Speech #550051047

President. we are confronted with the fact that it has been found hitherto impossible by any national power or legislation to keep our suffrage pure. Majorities in both Houses of Congress. elections of President. governments of great States. in our recent history have been decided where the power of the Government had no relation whatever to the will of the people. We have attempted by strict naturalization laws. by strict election laws. by the exercise of the authority expressly conferred upon us by the Constitution of the United States. to confine the exercise of the suffrage in this country to the hands legitimately and constitutionally entitled to it. and we have failed. Men of education. men of intelligence. men of wealth. scholars in universities. men who are now uniting in remonstrance against this proposed legislation. when they could accomplish their own political purposes have been found the willing. facile. and subservient allies to the men who have attempted to overthrow the honesty of legislation in this country. It has therefore been found impossible. if ignorance and poverty and crime enter our gates. to keep the persons so admitted from taking a lawless and dishonest share in the ballot. It is for that reasonbecause this. though in form an immigration bill. is in substance a suffrage billthat I am constrained to give it my support until in the future we shall be able to find some other and better remedy for this evil. And I undertake to say that the men who deserted their old political associates when they were struggling for righteous elections in this country and. for the sake of accomplishing their own desires. indulging their dislikes or their hatred of men. or accomplishing their freetrade or other policies. joined hands with the men who were baffling our attempts to keep elections pureit is upon them that the responsibility for whatever is evil or objectionable in this proposed legislation rests. I have received through the mail and I have heard in private conversation sentiments uttered by eminent men in my own Commonwealth attacking the policy of the bill of nay colleague. to which I intend to give my support. to which there is but one answer to be made. and the answer is: Whatever there is unAmerican. whatever thereis of evil principle. in this proposed legislation. the men who are remonstrating against it are. in my judgment. the men who are guilty of it.