only by permission of the State, and subject to such limitations and conditions as its charter specifies. Not only are the persons employed on the road, as well as the road itself, removed thus summarily from the control of its creator, the State, but it is operated by the court within the State limits by its own employés whether the State consents or not. The State creates a corporation which is permitted to exist and do business on certain specified conditions. The United States courts seize and operate it without consent of its master and absolutely in violation of the conditions and limitations under which the State consented to allow it to live at all. Again, the roads thus possessed and operated by the United States courts, together with the armies of employés working on them, occupy a relation to the criminal law and the police administration of the State altogether different from that held by other people and property in the State. In case of riot among railroad employés or others, in any way affecting the safety or convenience of the railroad, the United States Marshal promptly calls for a force of the regular army and the War Department may and does so order without the request or consent of the State Legislature or the Governor, and so a portion of the State, of its citizens, and of their property are completely removed from the jurisdiction of the State, and an armed police force introduced to apply other rules and measures than those of the State, and directed by other authority, to keep the peace among its citizens. This procedure makes the idea of States rights and local self-government somewhat hazy. No doubt plenty of decisions based on good law can be produced to justify this and like proceedings. It is in human nature that any organization of men possessed of power over their fellow men will seek by honorable means to increase and expand it, and the power to interpret the law creating it is an immense temptation to the judges, even if only to magnify the dignity and influence of the court itself. If there be really danger that the authority of the State governments may be too much restricted for the free and unobstructed exercise of their legitimate powers under the Constitution of the United States (the benefit of which was so deeply felt and admitted during the war), it might be respectfully suggested to the United States courts to try, for a time, the opposite method of determining the extent and character of their jurisdiction; that is, that they study the law for the purpose of

determining how little, rather than how much, they can absorb of the power and authority of the State courts, and the rightful authority of the State, without neglect of their own obligations.

This reverse process of examining and interpreting the law would at once make clear how wide apart would be the results reached by the two methods, and both reached by equally sound decisions; and thus, perhaps, enable the courts to arrive at a conclusion equally removed from both extremes, and, perhaps, also, more conducive to the general welfare and content.

II.

Another question equally important and perhaps more difficult to solve, was left to us by the war and by the events which followed. That question is, how we can absorb and assimilate into our social and political body the population both of foreign nationalities and of distinct races among ourselves? The former have always, the latter only recently, been endowed with the rights of citizenship, but neither of them prepared, by knowledge and experience, to discharge such obligations intelligently. It is a well-known fact that all the peoples who have founded and consolidated great empires, since history began, have possessed one peculiar faculty, the faculty of assimilating populations, of digesting, as it were, the peoples they acquired by conquest or treaty, and of turning into citizens like themselves the almost infinite variations of mankind which in any manner fell under their influence. This peculiar power can be traced clearly in the history of all the great peoples from the beginning. Of the two peoples of the civilized world of to-day who possess it, we are one, and so long as it remains unimpaired and in full force we may look to a future of prosperity and progress. When it ceases to act, we may understand without fear of mistake that we have reached the zenith of our fortunes and must begin to contemplate our certain decline. Until lately we have detected no signs of weakness or decay. We have welcomed to our shores all strangers, from whatever country or in whatever numbers they chose to come, and we have conferred upon them, to such an extent, the rights and privileges we ourselves possess, that absolutely the result of popular elections in many of our Western States is determined often by the votes of foreign immigrants not citizens of the United States; that is, of foreigners who have only declared their intention to become

citizens, and actually thereby, by the laws of these States, do become voters after a residence not one-fifth so long as the United States requires for their naturalization as citizens of this country. So far we have been able to assimilate them, and to make, out of the native of every country in the civilized world, an American in idea and in feeling.

All have adapted themselves (or did so before the war) to the conditions around them without much effort, and it is not too much to say that many of our best and most valuable citizens have come to us, in times not remote, from countries alien to us in blood, in language, and in institutions. Such were the conditions prior to the Civil War.

Unfortunately, however, since the war, and attracted by its successful issue, European immigrants have poured themselves upon us in far greater numbers, but of far less respectability and worth, than any of their predecessors. All varieties of the criminal, and the political and social agitator, and the lowest creatures of poverty and ignorance have been encouraged and helped by their own governments to precipitate themselves into our midst, reluctant as we have been to accept them. The agitators, whether Socialists, Anarchists, Nihilists, or whatever they call themselves, have promptly thrust themselves to the front: they infest every public meeting and enliven its proceedings by their presence and their oratory. It is quite manifest by the riotous and, at times, murderous transactions, which have found, so far, their extremest development at Chicago, that our old system of assimilation cannot be applied to such creatures as these. If we desire to appropriate and digest them, we must devise some newer and speedier method of doing so than the old methods that have sufficed in the past. The constantly increasing hordes of such people who are invading us every day, without an attempt on our part to resist, or even to discriminate among them, make it quite apparent that we have no time to lose if we would stay evils which threaten the overthrow, or, at least, the demoralization of our social and political organization.

There is no doubt, I think, that nine-tenths of our fellowcitizens of foreign birth who have been some time domiciled in this country view with even greater anxiety (because they better know the dangers than we do) this constantly increasing influx of political and social outlaws and of hopeless paupers, and would gladly

concur in any measures to restrain if not wholly to arrest it. The first sentiment we must get rid of (and it will be hard, remembering how we have flaunted it in the face of mankind so long) is that "America is the asylum of the oppressed of all nations," unless we couple it with what is much more a truism, "and also the refuge of the scoundrels and paupers of Europe." Late events in various parts of the country make it apparent that we must call a halt in this unjustifiable and most impolitic invitation to utterly ignorant or destitute foreigners, to sit down, unwashed and unshorn, to our banquet of liberty and self-government, at which they immediately assume the foremost position and announce and respond to every sentiment.

III.

More especially should we cease to overload our political stomach with this indigestible stuff until we have digested or in some way disposed of the great mass of ignorant people of a distinct race whom we already have in our midst, and whom the outcome of the war has left in such new and perplexing relations to us. As we ourselves brought these poor people or their ancestors to this country against their wish, and have placed them in such unfamiliar and irritating connections with their old neighbors, we surely owe to them such effort to settle them among us as citizens, and to make more satisfactory their status among the people around them, as our own action toward them imposes on us. Certainly, this duty is far higher and more binding upon us than the obligations of hospitality to such crowds of emigrants as are invading us from Europe. It happened, unfortunately, no doubt, that this great increase of emigration to this country began about the time we so suddenly endowed four millions of colored people with all the rights of citizenship. Certainly, it made the tax upon our powers of digestion greater than any wise statesmen should have consented to impose, but it has been done, and now we must decide whether our duty, as well as our direct interest, does not demand that we provide first for those we have created citizens

from among our own population, if, indeed, any choice is left us. The negroes are here, and by our own act endowed by law with all the rights we ourselves possess, though also by our own act they had been unfitted for self-gov

ernment by centuries of slavery and enforced ignorance. Extraordinary circumstances, and what seemed imperative necessity, forced us to bestow on them the rights of citizenship, and common justice to them, as well as our own direct interest, demands that we put forth every effort to fit them for the duties we have imposed upon them. It is a great task in itself, only just begun, and of doubtful issue still, and, at times, of grievous discouragement. There are portions of this continent we live on and some of the islands of the sea which, no doubt, it would be better for us and for mankind that we should possess, and were they without population, or with such a population as ours, it would be well, perhaps to acquire them, but certainly not till we have arrested or greatly limited the dangerous and troublesome hordes of emigrants from abroad, and placed in a far more satisfactory condition the large number of new citizens so recently added to our population in the Southern States. If we accomplish this task, we can approach the acquisition of new regions and the assimilation of additional foreign elements with some assurance of success. If we fail, we shall be confronted with difficulties greater than any we have yet overcome. Actual necessity demands that we put a stop to any addition to our burden by immigration from abroad, at least until we have made far more satisfactory disposition of what we have.

IV.

There is another singular result developed by the war, which may have such wide-spread influence on the country that, it appears to me, it should be carefully studied, and its significance (if it have any) be clearly shown. I state it with much diffidence, and only because it can be easily verified, and because it involves questions in which we are alike interested in all parts of the country. I disclaim any purpose whatever, other than an honest wish to seek and examine into all that our history has offered us which appears to deserve serious consideration.

Because a truth may not be agreeable to hear, it is hardly the part of wisdom in a clear-sighted, intelligent people to ignore it or put it aside, or even to have any feeling concerning it, except the wish to remedy what is evil and perpetuate what is good.

This singular fact was presented for our consideration at the conclusion of our Civil War. We had passed through four years of a great and bloody war; a convulsion which upheaved the