Unfortunately for us, this spirit of irreligion is not confined to the other side of the Atlantic. We find it already making its way into American society, though as yet it assumes more the character of indifferentism. We call ourselves a Christian people, yet less than one-half of the entire community ever enter a church for devotional purposes from one year’s end to another. Recently, too, we notice, in our larger cities particularly, exhibitions of the same wicked spirit which animated the Carbonari and Socialists of Europe, and which reveals itself in many expressions of sympathy for the infamous Communists of Paris in the columns of some of our newspapers and the speeches of more than one prominent politician. This insidious danger to our venerated institutions ought to be closely watched and sternly repressed. It is opposed alike to private virtue and public morals, and, if ever allowed a controlling influence in the state, would sweep away every safeguard that stands between the citizen and the passions of the mob. No person who values the blessings of domestic peace or venerates the memories of our ancestors, no true American, can tolerate for a moment these communistic and socialistic designs which are creeping in amongst us, utterly foreign as they are to our soil and the genius of our people and government. While thus excluding vicious principles from our shores, we ought to, as we have ever done, continue to welcome the oppressed and impoverished people of the Old World, and, as far as is consistent with the public safety, to extend to them every facility to a participation in the political as well as the material prosperity of the country. They are our relations. Very few of us, going back two or three generations, but will find that his ancestors were also immigrants, like those who to-day seek our protection and hospitality. Since the formation of our government, eight millions of them have made their homes in the young republic, helping to develop our resources, commerce, and manufactures, and always proving faithful to their obligations of allegiance in peace as well as in war. An enlightened and tolerant treatment of our immigrants is both charitable and wise; and the best evidence that we have profited by our superior political and educational advantages, is our readiness to make allowance for the intellectual defects and antiquated habits of those who have left home and country to join their lot with ours. The exclusion of any class of citizens from a participation in the benefits of our government, on account of religion or previous nationality, never has had, and is never likely to have, the countenance of the people of this country. The spasmodic efforts of those fanatics, vulgarly but not inappropriately called Know-nothings, 96 which have been made occasionally, were directed against Catholics, but they never reached the dignity of national movements, and, being