Speech #470040400

Suppose that we had 450.000.000 inhabitants in the United States. and in order to protect our northern frontier from the incursions of the Canadians we should build with incredible labor a stone wall from New Brunswick across the continent to Vancouver Island. suppose that in addition to this. in order to protect our southwestern frontier from the depredations of the Mexican greasers. we should build a stone wall from the Gulf ot Mexico along the Rio Grande frontier up to El Paso. with such stupendous monuments of national pusillanimity. how long would constitutional government subsist in this countryI If the northern people had been molded of such material. the gentlemen on the other side of this Chamber. in the late civil war. would have watered their cavalry horses in Lake Erie and bivouacked their infantry in the parks of New York City in about thirty days. When the Roman people. under Marcus Antoninus. built a stone wall along the Dacian frontier to protect the empire from the irruptions of the Germans. they proclaimed the decay of their national valor as well as the degradation of their national character. The immigrants who are pouring to our shores today. from western Europe and the British Isles. are the descendants of those fierce nations who broke through that Dacian barrier. forced the passage of the Rhine and the Danube. and overrun with invincible steps a sinking empire. Theserepresentatives of the great Teutonic. Celtic. and Scandinavian families come here to become American citizens in every sense of the word.