I hesitate very much to say another word; and yet I think the Senate
will pardon me, if I make a brief reply to the charge, so absolutely
unjust, of the Senator from California. He throws upon me the reproach
of indifference to foreigners. Sir, I deny the imputation, and
challenge comparison on this head with any Senator on this floor. Here
I know that I am without blame. Sir, you do not forget that more than
ten years ago there was a storm that passed over this country which
had a name more familiar than polite: I mean Know-nothing-ism. It was
everywhere, and enveloped my own State. At that time I had the honor
of holding the position which I now hold. Did I yield to this storm,
when it was carrying all before it? Sir, at that time I went down to
Faneuil Hall, and in the presence of one of the largest audiences
ever there assembled, and knowing well the prevailing sentiment, I
made a speech vindicating the rights of emigrants to our country and
promising them welcome. I have that speech here now, and I will read a
few sentences from it. This was on the 2d of November, 1855,--nearly
thirteen years ago. Pardon me for reading this record of other days;
but I am justified by the attacks to which I have been exposed. If
any foreign-born citizen is disposed to hearken to the Senator from
California impeaching me, I ask him to bear in mind how I stood for his
rights at another time, when there were fewer ready to stand for them
than now. I read from this forgotten speech, as reported at that time.
Mr. Sumner read the first two paragraphs on the thirteenth page
of the pamphlet edition.[260]
Such was my argument for the rights of the foreign-born among us. To
all of them I offered such welcome as I could:--
“There are our broad lands, stretching towards the setting
sun; let them come and take them. Ourselves children of the
Pilgrims of a former generation, let us not turn from the
Pilgrims of the present. Let the home founded by our emigrant
fathers continue open in its many mansions to the emigrants of
to-day.”[261]
Sir, those were the words which I uttered in Faneuil Hall at a time
when the opposition to foreigners was scouring over the whole country.
Others yielded to that tempest, but I did not yield. All my votes
in this Chamber, from the first day that I entered it down to this
moment, have been in the same direction, and for that welcome which
I thus early announced. Never have I missed an occasion to vote for
their protection; never shall I miss any such occasion. I was the
first in the Senate to announce the essential incompatibility between
the claim of perpetual allegiance and the license of unlimited
emigration which we had witnessed, saying that every Irishman or German
leaving with the consent of his Government was a living witness to
the hollowness of the original pretension. And now I am most anxious
to see expatriation a law as well as a fact. If I do not adopt the
expedients proposed, it is because I regard them as less calculated to
produce the much-desired result than other means equally at hand, to
the end that the rights of our naturalized citizens may find adequate
safeguard everywhere. The present bill can do little good, and may
do harm. It will not protect a single citizen; but it may be a drag
on those pending negotiations by which the rights of all will be
secured. Too studious of the Law of Nations, perhaps, to be willing to
treat it with distrust or neglect, I look to that prevailing agency
rather than to the more limited instrumentality of Municipal Law. It
is the province of Municipal Law to determine rights at home,--how a
foreign-born person may be naturalized in our country,--how he may be
admitted to all the transcendent privileges of American citizenship;
but it belongs to another system of law to determine what shall be his
privileges, should he return to the country which gave him birth. We
may, by our declarations, by our diplomacy, by our power, do much; but
it is by our treaties that we shall fix all these rights in adamant.
The Senator seems to have no higher idea than to write them in the
fleeting passions of party. My vote will never be wanting to elevate
them above all such fitful condition, and to place them under the
perpetual sanction of International Law,--the only law which can bind
two different powers. Sir, the Senator from California shall not go
before me; he shall not be more swift than I; he shall not take one
single step in advance of me. Be the person Irish or German or African
or Chinese, he shall have from me the same equal protection. Can the
Senator say as much?