And _we have not the power_ if we had the right. Congress does not make laws; Congress only declares and interprets them. There is but one law-giver—God Almighty; and all that judges and governors and law-makers and Congresses and Parliaments can do, is to ascertain what are God’s laws and interpret them. And God’s law is the law of liberty, and all His laws are to conserve liberty. Never in the history of the world has a nation succeeded in stopping one of these great migratory movements. Out of four hundred million people, in one year almost as many corpses lie upon the ground in China as were strewed on all our battle-fields, and over every one a grave-stone might be erected with the inscription, “Died of hunger!” Why, you might better expect to stop the charge of a herd of buffaloes rushing madly along with the prairie on fire behind them, by means of a Virginia rail fence, than to stop the immigration of a great nation, driven from its home by pursuing famine, with an act of Congress. You could easier dam up the waters of the Gulf Stream with bulrushes. In the year 250 the Goths and Vandals won their first victory over Roman arms on the Roman boundary. The Roman empire adopted Dennis Kearney’s platform; it said, “We will not have the Goths and Vandals on our territory.” The Roman empire was clad in mail from its head to its foot; it was an army of soldiers; it put forth the greatest military power the world has seen to stop the great migration. For a hundred and fifty years the conflict went on, but year by year the valiant warrior was beaten back, and it was ended at last with the sack of Rome. But 250 years before these immigrants made their first appearance on the border line, a little decrepit Jew made his appearance in Rome as a prisoner. He lived there two years, bound, chained to the soldier that guarded him, and he brought there the story that God had shown himself in Jesus Christ, His Son, who had lived, suffered, died, risen, and ever lived for them. In those 250 years, Christianity under various persecutions, had grown little by little, until, when the Goths and Vandals made their appearance, it comprised one-twentieth of the population of Rome—fifty thousand out of a million. It sent Bishop Ulfilas with his Gothic Bible, to the north; it sent Augustine into England; it sent St. Patrick—Protestant before the time of Protestantism—to preach a pure gospel in Ireland. One and another and another went forth, bearing the cross; and when at last the Goths and Vandals had conquered the armed Romans, so thoroughly had that Christian church done its work, that, says Lecky, the Christian church conquered the barbarian world almost in the same hour in which the barbarian world conquered Rome.