To sum up, therefore, it appears that in all European nations--with one insignificant exception--some measures, more or less drastic, are taken either for prohibiting the admission, or for the expulsion of destitute and undesirable aliens. This policy is the deliberate outcome of years of thought and legislation. It is framed in the interests of the native population in each country, and is in all cases fully in accordance with the popular will. It is generally recognized throughout Europe that it is the duty of every State to deal with its own paupers and undesirable citizens, and it is recognized also that the only way to bring about that desirable end, is by other countries politely but firmly refusing to admit them. Thus it may be safely said that in the continent of Europe all countries liable to suffer from undesirable immigration have taken steps to guard themselves against it--with one single exception. That exception is Great Britain. CHAPTER X. THE EXAMPLE OF THE UNITED STATES. Twenty years ago it was a common calculation in the United States that every new immigrant was worth a thousand dollars to the particular State in which he settled. A farm might be had for practically nothing by anybody who chose to apply for it. In those comparatively early days, what are now flourishing States west of the Mississippi, were then, in parts, wild unpeopled wildernesses, and the country could not afford to be very discriminative as to either the character or the means of particular immigrants. Thus for many years America was the camping-ground of the social refuse of Europe. Irish paupers driven forth by famine and political misrule went West in tens of thousands, to become, many of them, prosperous farmers and worthy citizens of their adopted country. But there came also, in almost countless hordes, immigrants of a far less desirable, and, as the sequel has proved, dangerous kind: Fenians and apostles of dynamite from Ireland; secret societies from Italy, whose gospel was murder and brigandage; Nihilists from Russia, and Socialists from Germany, driven forth almost at the point of the bayonet by their own Governments; Russian and Polish Jews, fleeing in terror before the fanatical persecution of the Czar. All this heterogeneous mass of inflammable human material has at length become a standing menace to the United States, endangering her friendly relations with foreign countries, as well as the freedom her own people enjoy under their present form of government. Of course there were compensating advantages, but the evil of unrestricted immigration has of late years reached such an extent that the old sturdy race, the descendants of the English Puritans, who made the great Republic of the West, have been in danger of being gradually swallowed up by foreign-born populations.