Litchfield enquirer., 1878-08-08

to intelligence throughout the country. A l glance at the last census shows that the tota emancipated and foreign born population ct the nation cannot exceed fourth of the whole Is ignorance so much stronger then than intel ligence that universal suffrage will enable ar l ignorant fourth to dominate over an intelligent three-fourths
 Intelligence need ask no odds of ignorance. The unsuccessful attempts of ignorant Repub | ican majorities, even when backed by Re 1 publican national administration, to keep con- trol of Southern States, shows how unequal such contest must always be. The impor tant political results of foreign immigration te | the North, and of the acknowledgement of the negro at the South, have been due to the fact that the whole weight of the ignorant vote ad mitted has been cast first against one and theI 1 against the other of two existing, almost equal | ly balanced parties, rather than to the intrin- sic importance of that vote. How weak po litical ignorance must always be against aroused and organized intelligence, even in such city of foreigners as New York, the uprising agaihst-the Tweed ring most conclu. svely proves.
 While, therefore, there can be no immedi- ate danger of the failure of government by uni versal suffrage in America, there remains the fear that the unprecedented pressure of native and foreign ignorance upon single generation of citizens is like to have permanent and perhaps fatal influence upon the future of the nation. There can be. no reasonable doubt that the training of American schools and American society will soon remove the re- proach of ignorance from the American voter Will they fit him for the safe and honest exer- else of the franchise? MT. Parkman thinks not
 The village has grown into the populous city, with it's factories and work shops it's acres of tenement houses and thousands and ten thousands of restless workmen, foreigners for the most part, to whom liberty means li- cense, and politics means plunder, to whom the public good is nothing, and their most tri- vial interests everything, who love the country for what they can get out of it and whose ears are open to the promptings of every rascally agitator. .. . -
 It may be doubted whether, as a general rule, the young Irish American is better or safer citizen than his parent from Cork. He can read but he reads nothing but sensation stories and scandalous picture papers, which fill him with preposterous notions and would enfeeble stronger brain than his and debauch a sounder conscience. He is generally less in dustrious than his sire and equally careless of the public good.
 Those who bray loudest for inalienable rights extol the ballot as an education in itself, capable of making good citizens out of the poorest material Under certain conditions there is a measure of truth in this An un- taught and reckless voter, enveloped by honest and rational ones is apt to change greatly for the better; but to this end, it is essential that those whom the ballot is to educate should be segregated and surrounded by healthy inf1u- ences. When extensive districts, and notably large portions of populous cities, are filled by masses of imported ignorance and hereditary ineptitude the whole ferments together till the evil grows insuffcrable. The ballot then edu- cates only to mischief. If the voter has con- science he votes it away. His teacher is a demagogue who plays on his predjudices or his greed and out of bad citizen makes him worse. Witness the municipal corruption of New York, and the mOnstrosities of negro rule in South Carolina. =.
 That is the 'shady" side of the picture. In the country the foreigner naturally appears to much greater advantage than when massed in manufacturing villages or packed into the poorer wards of great city. All over this part of Connecticut, and we believe throughout rural New England, the smaller and rougher farms are going into the hands of emigrants, mostly Irish, who work hard, who practice all the economies that used to be thought peculiar to the rural Yankee, and who finally pay for the farms they buy.
 On our first page will be found a speech de- livered to his college class by one of those young Irish-Americans' of whom Mr. Park man thinks so i'll. That may be an exception al instance. So, also, we firmly believe, is the young native American who is mo better or safer citizen than his parent from Cork"
 Nor are American associations wanting to the foreigner. The man or woman who. comes to this country, single, usually spends several years in farm or domestic service-perhaps as good a schooling in Americanism as they can well have
 We are perfectly well aware that political prosperity docs not necessarily, nor perhaps ordinarily, accompany such a wonderful de- velopment of material prosperity as has result ed from the immigration of millions of foreign CTS in the prime of life. No doubt the social tendencies of the manufacturing village and of the city tenement house are permanently evil But it is unfair to charge upon the mass the faults of the system. A nation which protects it's manufactures by discriminating tariff should not disfranchse its citizens, even of for eign birth, for faults that are due to the very system it protects. Nor do we imagine that dlsfranchisement is any remedy for the disor- ders of the municipality. The political de- moralization of city politics is merely one of many indications of social demoralization which is the real evil that must find some rem edy. Closing the safety-valve will only in crease the danger.
 We believe that most of the evils referred to in the foregoing article are the temporary results of imperfect moral and intellectual de- velopment under aristocratic systems abroad, or under slavery at home, and that American schools and American social influences will in time effect their eradication or at least their modification. Some, indeed, like the evils of city life and of the manufacturing system, will no doubt remain but for their cure we should be sorry to see any reaction to that species of rule which has produced them-a government of property holders. We look to universal suffrage to save America from becoming ser. vile copy of bad foreign original A mate rial development that produces nation of paupers ruled by class of millionaires, is the most undesirable of political deyel- opments. Years ago Macaulay wrote to an American that our system would do very well Tor new country where land is cheap and la- bor dear, but that universal suffrage would surely deVelope into anarchy whenever the time came that the majority of our voters were hir- ed wOrkmen and lahorerS who mipht r;sa h,an