The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1853-10-13

who denies this proposition.
The Reviewer attempting TO expose the sup
posed popular iallacy," quotes scraps OF tes-
timony from two or three witnesses-one
French savant, another a kind of city mission
ary, intent on making out case to arouse
Christian sympathetic show that pauperism'
crime, and misery, prevail pretty much in the
large cities of this country, as they do in those
of the Old World We know by personal OBJ
servation and comparison that this is false !;
and the witnesses quoted cannot sustain them
selves by fair presentation of official stats
tics. One very important fact the writer
chooses to overook-that, while the cities of
the Old World have to take care chiefly Of
their native population, ours are obliged to
provide not only for native population, but
for hordes Of ignorant, destitute foreigners.
The Edinburgh Review, more inclined to
exalt free institutions than to deprecate rival
nations, points to the fact disclosed by the
census returns, that while the immigrants con-
stitute not quite tenth of the whole popula-
ton of the United States, they furnish more
than third of all our permanent paupers
and more than half of our criminals. We
cannot exactly see the justice of being held
chargeable with the vices which the Old World
sends to us in its refuse population. Let US
not be understood as hostile to foreign immi-
grants. Let them come, rich and poor, edu-
Gated and ignorant There is room for Us all
and we want their labor. The good will
strengthen us, and the evil will be reformed.
But for their characteristics, whatever they
may be, this country is not accountable
Not only does this writer attempt by finn
sy show of evidence to convey the impression
that there is as much poverty and crime in
our Atlantic cities as in the cities Of Europe
but he does not admit that the laws or insti-
tutions of the Old World are at all chargeable
with the wretchednes5 of it's poor. He can
see nothing in the gross land monopoly of
England, for example; nothing in the law of
primogeniture, nothing in the detestable legal
lied institution of caste, nothing in the re-
mains of rotten system of feudasm, nothing
in the want of a national system of education,
calculated to work misery and death to the
poor.
1t is true We have poverty and crime among
our free people, but it is not the work of
our free institutions We may not have done
all, in the power of wise legislation, to
prevent these evils, but we have done great
deal more than any other nation. We have
repudiated feudalism-we have abolished the |
law of primogeniture-thu allowing full play
to the parental instinct, and preventing the
permanent accumulation Of vast landed es-
tates-we have made it possible for every
white man Of steady habits, fair enterprise,
and with ordinary success to become land |
holder. We have opened our public domain
to settlement upon almost nominal terms, and
will soon make it free to the poor native and
poor stranger alike We have taken off all
restrictions upon individual enterprise, and by
placing all upon platform of political equal
ity, done what law could do to encourage self
respect, selfreliance and energizing aspira-
tions. We have made provision, too, for the
education of all--(except Southern slaves the
children of the poor as we'll as of the rich-of
the stranger as well as of the native born.
Now, when England and the nations of Eu-
rope have done all this, it will be time enough
to compare the condition and privileges of
their masses with ours, and not before.
It is painful to be obliged to make an excep-
ton in this general statement of what We have
done. But Truth requires us frankly to &C.
knowledge the exception, however Notifying
it may be. 1t is fact then, that in country
where twenty-five millions of people enjoy
larger liberty more security, and more comfort,
than any other twenty-five millions on the face
of the earth, there are also three millions of
people in state of Slavery as abject and
wretched as the sun in all his course has ever
looked upon. We have no objection that for
egners should arraign us for this gross incon
they should, under the influence
of humanity and justice, appeal to us against
THAT they should make it subject Of fire.
luent comment and discussion, for the purpose
Of obliging us to feel more and more deeply our
in the matter; but let them avoid
exaggeration, indiscriminate censure pharisa-
cal dogmatism and be careful not to give
ground for the suspicion that under the veil of
philanthropy they are INDUCING spirit of hos
tility to our country, and hatred of its demo-
cratic institutions For example, what whole
some influence can such writer as the one on
whom We are commenting expect to exert on
the Question of Slavery, when he INDUCES in
hippant remarks on the alleged bad faith of
our Government in relation to Cuba; when he
sncers at the system of electoral autonomy
fostered by the democratic spirit" when he
taunts us with receiving with open arms
every chsrlatan who has the glory of having
plotted against" the monarchical Governments
of Europe; and, finally, when he goes into an
elaborate argument to prove that the Federal
Union should be dissolved And so the Anti
Slavery zeal of this writer becomes revolution
airy. He would advise the People of the Free
States to seek the overthrow of their Federal
Goyernmen.-in other words, to aim at the
emancipation Of the slaves through the cOnvul-
sion Of civil war Now, we can tell this writer
that we are an Abolitionist; but we love our
country and its institutions, we love Peace,
| Order, and Freedom, we love the cause of the
White Man and the Black Man too WELL and
we hate Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Despot-
ism, too intensely, to tolerate for a moment his
abominable counsel. We tell him, moreover,
that such men as he would do well to keep
their peace, until they know more of the tenn
per and condition Of the People whom they at
tempt to instruct. We who are laborng to
disseminate right views on the subject of Sla-
very, and to produce public sentiment which