in the interior and western portions of our Union, vacant and un-
occupied, which it has been and is the dictate of sound govern-
mental policy, as well as the evident design of Providence, should
be filled up with an industrious, and civilized, [and christianized
population of freemen, as rapidly and as soon as that end can be
produced by easy and regular means, a part, and a large part of
which means, was and is, to free those lands from the occupation
and inroads of savage tribes,—to survey them and offer them for
sale and use, freely to all, at very low prices. This, together
with our happy system of laws and benignant form of govern-
ment, offered strong temptations to the better, if not the best,
classes of European peasantry, the industrious and enterprising,
to emigrate to this country, and fix their future, homes and the
homes of their posterity upon those lands, where they could not
only with ease obtain abundance and independence, but also be-
come freemen.

Thus impelled, the tide of emigration set strongly upon our
Shores. Thousands, and tens of thousands, and hundreds of
thousands came, and are coming every year, and wending their
way to those regions. They brought along with them, it is true,
a portion of those dregs of the worthlessness, vice and crime,
which exist more or less in all communities. These last gene-
rally faltered on the way, and were dropped, or loitered in the
Atlantic cities, or wandered about within a few hundred miles of
the Atlantic coast—they were injurious and offensive, and by
them, (the excrementitious portion,) the whole body of emigrants
were to a great extent judged; hence one cause of the excite-
ment against foreigners.

But the great mass of emigrants, tarrying not at all, swept on
westward—there selecting homes and settling down promiscu-
ously and in common with the native emigrants, who, more nu-
merous by far, and flowing with an equally steady current in the
same direction, rapidly filled up large portions of those regions.
Wildernesses became peopled districts—wastes were converted
into cultivated fields, and communities and new states were
formed. Community of interests, feeling and condition, produced
fellowship in feeling, and wishes between natives and emigrants
from afar. As freemen, they were to select and elect their own
political functionaries; and as they became States, they were also
to elect their own immediate agents and representatives in the
Federal Government, and to participate in the elections of those
who were to be the common functionaries of all the States.

They had and have the right within themselves, each State for
itself, to prescribe and fix the qualifications of voters—to say by
law who may and who may not exercise the right of voting at
elections. This right is exclusive in each State, and guaranteed

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