The weekly Placer herald., 1855-06-23

than there would be in attempting to keep
them out. In the latter case, by separating
them from the common life of the community,
making them amenable to laws for which
they are yet not responsible, taxing them for
the support Of a government in which they
are not represented. calling upon them for
purposes Of defense 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 degradation. How lamentable and newt
able the consequences of such a social contrast!
The reader, doubtless, has often seen a
wretched oak by the ay-side, whose trunk is
all gnared 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 verminous
outcasts, who live in novels away from the
cities, and prey on property like rats and wea-
sells; or, again, chance may have led him
through the Jews quarters. the horrid ghettOs
of the old continental towns, where squalor
accompanies ineffable crime; or. finally, his in
quiries may have made him familiar with the
free blacks of his own country, with their
hopeless degradations and mseres! Well. if
these experiences have been his. he has dis
cerned in them the exponents-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 a universal
truth. that whatever thing enjoys but par
tial participation of the life to which it gen
erically belongs, gets. to the extent of the de-
prvation, diseased. 1t is also as universal
truth, that the spread of that disease will,
sooner br later. affect the more living men,
bers Make any class of men, for instance, an
exception in society; set them apart in way
which shall exclude them from the more vital
circulations of that society; place them in re-
lations which shall breed in them a sense OF
alienation and of 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 rul' r, Louis Napoleon or DR.. Francia,
should decree that all the inhabitants Of Ger
tain country, of oblque or defective vision
should be rigidly confined to one of the lower
mechanical occupations: would not all the
squint-eyed and short-sighted people be i'm
m diately degraded in the est mation of the
community? Would not the feeling of that
debasement act as perp tual irr tant to their
mallce-lead them to hate the rest, and to
prey upon them-and so feed an incessant
feud-open or sinister, as the injured party
might be strong or weak-between the stra-
bismic families and those of more legitimate
ocularity? In the same way, but with even
more certainty and virulence of effect. any
legal distinctions among people, founded
upon differences of birth and race. must
generate unpleasant and pernicous rela-
tiQns, which, in the end could only be main
tanned by force. Say to the quarter million
of foreigners who actually arrive on our
shores, that like the metoi' on and perioil OF OF
the Greeks, they may subsist here, but nothing
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
reverently 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 far forth, you con-
vert them, infallibly. into encmies-into, the
worst kind Of enemies, too-because internal
enemies, who have already effected lodgment
in the midst of your citadel. Coming as an
invading army-these thousands-with avOw-
edly unfriendly purposes-they might easily
be driven back by our swords; but coming
here, to settle and be transmitted into a caste
into political lepers and vagabonds - they
would degenerate into moral plague, which
no human weapon could turn away. Pro-
scribed from the most important functions of
the society in which they lived, they would
cherish an interest separate from the general
interest, and, as they grew stronger. form
tn, ,mselves into an organized and irritable
clanship. Their just resentments, or their
increasing arrogance, would sooner or later
provoke some rival faction into conflict: and
then the deep-seated, fatal an imosities of race
and religion. exasperated by the remembrance
of injuries given and taken. would rage over
society like the winds over the sea.
History is full of warnings to us on this
head. No causes were more potent in sun
dering the social ties Of the ancient nations.
tnan the fierce civil wars which grew out of
the narrow policy Of restricting citizenship to
the Indigenous races. No blight has fallen
with more fearful severity upon Europe than
the blight Of class domination, which, for cen
turies, has wasted the energies and virtues,
the happiness and the hopes of the masses.
Nor is there any danger that threatens our
own country nOw-scarcely except ne slavery
more subtitle or formidable than the danger
which turks in those i'll suppressed hatreds of
race and religion, which some persons seem
eager to foment into open quarrel. Already
the future is walking in to-day. The recent
disgraceful exhibitions in this city-the armed
and hostile bands which are known to be or
ganized-the bitter taunts and encounters of
their leaders-the low ordinations Of the
Senate house--the pugilistc melee ending in
death--the instant and universal excitement
the elevation Of bully Of the bar room into
the hero of cause.-The imposing funeral
hon6rs rivaling in pageantry and depth OF