 been foremost in the world’s history whose char- 
 
 acters have been the amalgam of the greatest 
 variety of the best races of the earth. A constant 
 immigration of enough to produce variety, but 
 not to perpetuate diversity, would, 1 believe, con- 
 tribute to preserve and increase our vigor. But I 
 wish to see no foreign settlements in our country; 
 no papers, schools, and school-books in a foreign 
 tongue; no regions of country in which a traveler 
 might fancy himself on the banks of the Rhine, or 
 the green sward of.Ireland. I desire our people to 
 be homogenous in language and institutions; I 
 would have the first generation of foreigners to 
 be the last, their children I would have American 
 in tongue, in education, in principle, and in law. 
 
 It is said that this extension is rendered neces- 
 sary by the abuses of the present system. 
 
 These abuses are chiefly through false naturali- 
 zation papers, and false swearing. They exist, I 
 am inclined to think, less through any defect in 
 the present laws than through the defect in their 
 enforcement.* The use of false naturalization 
 papers, illegal voting, and the perjury attendant 
 upon both, are offenses against the laws of the 
 State where they are committed; and it is to the 
 State tribunals that the citizens must look for 
 redress, and the vindication of their rights. There 
 is no ground, none whatever, to believe that grand 
 (juries would be more active to find indictments 
 | under a new law than under the old one, nor that 
 pettit juries would be more prompt to convict. 
 
 It is useless to cumber the statute-book with 
 laws which there is not the public virtue to 
 enforce. No lawjcan execute itself; it must have 
 the agency of man to administer it, and it is use- 
 less to attempt to make the barbarous severity of 
 the statute atone for the apathy of the people. If 
 it could be shown that the present law had been 
 faithfully tried, and found inefficient, there would 
 be ample reason to ask the enactment of new laws. 
 But there is no such proof. On the contrary, it 
 is known that if offenses are frequent, as is 
 charged, indictments are few, and convictions still 
 more unfrequent. If the evil exists in the mag- 
 nitude describe'd, if offenses are so many and pun- 
 ishments so rare, the root of the evil would seem 
 to lie deeper than an imperfect statute. It cannot 
 lie in the law merely, for that would be pointed out 
 and remedied; nor in the officers of the law, the 
 juries, the attorneys, and the judges, for a whole- 
 some public opinion would impel them to the dis- 
 charge of their duty; but it lies deeper; I fear it 
 lies in a corrupted public sentiment. Individuals 
 dislike the labor and inconvenience with which a 
 prosecution is attended, and after an ebullition of 
 temper, and a few newspaper paragraphs upon 
 
 * Since the above was spoken I have seen a recent de- 
 cision of Judge Dean, of the supreme court of New York, 
 on the administration of the naturalization laws. He 
 remarks: £ ‘ Those courts, instead of administering this 
 law, (of naturalization,) have, by their negligence and in- 
 attention, practically repealed it, ad mining thousands to the 
 rights of citizenship, who want all the requisites to entitle 
 them to such admission ; have been guilty of a gross viola- 
 tion of duty, and have made the law itself odious in public 
 estimation.” 
 
 “ The man who would collect and embody in a single 
 act, the operative portions of the various statutes on this 
 subject, with such amendments as experience has shown 
 are necessary to their due and faithful execution, would be 
 a public benefactor.” 
 
 “ When that is done, and the laws are administered in 
 their purity, it will be apparent that the faults have been 
 I far more in the administration than in the laws them- 
 I selves.” 
 
.9 
 
 election frauds, the matter is allowed to drop. 
 Another reason, perhaps, quite as effectual, is 
 that both parties in the cities have been engaged 
 in the disreputable work of procuring fraudulent 
 votes, and each fears to provoke inquiry into its 
 own conduct, by attempting to expose the crimes 
 of the other. But even if all the illegal voting com- 
 plained of were confined to foreigners, by whom is 
 the temptation to commit the offense offered? Cer- 
 tainly by our own native citizens; and it seems 
 strange that the whole indignation is visited upon 
 the foreigner, who is denounced as “ ignorant and 
 corrupt,” and scarcely a censure is bestowed upon 
 the native who debauched him, and who, I sup- 
 pose, by contrast, is to be regarded as “intelli- 
 gent and virtuous. ” 
 
 But, Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that the 
 cause of the evil, which is ascribed to the immi- 
 gration of foreigners, may be justly sought for 
 even further back than the condition of public 
 sentiment where it exists. As a State becomes 
 more refined and populous, the disparity in the 
 condition of the people becomes greater. The 
 inequalities of wealth and social advantages are 
 more obvious; the rich become richer, and the poor 
 poorer. If there be any method of preventing this j 
 result, political philosophy has not yet announced ! 
 it; and the evil has begun to be felt in this country 
 in our large cities. There is, in all of them, a por- 
 tion of the community , N happily for us yet small, 
 who are sunk in vice and ignorance. As the pop- 
 ulation becomes denser, there will be accessions 
 constantly to the number, and in due time there 
 will exist a class in this country, as in the Old 
 World, in which vice, and crime, and destitution 
 will be the hereditary condition. It is from this 
 class, and those who approach its condition, that 
 the material for fraudulent voting is drawn. In 
 agricultural regions, where the means of living 
 are cheap and abundant, it is almost unknown; 
 but, as a rule, I believe the evil will be found to 
 increase in exact proportion with the density of 
 the population. So far as this class exists in our J 
 midst, a large share of it, I believe, will be found 
 among the foreign population; because they con- 
 gregate about the cities, where the vice of proleta- 
 rianism mainly flourishes, and because the native 
 population, from its superior intelligence and 
 familiarity with the mode of life here, has retained 
 the more lucrative occupations, leaving to the for- 
 eigner the humbler and cheaper ones, and those 
 which are first to suffer from revulsions in trade 
 and commerce. Population and production march 
 on closely together; there will not, for any great 
 length of time, be a wide disparity between the 
 supply of food and the number of people to con- 
 sume it. And when the amount produced and 
 that requisite for consumption are about equal, a 
 slight decrease of the former, or of the supply of 
 labor by which it is to be produced , results in pov- 
 erty and starvation. Such is the state of things] 
 in the greater part of Europe. Such , in a mitigated 
 form, is getting to be the condition of our larger 
 cities. The accounts of the destitution now pre- 
 vailing in some of them, among the honest and 
 industrious, and the gloomy anticipations of the 
 comingwinter, are heart-rending. Yet Government 
 has not aaused it; the tariff has not caused it; for- J 
 eigners have not caused it; nor even the present! 
 war, though that event may have precipitated it. !j 
 It is the effect of those mutations which are the [| 
 
 inevitable condition of existence, and which are 
 brought about by the whole variety of those per- 
 plexed causes which have produced that result 
 which we call the “ present state of things.” Our 
 very prosperity has been as effective in bringing 
 it about, as any other cause. High excitements 
 in the commercial world are always followed by 
 periods of languor and depression, and the sugges- 
 tions of quacks, and their still more dangerous 
 remedies, are alike to be discarded. Republican 
 institutions can protect us against unjust legisla- 
 tion, oppresive taxes, and guilty wars, but they 
 cannot secure us against the inexorable laws of 
 trade, commerce, and manufactures. It is, then, 
 unjust to ascribe to transient causes evils which 
 appear inseparable from the structure of civilized 
 society. 
 
 But, sir, if all these evils were the result of fraud- 
 ulent voting, how would the mischief be remedied 
 by extending the period of probation from five to 
 twenty-one years? If. five years’ delay is so irk- 
 some that the foreigner will risk the penalties of 
 fraudulent voting and perjury to escape it, it seems 
 to me the temptation would be multiplied four- 
 fold by increasing the delay to twenty-one years. 
 
 So far as the extension of the period to twenty- 
 one years is a sentiment, a mere gratification of a 
 feeling, or a prejudice, it is either above or beneath 
 reason, but as a statesman’s remedy for an exist- 
 ing abuse, it seems entirely incompetent and 
 unsatisfactory. 
 
 The laws of naturalization I regard as I do any 
 other laws— justly open to revision and amend- 
 ment. If defects of any importance exist, they 
 ought to be remedied promptly; and I am ready 
 to vote for all such changes as may be found expe- 
 dient. I am satisfied, after listening to all that I 
 can hear upon the subject, to let the period of five 
 years remain in the statute; yet, I am not so 
 wedded to that time that I would consider any 
 change of it by Congress an outrage upon the 
 rights of foreigners, or upon the Constitution. I 4 
 am very ready to hear all argumen t upon the sub- 
 ject; but, so far as I have comprehended the evils 
 under which we are said to labor, 1 find no adap- 
 tation in the remedy to the disease. The great 
 evil of a foreign population is hardly noticed in the 
 discussion, and the changes of the law proposed, 
 and the persecuting creed of the Know-Nothings, 
 are alike trivial when compared with it. The mag- 
 nitude of the evil these midnight reformers see, 
 perhaps, but fear to grapple with. The discussion 
 of it is too portentous, too pregnant with the high 
 philosophy of races, population, and government, 
 to be handled by those whose whole political 
 pharmacy^is persecution, whose highest ambi- 
 tion the ejection of an Irish tide-waiter from his 
 office, and the summit of their statesmanship to 
 combine the “ isms ” that are out against the Dem- 
 ocrats who are in. The real danger is, that for- 
 eigners will congregate in some States of the Union 
 in such numbers, preserving the language, man- 
 ners, and traditions of the Old World, as to root 
 out the native population speaking the English 
 tongue, and that we may come to be a Confed- 
 eracy of States as foreign in origin, in language, 
 customs, institutions, and religion, as are the sev- 
 eral nations combined by force under the sway of 
 the Emperor of Austria, or the Czar of Russia, 
 j Nothing can tend to accomplish this more speedily 
 ! than proscription. If the foreigner finds himself 
 
10 
 
 one of a degraded caste while living among the j 
 native population, he will naturally seek those j 
 regions in which his own countrymen are numer- , 
 ous,and a little more concentration of the foreign j 
 population in some of the northwestern States ! 
 will give them an absolute numerical majority, j 
 and insure the control there. Jn such an event, ! 
 they would, of course, retaliate the proscription 
 under which they had suffered; they would, per- 1 
 haps, become even as intolerant as the Know- ( 
 Nothings, and permit no native-born citizen, nor i 
 the son of a native, to vote or hold office; they | 
 would send naturalized foreigners to represent j 
 them here in both Houses, as they would have the 
 constitutional right to do; they would have their |[ 
 relative weight in presidential elections, and the! 
 “ foreign vote” would then be something distinct | 
 and palpable for politicians to intrigue after. No 
 state of things could be more deplorable than the 
 war of races, of which this order is the beginning, I 
 and if it be not crushed at once by the honesty 
 and common sense of the people, it may give to l 
 our history a chapter as dark and bloody as that J 
 of the English revolutions, or of the religious j 
 wars of the Hugenots and Catholics in France. 
 You know, sir, that this is the. evil to be dreaded j 
 in the future, compared to which all German, anti- J 
 Sabbath societies, Irish riots, illegal voting, and j 
 foreign military companies sink into utter insig- 
 nificance, and before which, as remedies, the ex- 
 tension of the term of naturalization to twenty-one 
 years, and the Know-Nothing remedy of exclusion 
 from office, are but as bands of tow to devouring 
 flames. Neither of these would diminish percept- 
 ibly the number of immigrants; and, while the 
 annual supply continues, or increases, any law 
 which tends to perpetuate the distinction of races 
 will only make the ultimate danger more formi- 
 dable. 
 
 The duty of excluding paupers, vagrants, con- 
 victs, and felons, is imperative; and if the evil be 
 as great as is charged, the only surprise is, that 
 we have allowed a public mischief of such gravity 
 to exist so long. Laws, rigorous and effective, 
 should be enacted, if such are not now on the 
 statute-book; and every citizen who regards the 
 public weal, should unite, heartily, in their enforce- 
 ment. 
 
 The third remedy proposed is the repeal of the j 
 naturalization laws. Before the adoption of the 
 Constitution, each State passed its own laws upon 
 this subject, and, of course, there was great diver- 
 sity. To obviate this, the power was given the 
 Federal Government “ to pass uniform naturaliza- 
 tion laws.” As the States were exercising the 
 power to naturalize foreigners when they gave it 
 up, that the law might be made “ uniform,” a 
 failure to employ it by Congress would induce j 
 them to exercise all the rights they yet have, and 
 which are very considerable, on that subject. 
 
 Under the Constitution, the foreign inhabitants, | 
 whether naturalized or not, are enumerated as a 
 part of the basis of representation, and give addi- j 
 tional power to the States where they reside. 
 
 The effect of naturalization is, to give all the 
 rights of citizenship at once, with the three excep- 
 tions enumerated in the Constitution, and which 
 I have already quoted. 
 
 Though the rights conferred are thus ample, it 
 is competent for the States to bestow nearly all of 
 them upon the unnaturalized foreigner, by virtue 
 
 of their State sovereignty. He may be allowed to 
 vote in State and Federal elections, mayTae allowed 
 to hold and to transmit real estate, and may be 
 made eligible to any State office. But these rights 
 would not be recognized in other States except by 
 special action. In every State where similar laws 
 had not been enacted, he would be in the position 
 of an alien. A law of Congress is required to 
 entitle him to the benefit of that provision of the 
 Constitution contained in the 'first paragraph of 
 article fourth, section second: 
 
 “The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all 
 privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.” 
 
 Such a man would not be “a citizen” of the 
 United States, though he might be enjoying nearly 
 all the rights of citizenship in a particular State. 
 The right to vote, which appears to be considered 
 one of the privileges bestowed by naturalization, 
 is derive'd from another source. Each State can 
 fix the qualification of its own voters, can enlarge 
 or contract that franchise at its pleasure; and if a 
 State should deny the electoral franchise to all 
 persons not natives of it, the right to do so, I pre- 
 sume, would be unquestioned. 
 
 Thus we discover that even the repeal of the 
 naturalization laws would not protect us from the 
 influx of foreigners, nor from the ill effects of their 
 voting, in case any of the States see fit to bestow 
 that right upon them; and if the naturalization 
 laws should be repealed, or the term extended to 
 twenty-one years, under the influence of a tem- 
 porary excitement, the natural reaction of popular 
 feeling would demand a restoration of the old law; 
 or the right of voting, and other privileges of citi- 
 zenship, would be conferred by the States upon 
 their alien inhabitants. The power of each State, 
 then, is ample over its own ballot-box, and it can 
 be approached oniy by those on whom she confers 
 the right. There is not a voter of the Union who 
 derives his power from the Federal Government; 
 he may be naturalized under a law of Congress, 
 and possess all that such laws can bestow, yet 
 never be permitted to cast a vote or hold a State 
 office in the Union. This is fortunate, as the 
 necessities of States are different. In some, the 
 foreign population is so numerous as to require, 
 perhaps, some State legislation; in others, there is 
 so little that it is merged in the mass of the native- 
 born people. The proportion of natives to for- 
 eigners in some States, is as one to eight or ten; in 
 others — Mississippi for instance — as one to sixty 
 of the native white population. It seems natural 
 that States of such dissimilar conditions should 
 have laws adapted to their peculiar necessities, 
 and if abuses have arisen where the foreign popu- 
 lation is flense, which require laws for their eradi- 
 cation, it is useless, not to say foolish, for States, 
 where those abuses are unknown, to enact laws 
 for their suppression. 
 
 The foreign population of Mississippi is re- 
 ported in the oensus at five thousand; the entire 
 white population three hundred thousand. These 
 foreigners, for the most part, are peaceable, indus- 
 trious, useful citizens.' They keep up no separate 
 schools, publish no papers in their native tongue, 
 affect no interests distinct from those of the rest 
 of the community, and are steadily being absorbed 
 into the mass of the people. Nor have they, sir, 
 done that which seems the unpardonable offense — 
 obtained more than a share of public office. 
 
11 
 
 Why, then, does Mississippi need to join in 
 any persecution, open or covert, of her foreign 
 population? Why should Congress enact any 
 general law applicable to her, which she does not 
 need, for the convenience of those States whose 
 situation may, indeed, require it, but who have 
 full power, in their State rights, to enact any law 
 their exigencies demand? Our foreign population 
 does us no injury which' the laws of Congress can 
 redress. The evil is local, so should the remedy 
 be. 
 
 I am influenced by considerations of this kind, 
 when I say that I am not fired with the prospect 
 of a splendid Government, nor anxious to see our 
 population swelled with a mighty influx of for- 
 eigners. In due season the time will arrive when 
 the natural increase of our native people will 
 spread over our territory, and at a more distant 
 period the condition of a crowded and redundant 
 population will be reached. As this condition is 
 approached, there is less of happiness proportion- 
 ably; at least there is a far more visible crying 
 misery. The fortunate classes may enjoy more, 
 but the poorer classes suffer more. Any course of 
 action giving an artificial stimulus to the causes 
 which will bring this state of things, is to be 
 shunned. There are no new worlds on which the 
 excess of population here can be poured. Europe 
 and Asia will alike present barriers in their own 
 crowded nations to any addition from these shores. 
 The evil, when it comes to exist here, must find its 
 solution at home. Highly colored pictures are often 
 shown us of the myriad population that is to be j 
 poured upon us, and the measures I have been 
 discussing are pointed to as remedies for that state 
 of things. These 1 esteem utterly worthless for* 
 the purpose. 
 
 I do not deny, on the contrary I affirm, the 
 right of a nation to impose such terms on the 
 influx of foreigners as a due regard to her own 
 interest and safety require. She is the sole judge 
 of the evil and the remedy. If there were just 
 reason to apprehend such an immigration from 
 Europe or Asia, as would unduly crowd our 
 people, impoverish our labor, or eihaust our soil, 
 
 I should advocate a policy more prompt, and 
 adapted to the emergency, than the ritual of the 
 Know-Nothings, or their clumsy imitation of the 
 secrecy and persecution of the Jesuits. We have 
 the right, and I should favor its exercise in that 
 extremity, to deny all foreigners admission, and 
 I would, in that case, have our coast present an 
 iron front to the tide of immigration as it does to 
 the waves of the ocean, so long as the danger 
 existed. But I would appeal to the manly, com 
 mon sense of the people, and have our action, if 
 any were taken, wear all the dignity of national 
 justice and self-defence, and not the sinister aspect I 
 of a revengeful intrigue and midnight cabal. 1 | 
 do not believe the time for such action has come; i 
 and if it were now thick upon us, the remedies of 
 Know-Nothingism are poor, flimsy — wholly in- 
 adequate. 
 
 It cannot be denied that the policy of our Gov- 
 ernment has been to encourage immigration. The 
 vast amount of fertile unoccupied territory, the 
 number of canals to be dug, of railroads to be 
 built, and all the variety of labor required in a new 
 country, induced our ancestors to solicit foreign 
 aid. The surplus labor and capital of Europe 
 found employment here. Most of the immigrants 
 
 settled in the northern and northwestern States, 
 and it is owing to this addition to their native 
 population that their numbers have increased faster 
 than the southern States. The natural growth 
 of population at the South, is as rapid as in any 
 part of the world. These foreigners not only 
 brought their strength to increase our productive 
 industry, but the aggregate of money they have 
 introduced into the country, has been very large; 
 many of them being inferior in education and so- 
 cial advantages to our native population, turned 
 to those occupations which are almost solely 
 physical, requiring vigor of muscle, and strength 
 of constitution, leaving to the native popula- 
 tion almost a monoply of the more scientific and 
 remunerative branches of industry. This pop- 
 ulation has furnished to the North a large increase 
 of capital. It has supplied capital with a cheaper 
 labor, by increasing the amount of it. It has 
 given greater activity to manufacturers, by adding 
 several millions to the number of consumers. It 
 has strengthened the shipping interest, by an 
 amount of passage money equal, it is said, to 
 the whole export freights of the country. The 
 North could not have completed one tenth of her 
 improvements, and kept up her other interests to 
 their present extent, without this foreign labor. 
 Most of these improvements at the South have 
 been made by the native labor, and without ma- 
 terially diminishing the annual supply of the staple 
 productions of the country. As a section, the 
 North has reaped the benefits of this immigration, 
 and it will haye to meet the consequences which 
 flow from it. The question of the organization 
 of labor, its rights and duties, is perhaps the most 
 vexed one of all that disturb the body politic. 
 By immigration we are perhaps fifty years in ad- 
 vance of what we should have been, had increase 
 in numbers been natural only. The difficulties 
 that attend our condition are not mainly attributa- 
 ble to the foreign origin of a part of the popula- 
 tion, but to the number of the population. If 
 every foreigner were this day removed from the 
 country, and natives in equal numbers substi- 
 tuted, the difficulties Which exist now would be 
 as great then, and substantially the same. It 
 matters not where the population is born, if there 
 is not work for them to do, and they have no 
 accumulations in store, there will be want, mis- 
 ery, and destitution. It results from the density 
 of population, and not from its nativity. If the 
 | population of New York city were to-day wholly 
 native, would the cessation of business, the par- 
 tial suspension of manufactures, trade*, and com- 
 merce, afflict them less sorely than it does the 
 present mixed population? But yesterday, and 
 there was labor for all, and, with labor, food and 
 contentment; to-day there is a deficient supply, 
 and at the same time a greater scarcity and dear- 
 ness of the necessaries of life. If there be any 
 way to prevent these fluctuations in business, and 
 the suffering consequent upon them, it has never 
 yet been made known. 
 
 I have alluded to these things, sir, not in the 
 spirit of crimination — God forbid, sir — for the 
 whole country lies too near my heart for me to feel 
 anything but the warmest sympathy for any 
 J section whose happiness is impaired, but for the 
 ) purpose of pointing out what seems to me the 
 j very root of the disorder complained of. And, I 
 || think, both of the great sections of the Union 
 
12 
 
 might find a practical argument for mutual charity 
 in the fact, that the social condition of each has 
 in it the germs of consequence which will give 
 home occupation to their wisdom and philanthropy 
 without either intermeddling in the affairs of the 
 other. As soon as the population of the South 
 becomes so dense that labor is not remunerated, 
 and there are no new regions for it to occupy, its 
 period of trouble will have arrived; and the same 
 is true, equally true, of the North. So far as 
 immigration may help to bring this state of things 
 prematurely, so far the troubles consequent upon 
 it are attributable to foreign population; but I 
 repeat that it is a question of numbers, not of race or 
 nativity 
 
 The last purpose to be achieved by the Know- 
 Nothings, is the exclusion of all Catholics from 
 office. That this is one object to be accom- 
 plished by the order, is evident from the oath 
 taken by the members upon admission, and which 
 I have already quoted. It is not to be denied that 
 there is deversity of opinion among the brethren 
 of different sections. The order seems already to 
 have fallen into the most corrupt practice at- 
 tributed to the old parties, and to the most cor- 
 rupt class of the old politicians, that of varying 
 its creed with every change of latitude. In the 
 infancy of its existence, it is already mature in its 
 vices, and with a most surprising harmony be- 
 tween the end and the means, it aims at political 
 and religious intolerance by seizing on every pre- 
 judice and adopting every creed. The foreign 
 Protestant is told that the order strikes only at 
 Catholicism, and the native Catholic is assured 
 that it interferes with no man’s religion, but 
 attempts to limit the influence of foreigners. 
 
 In Louisiana, Catholics are allowed to join the 
 order, we are told — and why? because that denom- 
 ination is too numerous there to be assailed open- 
 ly. If the order throughout the Union is sincere 
 in its hostility to Catholicism, then the Catholics 
 of Louisiana and elsewhere, who are persuaded 
 that their faith js not to be harmed, are deceived 
 and betrayed ; but if they are not thus deceived , all 
 others who have joined with the hope of crushing 
 the influence of that church, are imposed upon, 
 and have sworn their oaths in vain. In either 
 event there is deception, which compels us to 
 distrust, and should teach us to shun, the order of 
 the Know-Nothings. 
 
 It is something that will, I dare say, excite sur- 
 prise through the civilized world, when it becomes 
 known, that the people of this country, who have 
 been first *to practice, in its fullest extent, the 
 great Christian doctrine of toleration, are engaged 
 in discussing whether or not the Government is 
 safe while it continues. England which, three 
 centuries ago, disfranchised the Catholics, and has 
 since, under the influence of our example, grad- 
 ually relaxed the stringency of her laws, may 
 well distrust her course, if our experiment demon- 
 strates that even a Republic is endangered by 
 religious freedom among its citizens. With what 
 show of justioe or consistency can we plead to the 
 Catholic sovereigns of Europe for the toleration 
 of Protestantism in their dominions, while we 
 disfranchise our fellow-citizens of the Catholic 
 faith. How can we ask them to go forward in 
 relaxing the fetters of opinion, while we are going 
 backward? How dare we talk of freedom of 
 conscience, when more than a million of our citi- 
 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 i 
 
 II 
 
 zens are to be excluded from office for conscience 
 sake. 
 
 Yesterday, to have argued in favor of religious 
 toleration in this country, would have been absurd, 
 for none could have been found to deny or question 
 it. But to-day, there is a sect boasting that it can 
 control the country, avowing the old papist and 
 monarchical doctrine of political exclusion for reli- 
 gious opinions’ sake. The arguments by which 
 they sustain themselves, are those by which the 
 Inquisition justified their probing the consciences, 
 and burning the bodies of men five hundred year 
 ago, and against which Protestantism has struggled 
 since the days of Luther. You, sir, and I, and 
 all of us, owe our own right to worship God 
 according to our consciences, to that very doctrine 
 which this new order abjures; and if the right of 
 the Catholic is first assailed, and destroyed, you, 
 sir, or another member who believes according to 
 a different Protestant creed, may be excluded from 
 this House, and from other preferment, because of 
 your religious faith. The security of all citizens 
 rests upon the same broad basis of universal right. 
 Confederates who disfranchise one class of citi- 
 zens soon turn upon each other; the strong argu- 
 ment of general right is destroyed by their united 
 action, and the proscriptionist of yesterday is the 
 proscribed of to-morrow. Human judgment has 
 recognized the inexorable justice of the sentence 
 which consigned Robespierre and his accomplices 
 to the same guillotine to which they had con- 
 demned so many thousand better men. 
 
 No nation can content itself with a single act of 
 persecution; either public intelligence will reject 
 that as unworthy of itself, or public prejudice will 
 edd others to it. If the Catholic be untrustworthy 
 as a citizen, and the public liberty is unsafe in his 
 keeping, it is but a natural logical consequence 
 that he shall not be permitted to disseminate a faith 
 which is adjudged hostile to national independ- 
 ence; that he shall not be allowed to set the evil 
 example of the practice of, his religion before the 
 public, that it shall not be preached from the pul- 
 pit, that it shall not be taught in the schools, and 
 that, by all the energy of the law, it shall be utterly 
 exterminated. 
 
 If this faith be incompatible with good citizen- 
 ship, and you set about to discourage it, destroy it 
 utterly, uproot it from the land. Petty persecu- 
 tion will but irritate a sect which the Know-Noth- 
 ings denounce as so powerful and so dangerous. 
 This was the course which England pursued when 
 she entertained the same fears of the Catholics 
 three hundred years ago, and which she has lived 
 to see the absurdity of, ‘and has removed almost, 
 if not quite, every disability imposed. Perhaps, 
 however, this new sect will not startle the public 
 mind by proposing too much at once, and holds 
 that it will be time enough to propose further and 
 more minute persecution, when the national sen- 
 timent is debauched enough to entertain favorably 
 this first great departure from the unbounded toler- 
 ation of our fathers. 
 
 It is the experience of this country that perse- 
 cution strengthens a new creed. The manhood 
 of our nature, of all true, genuine men, clings 
 more ardently to a faith which brings peril to the 
 believer. Perhaps it is true of all times and 
 countries. Christianity grew strongest under per- 
 secution — not merely the exclusion from office, 
 which is the condemnation of the Know-Nothing 
 
* 
 
 13 
 
 conventicles, but when the faggots and the stake 
 were the portion of the true believer. With the 
 history of Protestantism so recent, and so fresh in 
 our minds, its birth in the very bosom of the 
 Romish Church, where the civil and ecclesiastical 
 power were united to discourage and destroy every ; 
 species of heresy; its growth amid every form of j 
 danger, obloquy, and persecution; its triumph, by 
 the aid of truth and reason; and remembering how 
 every effort to destroy it only planted it deeper in 
 the hearts of the faithful, it is natural to believe 
 that persecution will invigorate other creeds and 
 sects. Whoever has the courage to bear the tor- 
 ture for conscience, will kindle more sympathy, 
 and attract more converts, than the most eloquent 
 tongue. In my judgment, this attempt at pro- 
 scription will do more to spread Catholicism here 
 than all the treasures of Rome, or all the Jesuitism 
 of the Cardinals. 
 
 Now, sir, what is this movement at the North, 
 and who are engaged in it? It is a combination 
 of all the “ isms” of that section. Abolitionism, 
 Free-Soilism,Whigism,Woman-Rightism, Social- 
 ism, Anti-Rentism, gathered together from a thou- 
 sand fretful rills, and mingling their currents in 
 one common channel. Abolitionism and Know- 
 Nothingism are akin; the first is a denial of the 
 rights of a section of the Union, and an attempt 
 to destroy them, because, in its wisdom, it has 
 determined that those rights have not the proper 
 moral sanction; the other is a denial of the rights 
 of a class of citizens, regardless of section. One 
 is a crusade against the rights of States; the other 
 against the rights of individuals. The one openly 
 spurns the Constitution fthe other attempts a flimsy 
 evasion of it. This daringly attempts a breach 
 and an assault; that more cunningly adopts and 
 prepares a surprise. The one almost commands 
 respect for nefarious schemes by boldness and 
 courage; the other would bring discredit on the 
 best of causes, by evasion, circuity, and irrespon- 
 sible assaults. In Massachusetts, when the sect 
 made their own nominations, so far as I can learn 
 the politics of those elected to Congress, all are 
 ultra anti-slavery men. No man suspected of 
 moderation was allowed to occupy a seat here. 
 The candidate whom they elected Governor de- 
 clared: 
 
 “ It is not true that I am, or have ever been, in favor of 
 the fugiti ve slave bill. I never voted for a man who favored 
 it, knowing such to be his views; and I must very much 
 change before I ever do. I never, by word, act, or vote, 
 favored its passage, and I am an advocate of its essential 
 modification, or, in lieu thereof, its unconditional re- 
 peal.” 
 
 The following resolutions of a Know-Nothing 
 convention, held in Norfolk, Massachusetts, show 
 the sectionalism and intolerance of the order: 
 
 “ Resolved, That in the present chaotic condition of 
 parties in Massachusetts, the only star above the horizon 
 is the love of human liberty and the abhorrence of slavery, 
 and that it is the duty of anti-slavery men to rally around 
 the Republican party as an organization which invites the 
 united action of the people on the one transcending ques- 
 ion of slave dominion, which now divides the Union. 
 
 “ Whereas, Roman Catholicism and slavery being alike 
 founded and supported on the basis of ignorance and tyr- 
 anny ; and being, therefore, natural allies in every warfare 
 against liberty and enlightenment ; therefore be it 
 
 “ Resolved, That there can exist no real hostility to 
 Roman Catholicism which does not embrace slavery, its 
 natural coworker in opposition to freedom and republican 
 institutions.” 
 
 Those whom the order voted for, elsewhere in 
 the North, are of the ultra stamp, almost with- 
 
 out exception. To secure the vote of the Free- 
 Soilers and Abolitionists of both the old parties, it 
 was indispensable to have a candidate tinctured 
 strongly with those heresies, and a flavor of 
 Know-Nothingism was added to secure the coop- 
 eration of certain Democrats, whom unadulterated 
 Whiggery and Abolitionism might have disgusted. 
 It was a combination and a triumph of all that 
 was ultra, and factious, and discontented, overall 
 that was moderate, and judicious, and studious of 
 the public peace. 
 
 Now that most of the elections at the North 
 are over, a laborious attempt is made to persuade 
 the South that the order is free of those Aboli- 
 tion tendencies which secured its triumph. The 
 one great fact relied on is, that the order in New 
 York is opposed to Seward. Let us inquire into 
 this. There is a strife in that State between the 
 Silver Grey or Fillmore Whigs and the Seward- 
 ites. It is, in the main, a personal strife, the rivalry 
 of two ambitious men. Seward has taken ground 
 against the Know-Nothings for two reasons, I 
 suppose. He, in common with other Whigs of 
 New York, had, in past years, committed himself 
 upon certain questions designed to win favor with 
 the foreign voters, and could not join in this new 
 persecution without gross inconsistency. But, 
 worse than that, he, in common with the Whigs 
 of the Union, had supported General Scott, who 
 had advocated in the canvass giving to any for- 
 eigner who served in the armies of the United 
 States twelve months the right to vote. He had 
 read without public dissent, as had the rest of the 
 Whig parly, General Scott’s speeches on his west- 
 ern tour, in which there were warm eulogies of 
 “ the rich Irish brogue, with the illigant Jarmin 
 accent, ’’and if others are willing,in two years’ time 
 to pass from eulogists and suppliants of foreign- 
 ers, to abusers and persecutors, it seems that he is 
 not. He knows that judicious men will ask: Were 
 you sincere, two years since, when you attempted 
 to cajole the foreign vote, or are you sincere now? 
 If you were in earnest then, what great events 
 have occurred to change your views so completely? 
 If you were not in earnest then, how shall we trust 
 you now ? Efforts were made to array all the preju- 
 dice of the Catholics against General Pierce. He 
 was denounced for living in a State whose consti- 
 tution excluded Catholics from office; though he 
 was opposed to that clause of the Constitution, 
 and had voted against it. For the first time, to 
 my knowledge, the attempt was made to bring 
 religion into the field of politics, in a presidential 
 campaign, and it originated with those who are 
 now active in getting up a furor of persecution 
 against foreigners and Catholics. They had failed 
 to win the united Catholic and foreign vote for 
 General Scott, and they seem determined to be 
 revenged on those whom they once so flatteringly 
 besought. It is natural to hate those before whom 
 we have humiliated ourselves in vain. 
 
 Mr. Seward, perhaps, has too much justice and 
 consistency to join in so unrepublican a move- 
 ment. It was he who assailed the Know-Nothings, 
 and not they him. The natural affinity for Free- 
 Soil, as shown in other States, satisfies me that 
 they would have united with/ him had he not 
 spurned the association. He first threw down the 
 gauntlet to them, and has come off victor in the 
 contest. The charm of Know-Nothing invinci- 
 bility was broken by the triumph of both Whig 
 
14 
 
 and Democrat over them, and the order attempted 
 to revenge itself by persecuting its pwn members. 
 He can dictate his terms of accommodation with 
 them, I have no doubt. The pretense that one 
 great mission of the order is to put down anti- 
 slavery, and especially William H. Seward, is 
 sheer nonsense, and has been largely circulated, 
 since the northern elections, to make the order 
 popular in the South, and thus to foist into power 
 there, as it has done in the North, the enemies of 
 the Democratic party, and of this Democratic 
 Administration. The Silver Greys of New York 
 are anxious to defeat Seward to remove a rival 
 of their own chief, even if they send a more dan- 
 gerous man in his place. 
 
 Another reason of Mr. Seward ’s refusing to join 
 the order, I doubt not, was that, with his sagacity, 
 looking to ultimate success, he could not fail to see 
 that the whole movement would be short-lived, 
 and that when it ended, no political act, not even 
 membership of the Hartford Convention, with its 
 secret proceedings, could be more destructive to 
 the prospects of a public man than to have avowed 
 the principles of the order. You, sir, and I, we 
 all know, that it is the almost universal opinion in 
 
 E olitical circles here, that this thing will have a 
 rief day. The most anxious wet-nurses of the 
 bantling hardly expect it to live through the pres- 
 idential canvass of 185G. There is everywhere 
 the most feverish anxiety among the faithful to 
 secure some little official crumb of comfort before it 
 is forever too late. Each longs to be carried into the 
 pool while the waters are troubled, for the time of 
 the troubling, they know full well, will soon be 
 past, and then, where shall they be healed? Evi- 
 dences of premature decay are already visible. It 
 will vanish as suddenly as it arose, and leave 
 scarcely a wreck behind. They feel the sandy 
 foundation slipping from beneath their feet. They 
 feel their sentence is pronounced each time they 
 hear repeated the wise and tolerant doctrines of our 
 religion, and which are grafted upon our Consti- 
 tution. Blank annihilation stares them in the face. 
 They see indignation and distrust without, discord 
 and rebellion within. Their secrecy is betrayed 
 and mocked, their intolerance despised, and their 
 prestige broken. 
 
 Towns in Massachusetts over which the storm 
 swept in November, have since had municipal 
 elections, and those opposed to the order were 
 open in their denunciation of it and of its princi- 
 ples, and, banding against it as against a common 
 enemy, have defeated it. The organization of the 
 order is better understood; its intolerance, even 
 to its members, has too plainly manifested itself, 
 and others have not hesitated to apply to the 
 order those epithets bestowed upon the action of 
 the New York council by the Brooklyn breth- 
 ren, “anti-American,” “anti-Republican,” 
 “ Most unwarrantable, abominable, and dan- 
 gerous ASSUMPTION of DESPOTIC POWER,” in its 
 “ CONFESSIONAL, PENANCE, and THREATS of EX- 
 COMMUNICATION, only equaled by the holy Inquisi- 
 tion of Spain, and only worthy of imitation by 
 the GRAND COUNCIL OF CARDINALS AT ROME.” 
 
 I can but believe that the Brooklyn insurgents 
 have used language which the deliberate judg- j 
 ment of the American people will adopt as their | 
 opinion of the character, the purposes, and the I 
 merits of the order, and this opinion will soon be 
 both verdict and epitaph. 
 
 Were there no cause for the dissolution of the 
 I order in its principles, the discordant materials 
 j which compose it would soon precipitate its de- 
 j struction. The ultra men already elected, agree- 
 ! ing in nothing but hostility to the South, to aliens, 
 
 I and to Catholics, can harmonize in no course of 
 j[ action, foreign or domestic, unless by the happen- 
 j ing of a Whig majority in Congress, the tariff 
 j should be altered to suit the protectionist theory, 
 j or some other doctrine of that party be embodied 
 | in a law. If this order takes hold in the South, it 
 j will surprise both friends and opponents. It will 
 1 be a matter of wonder why that section, suffering 
 none of the hardships which are plead as an 
 excuse for the order in the North, ami from her 
 institutions peculiarly averse to secret and irrespon- 
 sible associations, should discard a long history of 
 generous toleration to adopt the creed of proscrip- 
 tion, and wear the name of an order which, in the 
 northern States, has beaten down the defenders of 
 the Constitution and State-rights, and inaugurated 
 more fully than ever before, the era of consolida- 
 tion and fanaticism. 
 
 In a crisis like the present, it becomes the 
 Democratic party to remain steadfast to its old 
 principles. In the “ Act for establishing religious 
 freedom,” adopted in Virginia, in 1786, and ori- 
 ginating in the benevolent mind of Mr. Jefferson, 
 it was enacted that, 
 
 “No man shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or bur- 
 dened, in his body or goods, nor shall he otherwise suffer 
 on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all 
 men shall be free to profess, and by argument, to maintain, 
 their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same 
 
 SHALL IN NOWISE DIMINISH, ENLARGE, OR AFFECT THEIR 
 CIVIL CAPACITIES.” 
 
 On this tolerant principle the Democratic party, 
 through all the variety of disaster and success, has 
 stood from that day to this. It has been the 
 guardian of every civil and political right, of every 
 individual, and of every section. No error has 
 been'too gigantic for its assault, no right too insig- 
 nificant for its protection. When the rights of the 
 States were in peril during the Federal adminis- 
 tration of the elder Adams, it was the champion 
 of our faith, Mr. Jefferson, who was foremost in 
 their defense, resting their security upon principles 
 as wise and venerable as the Constitution itself, 
 and triumphantly sustained by the Democratic 
 party. It was during his administration that the 
 “ alien and sedition laws,” so violative of personal 
 right, were effaced from the statute-book by the 
 votes of the same Democratic party which it is now 
 attempted to seduce into heresies more abomina- 
 ble than those which it then abolished. This new 
 ism is the old “ alien law,” under a thin disguise; 
 and these two, with “ Native Americanism,” are 
 bodies into which the old unlaid spirit of Feder- 
 alism has insinuated itself, hoping, under these 
 forms, to obtain a favor which was always denied 
 it when recognized. It is like Petruchio’s nether 
 wedding garment, “a thrice-turned pair of old 
 breeches,” betraying the nakedness it was intended 
 to conceal. 
 
 The integrity and respectability of the Demo- 
 cratic party have been sustained by adhering to 
 the great constitutional doctrines which it incul- 
 cated, and refusing under all circumstances, to 
 ally itself with the temporary isms, which the 
 Whig party has so readily affiliated with, and 
 which have resulted in its corruption, and almost 
 
15 
 
 in its destruction . Though defeated at the North , 
 in the late elections, those who stood by their 
 principles through that arduous struggle, are men 
 whose devotion to tfuth is beyond suspicion, and 
 who, aided by a few thousand of their old friends, 
 whom the excitement and the deceptions of the 
 hour have misled, will soon bear the ancient flag 
 triumphant through that section, and reinstate 
 their old principles, and their true men. Is it 
 wiser for the South to trust this new organization, 
 for the just interpretation of the Constitution, on 
 which her rights, and those of the whole Union, 
 depend, or that old party which, feven when de- 
 feated by desperate factions, has always possessed 
 a large body of faithful men, and who are now in 
 a minority only because they are devoted to 
 the Constitution and the rights of the States? 
 
 We know that this order is hostile to principles 
 
 which the party have ever cherished. We know 
 that it is a formidable machine in the hands of 
 ambitious men to defeat this Administration, 
 which stands as a bulwark for the just rights of 
 the States, and the people, against every form of 
 persecution and fanaticism. We know that under 
 its banner are arrayed those who, for a quarter of 
 a century, have been the enemies of the Consti- 
 tution and national peace; that against it are op- 
 posed those whom we have ever cherished as our 
 friends, and the true friends of the Union — whom 
 fanaticism has reviled and persecuted, and who, 
 under every adversity, have stood by the rights of 
 the States and of the citizens of every State. It 
 will create no surprise that we adhere to old 
 friends who have proven faithful, rather than trust 
 ancient enemies, who do not conceal their aversions 
 even while they solicit our confidence. 
 
 Printed at the Office of the Congressional Globe.