continually came across such cases. He went on to say in his evidence at the inquest:--"I continually come across such cases as this.... The poverty in the East End is terrible." Instances like this cannot but strengthen the argument against admitting destitute aliens here. Strangers in a strange land, these miserable new-comers find themselves worse off than they were before. They are not themselves benefited, and the only result is that they intensify the awful struggle for existence which is going on daily and hourly among the poor in our large cities. It has been said that to limit this influx would be to endanger that right of asylum which has ever been one of England's boasts and glories. It is not so. Were a careful and judicious measure passed for the sifting of alien immigration, it would be quite possible to insert a clause, similar to that which has been inserted in the new American Act, which runs as follows:--"That nothing in this Act shall be construed to apply to or exclude persons convicted of a political offence, notwithstanding the said political offence may be designated as a 'felony, crime, infamous crime, or misdemeanour involving moral turpitude,' by the laws of the land whence he came, or by the court convicting." Such is the law in the "land of the free." England, no less than America, is the home of civil and religious liberty She has great and glorious traditions; they are illustrated by her treatment of the Walloons, the Huguenots, the slave-traffic, and all political refugees from time immemorial. Yet in the past she has not hesitated from time to time to pass such laws as need and occasion required. To this the Statute Book is a witness,[5] and her traditions would not be reversed because in the present day she found it necessary, in the interests of her own people, to adopt some means for checking this latter-day invasion. What is asked for is not an offensive but a defensive measure.