The Daily Nashville true Whig. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1851-1855, 1855-09-20
THURSDAY MORNING, SEPT. go.
Americanism Nothing New.

The American party, says the New York
Express, presents no novelties In Its creed to
the Republican The Federal Constitution,
made ia 1877, and signed Geo. Washington"
is Native American Document all over.
Even the Foreigners" that helped to make
that instrument, and that fought shoulder to
shoulder with our fathers, from 1776 to 1888,
had the sense and judgment, to see,-that the
Executive Branch of the Government, that is
one third OF it, as a Legislative Branch, with
the power of executing the Laws besides, must
be "native," and they insisted upon it.
They gave that native" Executive the pow
er of originating and making Treaties, end
they put in his hands exclusively the Army
and Navy of the United States,-with the
militia of the several States, when called into
action by the United States. The presiding
officer of tie Senate must be "native too,
that presiding officer, who presides over
that branch of the government, which ratifes
treaties, -impesches Judges, and makes all
combinations of Office, and thus holds in
directly all patronage and Federal power.
Onr Fathers, too, gave Congress the power
to make uniform naturalization laws, "-and
60 took from the States to give to the Federal
Power, the right of making, or not making,
citizens of Foreigners at all. Upon the quail
fication of Senators, and Representatives in
Congress, our Fathers also imposed certain
"native " elements, which 60 great ways to
keep authority in American hands. What is
worthy of note, foreigners themselves, in 1877,
all saw the justice OF, and the necessity of,
these restrictions. Such foreigners as Albert
Gallatin, Switzer-man, cheerfully concurred
in them, though they might cut him off from
being President or Vice-PresdeEt.
Now, if the children of the Constitution in
1855 carry out the principles engrafted upon
the Federal Constitution in 1887, they present
nothing new, though there is a little more
danger of Foreign influence in 1855, with half
q million of foreign immigrants coming here
annually, than there was in 17S7-with only
some twenty or thirty thousand.
So then tho American Party is no ISM"
no new hght-no novelty-no oddity-but
the old organization of Geo. Washington, AL
exander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, &c, of
1877. 1t re-fxes the public eye upon the polar
star of the Federal Constitution. 1t is the
restoration Of an old land mark only. Indeed,
the principle involved in it is as old as the
External hills of Rome, "-and the outcry for
it is of the eras of Demosthenes and Cicero.
As Athens was swamped by the Macedonian
phalanxes, and the Asatic Greeks-agaiust all
of which Demosthenes made the streets OF
Athens ring-as Rome was swamped by Goth
ic and Vandal legions-so America, under an
emigration of half a million of foreigners a
year, is in danger of losing its nationality, its
specialize, its idyosyncracy. Americans then
preach no new principle-inculcate no new
creed. Their lessons are twenty centuries old
older than the Pyramids of Egypt-and all
history is red with beacons of perilons fore
warning-where there is disregard of them.
If intelligent foreigners among us now in
1856, would only initiate the spirit OF the for
eigners here in 1887, we should have no
trouble with any of them. To save their
adopted land, they must see, that 1t must not
be thrown open TO the scum OF all Europe
and they must bear and forbear, for the public
good-as did the Alexander Hamitons and
the Albert Gallatins, the foreign-born men OF
our Revolutionary era. The Ballot Box-a
partnership in Government, cannot be safely
opened TO half million strangers year; for
government is not an instinct, but science, a
training, an education, an experience, heri-
tage of hereditary presidents, to be studied,
and TO be obeyed. We take Fl years before
we allow our own children to vote-and we
expect them at that age, not only TO know our
own language but to know by tradition, if not
in theory and in practice, all the maxims and
guides of our fathers, and all the ten thousand
of unwritten laws and inaxims, which are the
bases upon which stand, not alone our State
and Federal Constitutions, but the whole
fabric of the Republic. True, studious, in
telligent foreigner, possibly, may learn all
these in q couple of years, but for one thus
earning, tens of thousands never learn at all.
But what would that one intelligence thus
gain by his vote, if that vote be offset by the
whole masses of ignorance and passionR Think
of this, one and all.