Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-06-01
THE RIGHT TO COME.

Getting here first gives US no exclusive
right to this new world, said Decoration
Day orator in this city Sunday. And the
same speaker also said d" the pilgrims of
the nineteenth century have as good a
right to come, if they behave themselves,
IS had those of the seventeenth" The
doctrine is not true. The right" to come
here does not exist in any alien; the
pririlege is given to all, under such restric-
tons as those who make and maintain the
Government prescribe. The second sent
ence we quote contradicts the idea the
speaker advances. If they behave them
selves is condition attached to the
orators doctrine of the "right" to come
here. Who is to determine what good
behavior is? Obviously the people who
battled for the land won its independence
and maintain the Government that rules
over it. 1t follows that this same people
have a right to attach condition pre-
cedent 10 the privilege of immigration to
determine who are likely to behave them
selves. There can exist no right, except
there it moral or legal power for its en-
forcement If the pilgrims" of the
nineteenth century possess the right to
come, then we have no right to make their
coming dependent upon any condition
whatever If the foreigner has any kind
of right to come, it springs from some
thing we have granted, since no one can
establish that any right to immigrate is
inherent in those owing allegiance to other
Governments than ours. This so-called
fright" therefore, declines into mere
privilege, and is and can be nothing more
Being a privilege, it is subject at all times
to any conditions the grantor may append,
or to absolute revocation We consider
this doctrine of free asylum as not only
obnoxious to the progressive spirit of the
age, but as dangerous to the very idea of
and spirit Of patriotism. What abiding
patriotism can an American citizen have
if he knows that his heritage may be
shared with him by whomsoever will and
possibly to its reformation and his prac-
teal exclusion. Very truly did the
speaker draw the line Of distinction be-
tween love of the location we call home,
ana the broader, higher and more endur-
ing devotion to the idea" and the form
of government; attachment to the principle
involved in given system of government
1t is very true, then, as he stated, that
patriotism can catch and burn in the
bosom Of a man of foreign birth" But we
submit IL does not follow of necessity chat
this inspiration. of All idea carries with it,
and invests the mau with the right" to
enter into our household and put his hand
into our salt dish. Hospitality may grant
the privilege and conviction of duty to
self may refuse its extension. Americans
are not those born to the soil exclusively,
but those also adopted into the fold. This
very act of adoption presupposes the right
OF refusal, and ON that theory the people
BY DEGREES of law have set up metes and
bounds 70 the system of adoption, and by
equal right may, and now actually do,
prescribe the limit of the privilege to en-
ter the land at all We had not expected
in the flood of intelligence ON this subject
N this day, to hear from any pulpit or
rostrum outside the severe lines of
New England, the enumeration of such
hcresy as this-that America Is at the
mercy Of whomsocyer may come, since
they have as much right to enter as did
those who carved out of wilderness this
fair land, and out of despotism this system
ofself-goyernment. Set up that doctrine and
its logical sequence will make this Repub-
lie inside the next two decades a Botany
Bay and hospital for political incurables
among whom those possessed of the Ameri-
can idea cannot dwell. Very true, the
bars have long been down. but the Ameri-
can people are about to put them up and
set loyal guards at the stile.