The weekly Placer herald., 1855-07-21
Governors Foot's Speech.

be I! branching off into an account Of the re-
cent action of the National Council at Phila-
delphia, throwing hot shot at Wilson, Gard
ner and the rest of the abulitionists who
withdrew from that body-comparng them to
the secessionists of the south, and declaring
his eternal hostility and enmity to both fac
tons. He gloried in the action of the major
| ity who sustained the platform that was re-
ported by the committee-ts application to
the compromise measures of 1850. Went on
to prove to his own satisfaction. no doubt,
that the men who sustained those measures
stood where the know-nothings now do.
| He expressed in his peculiar manner his
contempt for the National Administration,
and let out little concentrated venom upon
the Hon. jeff. Davis, his former opponent and
conqueror in the political arena Of Mississippi,
and finally closed his speech by reading and
commenting on the know-nothng PLATFORM
He contended that the Sth article was not hos
tile to Catholics!
If such was the fact why were Catholics
named at all? Why were the Catholic dele
gates from Louisiana refused admission =
Why not have enumerated in the platform
other religious denominations as we'll as the
Catholics! Why single them out from all
others if know-nothingism was not an enemy
to their faith? and why was it that when the
resolution was offered to admit ndtive born
Catholics to membership it was voted down!
| Gov. Foote may think ne cleared up salts
factorily the mist hanging about this question
but he failed. The people of this country are
toe intelligent and well versed in the history
OF the times to be easily gulled by him or
any body else on this point They know full
we'll from the evidences before them that op-
position to the Catholic relig gion has been and
is now one of the great leading features Of the
know-nothing order.
Gov. F., affirmed that the know-nothings
were not opposed to foreigners but merely to
the shipment to this country Of foreign pau
pers and felons Does Henry S. Foote take
the people of the mountains for fools! that he
attempts to palm upon them such an absurd-
w.
the contrary of his assertion. They know the
hue and cry of the order is to change the nat
uralization laws, and to require a residence
of twenty-one years of all foreigners coming
to the country before they could become citi-
zens. The naked proposition of the recep-
ton of foreign paupers and convicts Gov. F.,
knows is opposed by every citizen of the o.
States whether native or naturalized, and he
should know too that the most earnest COM
plants that have been made to our govern
ment against the reception of this obnoxious
class has been made by our foreign popula-
ton.
But Gov. Foote, as we'll a. many Others,
has found that prescription of respectable for
eigners and the Catholic faith will not be en-
dorsed by the people Of our Union. The re-
suit of some Of the more recent elections in
the Atlantic states has convinced the leaders
of the order that they must change their tao
tics-hence, the Governor very insidiously re-
marks, that he and his party are not opposed
to Catholics and "only to the shipmento of pau
pers and felons to this country. How liberal
know -nothingism has become all at once.
As we before remarked, Gov. F., declared
his eternal enmity to abolitionism, and yet the
party for which he has constituted himself
general stumper. has done more to establish
fanatical abolitionism and fasten it upon the
country that any other party has since the
eyistnDcp of Our government the evidence of
which we find we'll summed up in the Times
and Transcript That paper in speaking upon
this point in reference to the speeches of Gov.
Foote in other portions of the State, says:
"In every free State where nothingism
has succeeded, the result has been the eiera-
tion of men directly arrQyed against, in
their essence and vitality, the Compromise
Measures of 1850. Yes, those great mea-
sures, on the passage of which Gov. F., may,
with pride, boast his nstrumentality, and
which then saved the Union, and whose sacred
maintenance in principle and spirit is still
necessary to it, have been spit upon, trampled
in the dust, and in every way revled by the
very men with whom he has publicly associa-
ted himself as alone capable of saving the
Union.
Let us see, then, what Know Nothingism
has done, first, for the U. S. Senate. In Mas
sachusetts it has elected Henry Wilson, an
abOlitiohist of the rankest kind, over the
splendid statesman and accomplished scholar,
Edward Everett. In New York, where it held
the balance of power, number of its men,