hubert howe bancroft - Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History ...

496 POLITICAL HISTORY.
country, and not thinking solely of themselves. It
could not be safe to longer endure, condone, or smile
at the antics of foreign demagogues, who understood
democracy to be a synonym for anarchy, who sought
to pull down the institutions nobler men have built
up, to glut their greed of plunder by making predatory
warfare upon capital which they never could have
amassed by their own brain or muscle, and who aspired
even to assume the government of a state which bad
afforded them an asylum from the poverty, ignorance,
and debasement of less favored lands.
If one could wonder at anything men may do, the
marvel would be that the leaders of these variously
styled factions do not perceive that their banner-cries
are for the most part dead issues. They were, many
of them, never native to the soil, but were imported
with fugitives from aristocratic abuses, from Europe.
Aristocracy and democracy do not now oppose each
other as in the beginning of our government, while
republicanism has degenerated to a degraded rule bordering
on anarchy. The contest now is entirely between
honesty and rascality. The foreigners who
insolently seek to rule these American states are
neither republicans nor democrats. Their blood is
soured by ages of enforced inferiority and discontent.
Having always been compelled, they desire to compel
others, nominally their equals, but visibly their superiors.
This assumption had gone to such lengths in California,
as in some other states, that a considerable
number of independent men, particularly young men,
" sons of the golden west," and others, left older parties
to call themselves Americans. Their platform
declared that all law-abiding citizens, whether native
or foreign-born, were entitled to the protection of the
laws; that the naturalization laws of the United
States should be repealed ; that aliens or non-residents
should not be permitted to own real estate in
the United States; that persons not in sympathy