The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1900-12-08

| II otherwise, John Bull would deal
with us as he did then.
One service that war did for Ameri-
ca was to make it more distinctly ma
tional than it had been. jefferson and
his friends had been disposed to make
more of the states than of the nation;
but when they had to fight the nations
battles with foreign power using ev-
cry kind Of state jealousy to weaken
the hands of the national government,
they grew naturally impatient of that
kind of feeling. They talked less
about states withdrawing from the
Union than they had done in 1898 and
1893.
But much more effective to this end
than any war was the spirit the i'm
migrants cherished of simple loyalty
to the nation, without any mixture Of
feeling about the state they lived in.
They had not come across the ocean to
be Pennsylvanians or New Workers,
but to be Americans. They loved the
land which gave them liberty and
abundance, and under whose protec-
ton they were safe from the exactions
and the tyrannies which had crushed
them at home The past of the sew
eral states was little to them, while
they gloried in the fight made for lib
erty and independence by the Ameri-
can people, as it was that conflict
which made them free also. So, as
Prof. Johnston, Of Princeton College,
says, it was the immigrant who ma
tionalized America, by his disregard
for colonial lines of distinction and
feeling, which had no meaning for him.
1t was also the immigrant who wiped
out slavery from America. Coming to
earn his bread by the sweat of his
brow. i'll most cases, he came to the
free states. in which labor was respect
led, and avoided the slave states, in
which it was the badge of servitude
Up to the time when the growth of
anti-slavery feeling swept that abuse
out of the northern states, immigration
showed no preference for the north
At the time when the first census was
taken, the population Of the two class
es of states was almost equal. There
were 1,96S,O4O north of the dividing
line, and 1,961,174 south of it. If the
immigrant had been Indifferent to the
question, there would have been as
many people in the south in 1860 as in
the north. In fact, the census of 1860
showed that the north had population
of q, 1,1S4,3 to the south's 1O,259,O16,
or more than two to one.
10 prevent this northern. increase
through immigration from telling
against slavery, the south enforced the
rule that for every free state admitted
into the Union, a slave state should be
admitted at the same time. This was
possible until just before the war, and
it explains why the south struggled so
hard to make slave state out of Kan
sas. But the admission of Minnesota
and Oregon gave the north majority
in the national Senate, as it had long
had in the House of Representatives;
and the efire-eaters of the south conclud-
ed that secession was the only safe
guard for their peculiar institution"
And when these descendants of the
original Americans Of 1890 tried to
break up the Union, it was the immi-
grants and the descendants of immi-
grants in the national army who
turned the tide against both slavery
and secession.
1t was the immigrant who made
America prosperous. 1t is common
notion, received without much thought
from English economists, that small
population in possession of a country
is better off than a larger would be.
1t is even said that if more people
come, then cultivation must be extend
ed to poorer soils, and as labor will
get less in return there will be steady
decline in the standard of living with
every increase in the number to be
fed. This wooden notion underlies
both the Malthusian theory Of popula-
tion and the Ricardoan theory of rent,
which our Socialists rely on as proof
Of the necessity for destroying social
order, which can for the majority do
nothing better than this. Henry G.
Carey disproved this Malthusian and
Ricardoan nonsense half century
ago. but it is still quoted as economic.
gospel on both sides of the Atlantic.
AS Mr.. Carey showed, the whole
history Of America proves the exact
contrary. The first settlers of a new
country are in danger Of perishing Of
starvation, just because they are few