FROM a personal investigation conducted amongst the immigrants from some of the more despotic governments of Europe, it appears, says a writer in a New York daily, that these victims of oppression have, for the most part, become so confirmed in the soul slavery which was their lot in the Old World, that they are utterly ignorant of the fact, and cannot be made to grasp the idea, that they have personal rights, which both individuals and governments are bound to leave inviolate. Only their children, born and reared in this country, are capable of assimilating the knowledge that they have a birthright to liberty.
With such facts before us, it is not difficult to perceive the providence of Him by whom all men were created equal, in setting up this free Government for a beacon light of liberty to the oppressed in all the world. But is it not true to-day that this Government has so far departed from the plan of the Creator, that it is most frequently the case that these downtrodden victims of European despotism, meet on these shores the same injustice and oppression, in a slightly less degree, from which they sought to escape by crossing the seas? Without the promulgation of the doctrine of individual liberty made by our heroic forefathers who put forth and maintained the Declaration of Independence, and founded a great republic upon the American Constitution, what would have been to-day the condition of the masses of mankind, under the rule of the classes?
It is bad enough, certainly, as it is. But when this Government shall become—as it is fast becoming—a despotism like those of the Old World,—when Liberty is chained and dies in her own home—when the experiment of a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” proclaims itself a failure—a condition of things will be reached which only the coming of the Lord can relieve.