Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/96

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS

tion has been more than nine millions of persons. The aggregate population in the last fifty years has advanced somewhat more than threefold, the foreign immigration more than thirtyfold, so that now immigrants and the children of im- migrants are a quarter of the whole population.

This enormous influx of foreigners has added an immense ignorance and entire unfamiliarity with republican ideas and habits to the voting class. It has brought other political traditions, other languages and other religious faiths. It has introduced powerful and organized influences not friendly to the republican principle of free- dom of thought and action. It is to the change produced by immigration that we owe the first serious questioning of the public school system, which was the nursery of the early republic, and which is to-day the palladium of free pop- ular government.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not lament- ing even in thought the boundless hospitality of America. I do not forget that the whole European race came hither but yesterday, and has been domesticated here not yet three hundred years. I am not insensible of the proud claim of America to be the refuge of the oppressed of every clime ; nor do I doubt in her maturity, her powder, if duly directed, to assimilate whole nations, if need be, as in her infancy she achieved her independence, and in her prime maintained her unity. But if she has been the hope of the world, and is so still, it is because she has under- 70

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