No American will ever undertake any of the lower forms of labour—very few of the men before the mast in American ships are native-born. The class of agricultural labourers is unknown among them. What labour they have of this kind is supplied by immigration. No American would become a footman or hotel waiter. Their railways were not made by American navvies. In the North all the lower kinds of labour—but which, though they rank low as employments, are still necessary to the well-being, even to the existence of society—have hitherto fallen to the lot of the Irish, English, and German immigrants. Their place has been taken in the South by the blacks, and in the Pacific States by the Chinese. [Sidenote: _The Future of the Servile Classes._] This suggests two very interesting questions. The first is, Can a republic be carried on without a servile class? What would be the state of things in the American Union if it were deprived of the services of the Irish, the blacks, and the Chinese? Of course the loss would be much felt, and would very much retard the progress of the country; but I do not think that it would be a loss that would be irremediable and ruinous. As soon as the country begins to fill up, there will begin to appear in America the class that has existed in every country in the world, composed of those who have neither property nor a knowledge of any trade (which can seldom be obtained by those who have no property), and who therefore have nothing to live upon except their power of doing rude and unskilled work.