But they seized with greater eagerness than was exhibited by any other immigrants every political privilege which was within their reach. In politics as in all other interests, their clannishness kept them mainly confined to one party; but even in that they stood as far as possible aloof from the real and patriotic Americans serving in the same organization. Coarse of feature and coarser of mind; servile in their devotion to religious forms, which were never any better than forms to them; superstitious to the last degree; blunted in moral sense so as to be amenable to fear alone as a restraining sentiment; utterly illogical and the slaves of ignorant prejudice,--it would be difficult to conceive of immigrants from any modern race less fitted than they for self-government or for exercising a share in the government of others. There were occasional brilliant and noble exceptions; but of the majority this picture is not over-colored. Wherever they touched the political garment they defiled it. In the cities, where their increase by steady immigration and by their own amazing procreative fertility gave them the majority, their power was invariably signalized by a corruption and local tyranny greater than that against which Adams and Jefferson and Washington revolted. As their numbers increased and they became more assured of their political power, their arrogance and reckless abuse of public trust became daily more and more exasperating. Through all the political changes to which other voters were subject, they remained in practical effect an organization by themselves. As has been said, they grasped with insatiate greed every political right and privilege which the laws afforded them, but refused to become any the less Irishmen. They stubbornly persisted in putting loyalty to the land they had abandoned above loyalty to the land they had adopted and which had opened its hospitality to them. Instead of becoming in reality as well as name American citizens, they remained Irish citizens, an _imperium in imperio_, and spoke of their life in the United States, even while they were exercising the franchise or sharing in the emoluments of office there, as an “exile.” They boldly proclaimed themselves “patriots,” because, having fled to the United States and accepted its protection and its asylum, they still professed greater devotion and a heartier loyalty to the fatherland they had forsworn than to the country to which they had solemnly pledged, by becoming citizens of it, their voluntary and complete allegiance.