insidious wiles against which he warns us: and the lesson taught
by his words was founded on his own experience. To us they
seem like the words of prophecy which in our day have been
fulfilled.

His apprehensions were aroused by the insidious wiles of a
few emissaries, who strove to poison the minds of our people
with principles foreign to our government; and to inspire them
with hatred arising, not from injuries to American interests, but
from sympathies for a foreign nation.               

The disseminators of these prejudices in his time, were few:
unimportant in number or influence, sometimes openly avowing
their intentions, but not yet daring enough to claim the right,
as the representatives of a foreign interest, to control the policy
of the nation.                               

But we, in our day, behold the whole country overflowed by a
constantly rising tide of foreign immigration, until it now threat-
ens to deluge and efface the ancient landmarks of the republic:
to change the national character, and to originate methods of
government inconsistent with the perpetuation, of our free in-
stitutions.                                                                          

Our native population is industrious, enterprising and pros-
perous: yet their industry is burthened and their accumulations
eaten up by the support of foreign paupers, annually cast on our
shores: and the comforts and conveniences of life, which energy
and thrift secure, are abridged to our industrious mechanics and
laboring classes. These are compelled to share their gains, as
well as their political rights, with paupers and criminals, whom
corrupt and selfish rulers have allowed to come amongst us.

Nor do they only ruinously compete with our native industry,
and devour its substance. We have seen this swarm of immi-
grants everywhere elevated, in five short years, to the power and
dignity of citizenship: without regard to character or fitness, and
ignorant of the habits, laws and language of their new home.
We have seen them hunted up on the eve of an election, whose
result they are to determine, with all their principles of monarchy
or anarchy about them, as foreign in heart, as if they had never
reached our soil; and openly offering their votes and influence to
those who will recognize their claims, as the foreign voting popu-
lation, to a share in the division of office.

It would be unjust, nor do I design to include in this descrip-
tion, all who have sought our shores.                       
There are some, and they are not a few, who have from proper
motives found a home amongst us; and who have not abused nor
sold the privileges of their citizenship. There are many of those
amongst us, of foreign birth, who have by a long life of industry
and good order, shown their fitness for these privileges: and it is
worthy of observation, that this very class are among the most,
decided in their opinions, as to the necessity for some check and
restraint upon this indiscriminate naturalization.

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