Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-10-02
THE INSULT TO THE NATURALIZED
CITIZEN.

When the claim is advanced that
there is virtue in a ticket that promises
special preferment for this or that repre-
sentative of foreign nationality, We are
overcome by unutterable disgust. What
virtue is there, superior to citizenship, in
being of foreign parentage? What kind
of national strength can we hope to de-
Velop from the outgrowth of a sentiment
that gives birth to the demand for degrees
Of Americanism? Why should there be
Irish-Americans, COMMUNICATIONS or
native Americans? There is no prefix
known to language that can ennoble the
word American. 1t is the supremest title
to which any man in this favored land can
or should aspire. When the foreign prefix
is added upon the title Of American citi-
zensbip, it is at the cost of the integrity Of
the latter.
We have faith enough in the mass of the
intelligent foreigners in America to be-
lieve hat this clap-trap and h%ollowness
about Catching their votes with a shib-
boleth that parts its name in the middle
disgusts them. If they are at all fit to
be American citizens, it is because they
realize the immense superiority of this
form OF government over that they have
abandoned. If they took the oath of citi-
zenship sincerely, it is because they were
honest in forswearing allegiance to all for
eign ~potentates and princes. They may
and should feel kindly for the soil of their
birth, and we would be the last to re-
proach the sentiment that clings with
ToGdness to "the old home" But to say to
these men that they classify themselves
according to the nationality they nave
abandoned, is to insult them by the IN
timation that they are here for refuge and
not from conviction that they do not
realize that the government that is based
on the consent of the governed is so infin-
itely superior to all other forms that they
are not to be mentioned in the same
breath.
Where else under the light of Heaven
is there such opportunity for the individ-
val as is here offered to all men? Where
else in all the broad world is it the priv
ilege of every man to rise superior
to birth and circumstance? By what
other nation is woman taken from
the fields, and men from the ranks
of the oonscripts of all nations of Europe
and planted upon the broad platform o
human equality, opportunity and priv
lege? These men of foreign birth are
alive to the fact that here there is no Law
of entail; that ereno title passes by birth
and none is conferred by statute; tina
pr~imogeniture is an unknown quantity il
the distribution Of the rights Of men
that wealth by neither law nor social sys
tenn can be kept in aggregation that tn
State demands no more service of one thai
of another; that it does not harvest tn,
flower of the family to harness it in arm
to awe the governed class into submission
that the one sovereign is self; that the re
sponsibility of the citizen is to himself
and to no other may he answer that Their
is here no limit to aspiration, no curb t
honest ambition.
1t is the rankest hereSy in such a lane
under such a Government, to talk Of class
hcations by ~nationalities. Such doctrin
ought to meet with the rebuke of ever
se~lf-respecting naturalized citizen. Ever
man who traces his immediate lineage b
yond the seas should treat it as a persons
insult when the political demagogue claim
his support because this, that or the othe
ticket has upon it the name OF a candidat
who is of foreign birth. If ever there
evolved an American party az opposed t
f~oreign-born citizens, the disposition {
some foreigners to be hooked on to TIL
sort of barb will more than all else cor
tribute to its birth.
Let every intelligent foreigner remen
Der when the politician says to hin
"You should vote with me because | hay
put one Of your people on my ticket" tn;