The United States has nothing to fear from honest, well-meaning immigrants, no matter how stupid they are. Transplanting does wonders for wild-wood trees and shrubs that amount to nothing in their native wastes, and the improvement which some unpromising foreign stock has often made in this country recalls the traditional remark of the Bad Habit to the Small Boy: “Look at me now and the day you got me.” Some of the most exquisite gentlemen and able men of our land descended from clodhoppers of no one nationality, who came to this country only a generation or two ago. Some of the wisest and grandest spirits of our revolutionary periods were descendants of articled servants who came away not many years before. But, pshaw! Which of us who has not pure Indian blood in his veins did not descend from immigrants who a little while ago were so badly off in the old country that they had to move to get enough to eat and wear? Some self-appointed aristocrats may except to this general classification, but either they lie or they don’t know why their ancestors came here. No foreigner who is living comfortably at home, and who has nothing to be ashamed of, is going to a new country unless he has some unrest in him which will make him a nuisance if he remains at home. Of course political annoyances have been influential in sending us many immigrants, but very few from the classes who have any possible excuse for thinking themselves better than other men. The development of fine natures from very rude stock in the United States has been so marvellous in some of its instances as to deserve a large book specially devoted to the subject. A little while ago it was discovered that a famous judge, whose opinions and rulings are held in respect in courts of every State of this Union, was the son of a pauper immigrant. A gentleman who was very favorably mentioned a few years ago as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States said himself that his father, who was an immigrant, was so poor that the son went to school without breakfast for five successive years, and acquaintances of this estimable and highly cultivated gentleman, who stood at the very head of one of the most learned professions, said that the father was unable to read or write at the time of his death. The population of the State of California started with men of all classes from all parts of the world. Probably more adventurers and worthless men took part in the rush for gold than can be found in all the state-prisons of the United States at the present day. Yet the descendants of some of these very objectionable characters are to-day men of prominence and character. The natives of that State attributed this wonderful change to the “glorious climate of California.” But it is not necessary to make any such explanation. Cases of the same kind, though not perhaps in so large proportion, can be found in all the States of the Union. It is impossible that it should be otherwise. Whatever may happen to the original immigrant, his posterity has as fair a chance as that of any native. His children go to the same schools, the same churches, they mingle freely with all persons of their own age, have the same interests, same impulses, aspirations, and opportunities.