CHAPTER II. FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN POLITICS.

Mr. Scroggs, who is staying .at one of our crack hotels, brought letters to us from our correspondent in Manchester. He is a very nice person in his way. He has an air of well fed respectability about him, which betokens thrift in trade and good quarters. His face is rosy, rubicund,(inclined to a healthy rosiness; ruddy) and well filled out. His figure is rotund and dignified. He gives you good port and champagne when you dine with him, and does it with an air of authoritative patronage, which, to an American citizen is very edifying. It is true he speaks of “am and heggs” for breakfast; but that is the fault of his education and profession; for Scroggs, although his English guineas, and a large stock of assurance have gained him admission into what is called good society, as a gentleman, in this country, he is nothing but a bagman, when he is at home.

Scroggs’s thorough ignorance of all liberal knowledge, his John Bull prejudices, and his admirable self-conceit render him an entertaining subject. So we sometimes amuse ourself by putting questions to him and receiving very profound answers.

Yesterday, at the dinner table, he was advocating the claims of one of his countrymen to some petty office in the custom-house.

“Pray, Scroggs,” said we, “what American citizen was ever permitted to hold office in England?”

“I ave eard say,” said Scroggs, “that Lord Lyndhurst, the chancellor, was born in Boston.”

“True,” we replied, “but he was not an American citizen. He was born a British subject; and his father, an old Tory, took him over to England before the Revolution. What other American holds office in England?”

“I never eard of hany hother,” said Scroggs.

“Well, in what other country of Europe are Americans permitted to hold office and exercise political power? Where can they vote in an election of any kind? Not in France, where even your Lord Brougham found it impossible to become a citizen. Not in Austria, -where Americans are imprisoned on suspicion of entertaining heretical opinions in politics. Not in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, or Spain. – In Russia and Turkey, some ingenious and talented persons from this country have received situations of a semi-official character, on account of some special knowledge, and in cases where their services could not well be dispensed with. But in despotic countries, like Russia and Turkey, all under the sovereign are necessarily slaves, in the political ,sense of the word. No offices exist in those countries which are of so,independent a character, even, as that which your friend solicits in our custom- house. The fact- is, Scroggs, that in this instance, as well as in all others, where we Americans deal with Europe and European interests, the reciprocity is “all on one side.”

“I thought,” said Scroggs, “that it was a game of give and take.”

“Precisely so,” we replied, “only the giving is all On our side, and the taking all on yours. When Englishmen, Irishmen, Dutchmen, Germans, and Spaniards, Portuguese, and Italians ask for offices here, we give them. But if an American could by any possibility make such an ass of himself as to ask for an office any where in Europe, and especially in England, Scotland, or Ireland, he would be laughed at, and scouted for his unparalleled impudence and presumption. ‘Give office to a foreigner, and above all to an American,’ a turtle-fed alderman of London would exclaim,’ the thing is preposterous.’ And yet the persons holding office in the United States, at this moment, who were born in Great Britain or Ireland, are counted by thousands. I tell you, Scroggs, the reciprocity is all on one side.”

“But then they become citizens,” pleaded Scroggs.

“But that don’t make them Americans, by a long shot,” we answered; “there ought to be equal privileges on both sides. While an American is utterly shut out and debarred from holding office in Europe, Europeans should be dealt with in the same manner here. It is not fair to play at give and take, with the giving all on our side and the taking all on yours.”

Here Scrogg’s attention was called off by some one who wished to look at his pattern-books of British calicoes made in imitation of American ones, and intended to cut out the fabrics of Lowell, in the American market; and so our conference ended.

But, leaving Scroggs to his pattern-books and his customers, let us consider for a few momenta the propriety of defending ourselves from the immense foreign influence which is aiming to control, and even to a certain extent is at this moment actually controlling the destinies of the country.

Is it not a fact that, for the last twenty five years, candidates for office have been constantly and openly bidding for the foreign vote? Even at the last election, did we not have to witness the humiliating spectacle of a man rendered illustrious by his public services, stumping about the country and currying favor with Irishmen and Germans, and endeavoring to gain the suffrage’s, which had already been sold by the Jesuits to his opponent, to be subsequently paid for by post office appointments? Do not foreign ruffians bully and attack with force and arms American born citizens at the polls, at every election? Are not these services to political aspirants paid for by appointments in custom houses and post offices? What would be thought of an American opening his mouth to speak, much less doubling his fist to strike, at an election in England, Scotland, or Ireland? He would be immolated on the spot; and the coroner’s verdict would be “sarved him right.” The truth is that nations ought to govern themselves, without foreign influence being permitted for one moment to interfere.

Many of our leading statesmen have recently declared that no foreigner should be naturalized till he has resided in this country twenty one years. We might cite some very high political authorities on this point. But we care for no man’s authority in so plain a case. The thing is self-evident. Americans should rule America; and the voters are really the rulers. None but a native born American would ever have been allowed to vote, if justice had been done, from the beginning. The franchise should have been held sacred. But the laws of the land should be respected. Let those vote, whose vote is already legalized. But when we come to revise the naturalization laws, a piece of public service which will soon have to be performed, let us make thorough work of it, and in future grant the privilege of voting to no man who was not born on the American soil. We have bad enough of artificial naturalizing. In all future time, let nature do the naturalizing herself. Then there will be no mistake, and no false swearing. Foreigners will cease to perjure themselves in order to acquire the privilege of fighting at the polls, and the interests of peace and good morals will be promoted.

But we have a great deal of work to perform in the mean time. It is necessary to put an end at once and for ever to the degrading practice of candidates for office bidding for the foreign vote. Let every native born American do his duty to his country and himself; and the foreign vote will no longer be worth bidding for. Let no American born citizen vote for a foreigner or for a man who will appoint foreigners to office, and the thing is done. We shall thus rid ourselves of the greatest evil with which this country was ever cursed.

There has been a great deal of talk about liberality towards foreign nations. But what foreign nation has ever shown any liberality towards us? Why should we import voters, when we are permitted to export none? They want a free trade in voters corresponding with their free trade in other things, giving to them all the advantage and to us none whatever. That is the European theory of free trade with the United States.

We are often reminded of the great military services of foreigners in our. armies in former times, and we are charged with ingratitude in wishing to withhold the franchise from those who have defended the soil. But, with some brilliant exceptions, such as La Fayette, for example, these were mercenary soldiers, who, if they received their pay, received all which they bargained for, and have no right to demand any more. Will the foreign legion whom the British government are now about to hire to fight against the Russians, ever become British subjects and voters? The British understand their duty and their interests too well to permit any such exercise of gratitude. It is only Americans who are expected to reward foreign hired soldiers, by making them citizens and voters.

To become an American citizen and a voter, a man should have been born and educated among us. He should be an American indeed. He will then have some chance of understanding the nature of our institutions, and the working of our system. He will have no foreign prejudices to get rid of. He will have no foreign preferences to forget. He will have no foreign ignorance to be enlightened.

Our present system of making American citizens is a perpetual source of.difficulty, vexation, and expense. A worthless fellow, named Koszta, comes to this country, and declares his intention to become an American citizen. This he does in order to protect himself against molestation while carrying on political intrigues abroad. Returning, to carry out his original intention, he is seized by the Austrians, who choose to govern themselves in their own way, without the intervention of pseudo-American citizens. An American officer reclaims him. The two governments are embroiled. The American secretary of state is made to waste much of his valuable time in writing a long defence. The American congress wastes more time and squanders many thousand dollars of the people’s money in debating about this trumpery affair — and all this because our naturalization laws require reforming. If these laws were such as they ought to be, another “Koszta affair” would be impossible. But as the law now stands, the success of this adventurer will probably be the prelude to many more of the same sort. The present naturalization laws place our government entirely at the mercy of any foreign adventurer who chooses to make them the instrument for r embroiling the country with foreign powers. They should be forthwith reformed.

The following able summary of the baneful effects of foreign influence is extracted from a recent inaugural address of Governor Casey, of Delaware.

“The issue which has been so harshly forced from abroad upon our people, has no features in common with our past political controversies, the mere domestic contests which have recognized a generous and fraternal difference of opinion among those who agree in a united devotion to our native land. The present is a resistance to invaders who unite foreign minds and hearts in allegiance to a foreign Prince and Pontiff, and standing between the American parties, have dictated their own terms, and asserted their own superiority. Under these influences, the ballot-box has been corrupted by their frauds, or subjected to their violence; American politics have been stained with vices foreign to the American character; and a large portion of our most virtuous citizens have revolted, in disgust, from the exercise of privileges so shared and so degraded; and the highest places of the Republic have been abandoned to foreigners or their flatterers, some of whom have dared to assert the alleged prerogative of a foreign Pontiff to free American citizens from their allegiance to the government of their country. In our foreign policy the settled principles of American statesmanship are well nigh lost sight of; foreigners have been selected to represent the country at the principal courts of Europe; and in the gratification of feelings, unshared by our people, they have made the American name a reproach throughout a large part of the civilized world. American principles and policy, feeling and interests, have been merged in their alien opposites; and in the press and on the platform, foreign influences have overswayed the control and directed the action of parties and the selection of candidates. The result of this conspiracy against the original and native American liberty, substantially, though not nominally, is devoted to foreign interests and preferring persons of foreign birth. If its recognized advocates have as yet failed to proclaim allegiance to a foreign monarch, they have made in most of the States efforts to overthrow the American system of public instruction; and have sought to exclude the Bible from the American schools; and have freely denounced, the most cherished principles of American religious liberty; and all this, it should be remembered, has sprung from’ those to whom all that our fathers have won and that is dear to us, was freely offered; all this was foreign in its origin, authors and acts — all this was unprovoked, wanton, long patiently endured; endured till foreign demagogues claimed our country as their own, and made our rights and our safety the counters with which they played the game of foreign politics.”

After noticing the noble resistance of Delaware to this foreign influence, as evinced in the late election, Governor Casey thus enumerates the duties imposed on American citizens in relation to foreign influence:

“That triumph, should it prove to be national, will impose many and majestic duties. The first will be to surround, as with a wall of fire, which no pollution can invade, that Holy of Holies, the ballot-box; and closely succeeding will rise the duty of regulating immigration; of closing the avenues which have communicated with the prisons and lazar-houses of Europe; of defeating the ungenerous policy by which foreign princes force us to receive the moral abominations which their over-cloyed country vomits forth, constraining us to support their paupers, and to expose the property and lives of our people to the ruffian skill and desperation of their transported felons. As a tax and a peril the heaviest and worst; as a wanton wrong and outrage, it should be redressed in the first hours of realized national American victory.

“But the more pervading and vital triumph of the second American revolution, will be those which will establish, as the settled policy foreign and domestic of the nation, the saving principle of American Independence, as applied, not only to the right of suffrage, but to the privileges, sacred and inestimable, of our honest and hard-handed home labor. The policy by which our country has been, in its trade, its currency, its varied industrial pursuits, agricultural, mechanical, and otherwise, and in its social habits of expenditure and luxury, thrust into and made a part of Europe, is a treason against American honor and American interests. It is a repudiation of all the peculiar advantages bestowed, by Providence, in requital of the virtues of our fathers, upon our young and then unburdened country. We have, to gratify the schemes of politicians, and to glut the greediness of money Changers, invited and drawn upon our country a common and almost an equal share of the evils which attend, as their parasite and clinging curses, the wasting vices and crimes of Europe. Our true hearted independence, real happiness, and secure policy are to be realized only by fostering our own American homes — their industry, mutual relations and mutual self-reliance. In regard to every political virtue and hope, to all of pride and confidence associated with that American liberty which — as the earthquake shakes and the tempest overshadows all else of the civilized world — grows brighter and dearer to us, it is apparent that the time has arrived when our own country must separate her policy from the intrigues and machinations of Europe, from the strategy and corruption by which European councils and interests boastfully betrayed the independence of American industry and made our land tributary, as it now unhappily is, to England and France; forced upon us, with their luxuries, their vices: and added to their usurpation the heavy imposition of a monstrous and perpetual debt — a debt shared by every American; a debt which drains our country of its specie, and which subjects it, throughout every fibre of its giant frame, to the agony of such a financial convulsion as that which afflicts us. Vain will be the patriotic throbbings of the great American heart, and vain the vigor of the American arm to re-achieve American Independence, until our land shall have been made independent in that from which all power has its source — her industry.

“Then and not till then, will she cease to be a European colony; then will she be the America of our fathers — truly independent — rich in her own resources — secure in her own strength, and happy in her own freedom. The crimes and oppressions, the wrongs and wars of Europe may terrify and torture their own world, but not a ripple of the storm will break upon our shores. Till that consummation shall have been effected, our duty will be unfulfilled, and our triumph — however glorious — incomplete, the oracles of our American patriarchs and prophets will remain empty, and the real mission, holy, calm, and beneficent of our American destiny unachieved.

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