It is but too common a remark of late, that the American character has within a short time been sadly degraded by numerous instances of riot and lawless violence in action, and a dangerous spirit of licentiousness in discussion. . . . If there is nothing intrinsic in our society which is likely to produce so sudden and mysterious an effect, the inquiry is natural, are there not extrinsic causes at work which have operated to disturb the harmonious movements of our system? . . . . The cause is FOREIGN IMMIGRATION. It is impossible in the nature of things that the moral character, and condition of this population, and its immense and alarming increase within a few years, should not have produced a counteracting effect on the benevolent operations of the day. How is it possible that foreign turbulence imported by ship-loads, that riot and ignorance in hundreds of thousands of human priest-controlled machines, should suddenly be thrown into our society, and not produce here turbulence and excess? Can one throw mud into pure water and not disturb its clearness?

Then [in the colonial and revolutionary period] our accessions by immigration were real accessions of strength from the ranks of the learned and the good, from the enlightened mechanic and artisan, and intelligent husbandman [farmer]. Now immigration is the accession of weakness, from the ignorant and the vicious, or the priest-ridden slaves of Ireland and Germany, or the outcast tenants of the poorhouses and prisons of Europe. . . . Then emigration was natural, it was an attraction of affinities, it was an attraction of liberty to liberty. Emigrants were the proscribed [banned] for conscience’s sake and for opinion’s sake, the real lovers of liberty, Europe’s loss, our gain.

Emigrants from Germany, . . . or from elsewhere, coming here, are not to expect favors from the governments. They are to expect, if they become citizens, equal rights with those of the natives of this country. . . . They come to a life of independence, but to a life of labor - and, if they cannot accommodate themselves to the character, moral, political, and physical, of this country, with all its compensating balances of good and evil, the Atlantic is always open to them to return to the land of their nativity and their fathers. To one thing they must make up their minds, or, they will be disappointed in every expectation of happiness as Americans. They must cast off the European skin, never to resume it. They must look forward to their posterity rather than backward to their ancestors; they must be sure that whatever their own feelings may be, those of their children will cling to the prejudices of this country . . . .

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