Wisconsin Herald

The Elective Franchise.

"We claim to be Conservative-not Radical. As it required infinite toil and experience to frame our free governments and to adjust, balance and harmonize their movements, we would not peril the disturbance of that balance by experiments or introduce into the system, crude and untried elements. There is not a people on earth-there never has been, excepting the American people who have really governed themselves. Place the English, the Germans or the French, under precisely the same system of government as ours, and no reasonable man would expect to see them maintain it for a single year. The aggregate of our national mind is of a peculiar character. Filtered by the process of colonization, by the stern necessity of self reliance, by a separation for two centuries from the corruptions of royal Courts; in short, thinking, as a people, of nothing else than self government, the bible and the school house have qualified us better than any other people to think and act like intelligent freemen.

We do not think it wise, to ascertain how many fresh importations of foreigners, can be mixed into the constituent parts of a republic with safety. It ought to alarm us to know, that taking foreigners is like taking whiskey—the more we take, the harder it is to stop taking. For want of firmness at first, to insist upon a compliance with the naturalization of all foreigners by the laws of Congress, as a condition of the elective franchise. it is not impossible that in five years from now, the laws of Wisconsin will be framed and printed in a foreign tongue.

We say that a gross wrong is done to the people of Wisconsin, by making voters of those who cannot, without time and instruction, be qualified to vote. We are friendly to foreigners-entirely so; and it is as well for their sakes as our own, that we are in favor of naturalization. We honestly believe that it is the duty of the people of Wisconsin, to attempt, immediately to put our Constitution on Constitutional grounds, and require foreigners to be naturalized before voting. Nothing but the basest of demagoguism, made the Constitution as it is. in this respect. If the question could now be submitted to a direct vote of the people, there is not a shadow of doubt but that a majority would go for the naturalization laws of Congress."