Democrat and sentinel. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1853-1866, 1855-06-13
EBENsBURG, JUNE 13, 1866.

doubt of it, as an absolute case of selfdefence.
Now. there is no such overruling necessity
with us as to compel either the exclusion or
the extrusion of our alien residents They
are not such violent Interpolation, as when
grains of sand, to use Coleridge's figure, have
got between the shell and the flesh of the
snail-that they will kill US if we do not put
them out and keep them out A prodigious
hue and cry against them wakes the echoes OF
| the vicinage just now, such as is raised when
pack of hungry foxes stray into the honest
len roost, but the clamor is quite dispropor-
tionate to the occasion. The foxes are by no
means so numerous or predacious as they are
imagined to be, and there is no danger of
them for the future that we need to be trans
fixed with fright, or scamper away in stamp
EIDE of panic terror. The evils which our
past experience Of Naturalization has made
known to us-for there are some-are not
unmanageable evils, requiring sudden and
spasmodic remedy, and menacing disastrous
overthrow unless they are instantly tackled.
The most of them are like the other evils of
our social condition-mere incidents of an in
fantile or transitional state-of life not yet
arrived at full maturity-and will be worked
off in the regular course of things AT any
rate they solicit no head-strong, desperate as
sault only a consciousness, of what and where
our real strength is, and patient-self control
On the other hand, it is a fixed conviction
of ours, in respect to this whole subject OF
aliens, shat there is much less danger in ac-
cepting them, under almost any circumstances,
than there would be in attempting to keep
them out In the latter case, by separating
them from the common life of community
making them amenable to laws for which they
are yet not responsible, taxing them for the
support of government in which they are not
represented, calling upon them for purposes
of defence when they have no real country to
defend we should in effect erect them into
distinct and subordinate class, on which we
had fastened very positive stigma or degra-
dation How lamentable and inevitable the
consequences of such social contrast.
The reader, doubtless, has often seen a
wretched oak by the way-side, whose trunk is
all gnarled and twisted into knots; or he may
have passed through the wards of hospital,
| where beautiful human bodies are eaten with
| ulcers and sores or he may have read of the
Pariahs of India, those vile and yerminous
outcasts, who live in novels away from the cit
les, and prey on property like rats and wea-
sells; or again chance may have led him
through the Jews quarters, the horrid ghet-
tos of the old continental town, where squalor
| accompanies ineffable crime: or, finally, his
| the free blacks of his own country, with their
| hopeless degradations and miseries! Well,
if these experiences have been his, he has
discerned in them the exponments-in some,
the symbols, and in others, the actual effects
of the terrible spirit of exclusion, when it Is
worked out in society. For, it is universal
| truth, that whatever thing enjoys but a partial
participation of the life to which it generally
| belongs, get, to the extent of the deprivation,
diseased 1t is also a universal truth, that
the spread of that disease will, sooner or later,
| affect the more living members. Make any
| class of men, for instance, an exception in
society set them apart in a way which shall
| exclude them from the more vital calculations
of that society; place them in relations which
| shall breed in them a sense of alienation and
degradation at the same time-and they must
become either blotches, or parasites, which
corrupt it or else band of conspirators, more
or less active, making war upon its integrity
| Let us suppose that some ruler, a Louis
Napoleon or DIR. Francia, should decree that
all the inhabitants of certain country, of OBJ
| lique or defective vision, should be rigldly
| confiness to one of the lower mechanical occu-
pations, would not all the squint eyed and
short-sighted people be Immediately degraded
| in the estimation of the rest of the community
Would not the feeling of that debasement act
as an perpetual irritant to their malice-lead
them to hate the rest and to prey upon them
and so feed an incessant fcud-open or sinis-
ter, as the injured party might be strong or
! weak-between straoismic families and those
of a more legitimate ocularity? In the same
way, but with even more certainty and viru-
lence of effect, any legal distinctions among a
people, founded upon differences of birth or
/ race must generate unpleasant and pernicious
| relations, which, In the end, could only be
| maintained by force Say to the quarter mil
lion of foreigners who annually arrive on our
shores, that like the n,etoilcoi and Perioihos of
the Greeks, they may subsist here, but moth
| ing more; that the privileges of the inside of
! the city, suffrage, Office, equality, ambition,
| are closed to them; that they may sport for
our amusement in the arenas, look on at our
| courts, do our severer labors for us, and rev.
/ ercntly admire our greatness but that they
shall have no part nor lot in that political life
| which is the central and distinguishing life OF
the nation, and so forth; you convert them,
i infallibly, into enemies-into the worst kind
| of enemies, too-because internal enemies,
| who have already effected a lodgment in the
midst of your citadel. Coming as an invading
army-these thousands-with ayowed un-
/ friendly purposes-they might easily be driven
! back by our swords but coming here to settle
! and be transmitted into caste-into political
i lepers and vagabonds-they would degenerate
i into mortal plague which no human weapon
could turn away Prescribed from the mos
important functions of the society in which
they lived, they would cherish an interes
separate from the general interest, and, as they
grew stronger, form themselves into an or
eanized and irritable clanship. Their jus