rights or of violent interference with
their operations. The community that by concert, open or secret, among
its citizens denies to a portion of its members their plain rights under
the law has severed the only safe bond of social order and prosperity.
The evil works from a bad center both ways. It demoralizes those who
practice it and destroys the faith of those who suffer by it in the
efficiency of the law as a safe protector. The man in whose breast that
faith has been darkened is naturally the subject of dangerous and
uncanny suggestions. Those who use unlawful methods, if moved by no
higher motive than the selfishness that prompted them, may well stop and
inquire what is to be the end of this.

An unlawful expedient can not become a permanent condition of
government. If the educated and influential classes in a community
either practice or connive at the systematic violation of laws that seem
to them to cross their convenience, what can they expect when the lesson
that convenience or a supposed class interest is a sufficient cause for
lawlessness has been well learned by the ignorant classes? A community
where law is the rule of conduct and where courts, not mobs, execute its
penalties is the only attractive field for business investments and
honest labor.

Our naturalization laws should be so amended as to make the inquiry into
the character and good disposition of persons applying for citizenship
more careful and searching. Our existing laws have been in their
administration an unimpressive and often an unintelligible form. We
accept the man as a citizen without any knowledge of his fitness, and he
assumes the duties of citizenship without any knowledge as to what they
are. The privileges of American citizenship are so great and its duties
so grave that we may well insist upon a good knowledge of every person
applying for citizenship and a good knowledge by him of our
institutions. We should not cease to be hospitable to immigration, but
we should cease to be careless as to the character of it. There are men
of all races, even the best, whose coming is necessarily a burden upon
our public revenues or a threat to social order. These should be
identified and excluded.

We have happily maintained a policy of avoiding all interference with
European affairs. We have been only interested spectators of their
contentions in diplomacy and in war, ready to use our friendly offices
to promote peace, but never obtruding