fications to
entitle them to all the privileges and immunities of
citizens of the United States? Have the people of the
several States expressed such a conviction? It may also be
asked whether it is necessary that they should be declared
citizens in order that they may be secured in the enjoyment
of civil rights? Those rights proposed to be conferred by
the bill are, by Federal as well as by State laws, secured
to all domiciled aliens and foreigners even before the
completion of the process of naturalization, and it may
safely be assumed that the same enactments are sufficient to
give like protection and benefits to those for whom this
bill provides special legislation. Besides, the policy of
the Government, from its origin to the present time, seems
to have been that persons who are strangers to and
unfamiliar with our institutions and our laws should pass
through a certain probation, at the end of which, before
attaining the coveted prize, they must give evidence of
their fitness to receive and to exercise the rights of
citizens as contemplated by the Constitution of the United
States.

"The bill, in effect, proposes a discrimination against
large numbers of intelligent, worthy, and patriotic
foreigners, and in favor of the negro, to whom, after long
years of bondage, the avenues to freedom and intelligence
have now been suddenly opened. He must, of necessity, from
his previous unfortunate condition of servitude, be less
informed as to the nature and character of our institutions
than he who, coming from abroad, has to some extent at
least, familiarized himself with the principles of a
Government to which he voluntarily intrusts 'life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.' Yet it is now proposed by a
single legislative enactment to confer the rights of
citizens upon all persons of African descent, born within
the extended limits of the United States, while persons of
foreign birth, who make our land their home, must undergo a
probation of five years, and can only then become citizens
upon proof that they are of 'good moral character, attached
to the principles of the Constitution of the United States,
and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the
same.'

"The first section of the bill also contains