Clarksville chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1857-1865, 1857-11-13
TRUE AS PREACHING.


The Spirit Of the Times, abiding to the
frequency of crime, says this country will
soon surpass the nations of the Old World,
in the number ofassassins and desperadoes.
This is true, and there is an obvious reason
why it should be SO. The United States,
like all other countries, numbers amongst
its native citizens, a considerable proper.
ton of men whose education, associations,
necessities, and natural proclivities fit
them for the preparation of all manner
of crime. But, unlike all other countries,
we freely receive and foolishly invest with
the rights of citizenship, and unwisely pct
and pamper all the desperadoes of Europe,
whose crimes have driven them from their
native lands, or whose iDclinations lead
them to our shores. Thus in addition to
the number Of native criminals, and those
who are fitted to become such, we are
cursed with the thousands disgorged upon
us from the prisons and poor-houscs of
Europe and Asia. And this evil is in
c%rcasing with fearful rapidly. Vice
spreads, like small pox, by contagion, and
every desperadoe from Europe, by associa
ton, educates some native for his own
career of crime; and by constant importa-
ton and consequent accelerated native
increase, our country has become a Botany
Bay, without its s%alutary regulations, and
political acknowledgements.
Every other Government, save our own,
confines the sacred rights of citizenship
to its native born; and whilst it may
tolerate the alien and bring him under the
shelter of its penal code, he is not permit
ted to exercise those high privileges which
pertain to the government of his adopted
country. The right to govern, is inherent
in the natives of the country, and should
be held as sacred as the right of the child
to inherit the estate Of the father. But
here it has even been, judicially, declared
that the foreigner has a better title to the
rights, of citizenship, Than the native, and
the Congress of the nation has decided
that the alien, in the territories, is equal
to the native citizen in all that pertains to
the administration Of the government
These acts are so many invitations to the
Adventures of Europe to crowd to our
shOres-so many incentives to a corrupt
Judiciary to violate the naturalization
laws-so manyinducements to the vile dema-
gogueto court the foreign herd-so many
examples of corruption to weaken the i'm
pulses of virtue, embolden the viciously
inclined, and harden the criminal.
In a government, like this, where the
people are the source of power, you can
not corrupt that source without infusing
the poison throughout the body polite
Corrupt electors make corrupt officials,
and the two act and react upon each other
with constantly increasing capacity for
evil until the government must die of
moral gangrene, or owe its renewed vitality
to the stringent power of revolution
Our government is, at this moment, in Il
state of rapid decay. The President and
his stipendiaries administer it, not for its
honor and prosperity, but to secure its
succession to another swarm from the
same party hive. A partizan Judiciary
is inadequate to the stern duty of punish
ing the guilty; ignorant and venal juries
step between the law and the criminal, and
n rotten public sentiment, by conniying at
every moral enormity, fosters all that is
evil, and brushes most that is good in mans
nature. Is it any wonder, then, hat every
species Of vice and crime is on the increase!
Who rcbukes their GROWTH Not the poll,
]tician, because he is one of the guilty, and
iattens as they grow, Not the judge, be.
cause he is n p~artizan and dare not offend
the meanest voter, lest he lose his office
or II he make an occasional display of in.
dignant virtue, it is at the expense of som,
lriendless poor devil who has no inhuonc,
to drcad-no friends to offend. These
and other causes, suffice to degrade any
people on earth, and it is a striking proc
of tho purity of our original stock tina
crime is not far more abundant. All tn
criminals the country has prodccd, an,
all it has imported have not yet sunk II
lower in the scale, han some Of tn
European nations; but even this @consola
ton will not long be ours; the causes ar
in active oporotion-continually gatherin.
force, whilst to powers of resistance ar
continually diminishing.
~ Mln EnnInrn nnrnrn r.--.L -