ake money, why not at once bring in more cheap labor?
The Chinese are ready to come, and the negroes, even if Ireland can
spare no more of her enlightened people. And then what a boon this
class of people would be to our aspiring statesman. For the sum of two
dollars they are entitled to vote, and then any man who feels a desire
to be a governor or an M.C. can, by paying this paltry pittance,
secure the votes of a grateful constituency. Is it not, therefore, our
supreme duty to bring in this class of voters as rapidly as possible?
We need _population_ and we need _voters_. England has a population of
389 to the square mile and we in Massachusetts have only 211! Should we
not hide our faces with shame while such an inferiority lasts?

There are people now who are getting up a scare about the wonderful
growth of the Holy Catholic Church, claiming that that church demands
of all its members (as it does) allegiance _first_ to the Church, and
then _second_ to the government where its subjects happen to be. I
do not think much of this now that Antonelli is dead; but there may be
something in it. I question whether Massachusetts can any longer put
forth pretensions to being a Puritan or a Unitarian or religious State
of any sort unless it be a Catholic one. Go with me to the U.S. census
report of 1870:

The whole population of Massachusetts in 1870 was 1,457,351

Of these were born in foreign lands 353,319

Born of foreign parents in Massachusetts 626,211 979,530

Thus, it seems, the population of Massachusetts is already foreign-born
and of foreign parents, _over two-thirds_. What number of these foreign
people are Roman Catholics, any other person can guess as well as I
can. But it is quite certain that this blessing, such as it is, has
reached us incidentally through our cheap labor; that is, it is a sort
of superadded bliss, coming as an unexpected reward of unconscious
virtue. In the words of Shakespeare, "We are twice blessed." We have
got cheap labor and we have got the Catholic church crowning every hill
and blooming in every valley.

At any rate it is quite certain that few if any of this class of the
Massachusetts people are either Puritans, Unitarians, or Episcopalians;
and some of them I strongly suspect are like the good sailor, neither
Catholics nor Protestants, but "captains of the fore-top!" In
Massachusetts, as I have said, there was in 1870 of this kind of
population sixty-s