On the subject of the Naturalization Laws, brought under discussion by resolutions of the Legislature of Massachusetts, asking such amendments as would protect the ballot-box and the elective franchise from abuses and frauds, we have understood Mr. Ingersoll as asserting both the power of Congress to make such amendments and the expediency of exercising it. These laws were enacted by Congress; no other tribunal, he has contended, could interfere with them. They were in daily use throughout the country. In the practical operation of them, errors were committed and frauds were perpetrated. This was a great and growing evil. It called loudly for redress. Redress could be effected in no other way than by an amendment of the laws themselves. While they remained, as they now stood, upon the national statute book, correction of abuses was hopeless. How, then, was a reformation, so loudly called for, to be brought about? State legislation could not effect it. All the sovereign states of the Union, combined in one strenuous and universal effort, could not add a section to the existing national code, or deprive it of any one of its provisions. Nothing human was competent to the object but an act of Congress.

This being the case, it was not easy, he thought, to discover an objection, in practice, to a compliance with the call made by the Legislature of Massachusetts. A sovereign state, suffering from a national law, in the exercise by its people of a high prerogative of freemen, asked the national lawgivers to amend it. Nothing could be more regular than the call— nothing more usual than a compliance with similar ones. If the evil were not imaginary, this was the proper, necessary mode of reaching it. Besides the practical necessity thus pointed out, an authority for the application, scarcely less operative, was to be found at hand in fundamental law. The Constitution declared that Congress might establish uniform laws of naturalization, and that it might alter any law that a state could make as to the time, place, and manner of electing representatives and senators (with a single exception). An American legislator would but vindicate the purposes of the Constitution of his country by asserting for it some control over the subject embraced in the Massachusetts resolutions. In the creation of citizens of the United States, State Legislatures could have no participation whatever. It was a power bestowed by

the people in their frame of government exclusively upon the Congress and the various federal and state courts acting under its authority. Some of the state constitutions, especially some of the new ones, had claimed a right to make citizens of the particular commonwealth; that is, to confer within its borders the elective franchise upon terms of residence, and otherwise, altogether different from those provided by the laws of the United States. So long as this prerogative was limited to the exercise of the right of suffrage on the particular spot, there might, perhaps, be no serious objection to it; but, beyond a very narrow range of power, it would be quite ineffectual. The term citizen had a national import. It contemplated, properly, neither municipal origin, nor a much wider local allegiance. It was coextensive with the republic. Mr. Ingersoll had been taught to believe, from high authority, that, strictly speaking, there was no such thing as the citizen of a state, although the term was frequently and familiarly used in legislation and out of it. A citizen, for example, of Pennsylvania, was a citizen of the United States residing in Pennsylvania. The term thus understood was sufficiently appropriate, and could do no harm. It prevented circumlocution, if it did no more. This was the doctrine he had learned from the lips of Judge Washington. To carry it further would be to disregard the provision of the Constitution which had been alluded to, and to substitute state power, in a particular so essentially and exclusively federal, for that of the general government.

An imperfect system of naturalization existed. Its arrangements were insufficient to prevent irregularities. Not an election occurred in crowded districts at which mutual complaints were not made by the respective parties of improprieties and frauds. If such reproaches were well founded, they proved a state of things which called loudly for reform. It was hoped that those abuses were not necessarily attendant on popular elections. If they were not, and if they were, indeed, but occasional excrescences which might be lopped off and pruned away, it was the duty of the patriot to seek the most effectual means of reformation. Even if they were, a no less solemn duty was imposed upon him to endeavor, by every practicable application of experience and wisdom, to lessen the evil. The object of the resolutions of the Legislature of Massachusetts was simply VOL. I.-D

to purify the ballot-box, to correct errors and abuses in existing systems, to carry out the spirit of the Constitution in all expedient and practicable purity, by rendering that uniform rule of naturalization which it conferred upon Congress the power to establish, wholesome in its exercise. All this must be effected, if at all, through the regular legal organs of the two houses of Congress, their committees on the judiciary. They were necessarily pioneers in this particular field of legislation. Laws now defective were to be amended, and plans of wisdom, heretofore inadequately accomplished, were to be better executed. Such was the design of the resolutions. A counter-proposition had been submitted, which contemplated something more extensive than the correction of errors and defects in existing laws, or abuses in the operation of them. It looked to a fundamental change, perhaps in the Constitution, and certainly in the laws themselves. It would not be contented with less than a wide enlargement of the term of probation now provided for the intended citizen, or, perhaps, in the not distant future, with any thing short of a total denial of the principle of adoption, and a positive restriction of the enjoyments of citizenship to those only who were of domestic birth. In support of this latter policy a new party had been created, and it was now, for the first time, the subject of distinct representation in the House. It not only aimed at a particular object, an attainment of which might be compatible with existing parties, but it sought separate organization, and a course of action distinct from that of either of the great political bodies which divided the country.

Rejecting the idea of the identity of this new organization with the Whig party, and to illustrate the exclusive tendencies of the former, Mr. Ingersoll playfully says,

"It will not be offensive to remark how carefully seats have been selected, as much as possible in a compact body, remote, as it were, from all association, except with each other. No such thing occurs with respect to the other political parties. They are brought together in amicable connection, and an intercourse at once useful in business and agreeable in the friendly feelings which it serves to foster, is preserved. For exam ple, I find myself elbow to elbow with a friend and colleague (Mr. Thompson) from the remotest part of our common state, who is not more remote from me in local residence than party

sentiment. Immediately behind me, and almost in actual contact, sits another honored friend, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Atkinson), one of the alphas of the House, whose vote upon party questions it is only necessary for me to learn, and, by a sort of chemical antipathy, notwithstanding high personal respect, it might suffice, for the most part, to direct my own. With regard to all others, except the few who thus compose a party distinguished for local solitude as well as individual strength, it may be said, in the language of Eloisa,

“Turtles and doves, of varying hues unite,

And glossy jet is paired with shining white.'

"Such is the social communion of Whigs and Democrats. They harmonize in every thing but political sentiment. Not so the third party, which stands aloof in voluntary seclusion, if not in proud distrust. It maintains a position like that which, in architecture, is said to enhance the magnificence of a Grecian temple; when placed, as it ought to be, on elevated ground, and gaining, by distance and unobstructed prospect, at once grandeur and distinctness for the view, it stands unmated and alone.

"In casting my eye around this diversified assembly, I am led to compare its human proportions and intellectual varieties with the natural phenomena described by travelers, as exhibited by that vast chain of mountains near the Pacific Ocean, in South America, which arise in successive plateaux, like so many huge, natural terraces, far above the clouds. Trees of the largest size and most luxuriant foliage grow and flourish upon some of those proud eminences of the Andes, and form, as it were, the basis of still loftier regions piled upon them. These are emblematic of the Whig party, always fresh in vigor, rich in patriotism, and rooted in the immovable basis of the Constitution. Among them one appears crowned with years and honors, green in the maturity and venerable in the dignity of age (Mr. Adams). Higher up, the mountain-trees become more numerous, but less firmly attached to the soil; not deeply planted, or standing in stern defiance of the fury of the elements, but moved and agitated by the passing breeze. These are emblems of a dominant majority, which yields conservative principle to its rivals, and professes and acts upon a different rule. Still higher up, above the level of perpetual snow, where no

other animated being is found, far above the habitation, and almost beyond the curious gaze of the most enterprising traveler, dwells that mightiest of winged animals, the condor, poised in mid air between the moon and earth, fixing its eye upon that cold planet of the night which astronomers assure us has no atmosphere, or none common to the rest of the system, flapping in interminable seclusion its ponderous and solitary wing."

Mr. Ingersoll is now serving at the head of the Committee on the Judiciary, the direction of whose business could not be committed to hands more capable.

In person he is tall and slender. As a debater, he is earnest, eloquent, and graceful, with a cast of mind and character more adapted, perhaps, to the highest order of forensic oratory, than to the excited and sometimes rude discussions of the House of Representatives. Science and the arts, knowledge and learning, in all their various branches, have found in him a liberal patron and an accomplished advocate. He is a widower, and has no living children.