The argument for immigration which, if not the strongest during the first half of the nineteenth century, was probably the most frequently expressed, was the sentimental one which exhibited the United States as the natural haven of refuge for the oppressed and unfortunate of all lands, and extended a hearty welcome to all seekers of liberty who should come. This, as has been mentioned, was natural under the conditions of the time. It found expression in such words as the following, appearing in a magazine in the year 1855: “If the physiologic principle we have endeavored to establish is correct, it follows that America pre-eminently owes its growth and prosperity to the amalgamation of foreign blood. To cut off, therefore, or to discourage its influx, will be to check the current from which our very life is drawn. The better course is evidently to welcome and provide for this tide of immigration, rather than to oppose and turn it away; to cherish the good influence it brings, and regulate the bad, rather than to trample them both under foot. What, though the population which is annually cast upon American shores is all of the filthiest and most degraded kind! The farmer might as well complain of the black and reeking soil into which his seed is dropped, as the statesman of such materials as these.... Let us welcome the houseless and the naked of every land to American shores; in the boundless forests of the north and the south there is room to make a home for them all. Let us invite the ill-fed and the starving of every grade to partake of American abundance; on the fertile fields of the west there grows corn enough to feed them all. Let us urge the oppressed and the down trodden of every name to the blessings of American freedom; the Star Spangled Banner is broad enough to cover, and the eagle that sits over it is strong enough to defend, them all.”[350] Such talk as this is so thoroughly out of date as to sound almost ridiculous in modern ears. In fact, the sentimental argument plays but little part in the present agitation, for the reason that the conditions which justify it furnish the motive to an insignificant portion of our present immigrants, with the exception of the Russian Jews.