Samuel F. B. Morse: The Dangers of Foreign Immigration, 1835; Annals of America, Vol. 6; p. 158:
“The necessity of a change in the naturalization laws is at the point to which it is indispensable to the safety of the country that the attention of Americans should at this moment be concentrated. It is a national question, not only separate from but superior to all others. All other questions which divide the nation are peculiarly of a domestic character; they relate to matters between American and American. Whether the bank system is or is not adverse to out democratic institutions; whether internal improvement is constitutionally entrusted to the management of the general government or reserved to the states respectively; whether monopolies of any kind are just or unjust; whether the high offices of the nation are safest administered by this or that citizen; all these questions are of a domestic character, to be settled between ourselves, in the just democratic mode, by majority, by the prevailing voice of the American people declared through a legitimate ballot box.
The question whether foreigners shall or shall not be admitted to America is a fundamental question: it affects the very foundation of our institutions, it bears directly and vitally on the principle of the ballot itself, that principle which decides the gravest question of policy among Americans, which can decide the very existence of the government or can change its form at any moment. Surely this vital principle is protected from injury? To secure this principle, every means which a people in securing their liberties could devise was doubtless gathered about for its protection?
It is not guarded! Be astonished at this, Americans! How is it possible that so vital a point as the ballot box was not constitutionally surrounded with double, nay, treble guards? How is it that this heart of democracy was left so exposed that the murderous eyes of despots reach out their hands and to stab it?
How is it that none of our “sagacious” statesmen foresaw this danger to the republic through the unprotected ballot box? It was foreseen. It did not escape the prophetic eye of Jefferson. He foresaw, and from the beginning foretold the evil, and uttered his warning voice. Mr. Jefferson denounced the encouragement of emigration. Truth and Justice are superior to all men. I advocate Jefferson’s opinions, not because they are Jefferson’s, but because his opinions are in accordance with Truth and sound policy.
In our national infancy we needed the strength of numbers. Powerful nations, to whom we were accessible by fleets, and subsequently also by armies, threatened us. Our land had been the theater of contests between French and English, and Spanish armies for more than a century. Our numbers were so few and so scattered that as a people we could not unite to repel aggression. The War of Independence, too, had wasted us. We wanted numerical strength; we felt our weakness in numbers. Safety, then, national safety, was the motive which urged us to use every effort to increase our population, and to induce foreign immigration.
We benefited from the immigrants and we in return could bestow on them a gift beyond price by simply making them citizens. Manifest as this advantage seemed in the increase of our numerical strength, Mr. Jefferson looked beyond the advantage of the moment and saw the distant evil.
“I beg leave,” says Mr. Jefferson, “to propose a doubt. The present desire of America is to produce rapid population by as great importations of foreigners as possible. But is this founded in good policy?
Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent. Every species of government has its specific principles. Ours, perhaps, are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution with others derived from the natural rights and natural reason. To these, nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchies. Yet, from such, we are to expect the greatest numbers of emigrants.
They will bring with them the principles of government they leave imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their numbers , they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp, and bias its directions, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.”
Mr. Jefferson asks, “What would be the condition of France if 20 million Americans were suddenly imported into that [country]?”
“It would be more turbulent, less happy, less strong; we may believe that the addition of half a million of foreigners would produce a similar effect here. If they come of themselves, they are entitled to all the rights of citizenship; but I doubt the expediency of inviting them by extraordinary encouragements.”
Circumstances have so changed entirely that instead of adding strength to the country, immigration adds weakness, weakness physical and moral. Then we were few, feeble, and scattered. Now we are numerous, strong, and concentrated. Then our accessions by immigration were for real accessions of strength from the ranks of the learned and the good, from the enlightened mechanic and artisan and intelligent husbandman. Now immigration is the accession of weakness, from the ignorant, [benefit-seeking] and the vicious. Then emigration was natural, it was an attraction of affinities, it was an attraction of liberty to liberty. Emigrants were the proscribed for conscience sake, and for opinion’s sake, the real lovers of liberty, Europe’s loss and our gain.” – Samuel F. B. Morse: The Dangers of Foreign Immigration, 1835; Annals Vol. 6; p. 158.
See Also: Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster by Peter Brimelow, May 30, 1996.
