SPRING ELECTION RIOTS OF 1834. Fatal Error in our Naturalization Laws.--Our Experiment of Self government not a fair one.--Fruit of giving Foreigners the Right to Vote.--Bitter Feeling between Democrats and Whigs.--First Day of Election.--Ships "Constitution" and "Veto."--Whigs driven from the Polls.--Excitement.--Whigs determined to defend themselves.--Meeting called.--Resolutions.--Second Day's Election.--Attack on the Frigate "Constitution."--A Bloody Fight.--Mayor and Officers wounded.--Mob triumphant.--Excitement of the Whigs.--The Streets blocked by fifteen thousand enraged Whigs.--Military called out.--Occupy Arsenal and City Hall all Night.--Result of the Election.--Excitement of the Whigs.--Mass-meeting in Castle Garden. This country never committed a more fatal mistake than in making its naturalization laws so that the immense immigration from foreign countries could, after a brief sojourn, exercise the right of suffrage. Our form of government was an experiment, in the success of which not only we as a nation were interested, but the civilized world. To have it a fair one, we should have been allowed to build and perfect the structure with our own material, not pile into it such ill-formed, incongruous stuff as the despotisms of Europe chose to send us. Growing up by a natural process, educating the people to the proper exercise of their high trust, correcting mistakes, and adjusting difficulties as we progressed, the noble building would have settled into greater compactness as it arose in height, and all its various proportions been in harmony. We should have built slowly but surely. But when there was thrown upon us a mass of material wholly unfit for any political structure, and we were compelled to pile it in hap-hazard, it was not long before the goodly edifice began to show ugly seams, and the despotisms of Europe pointed to them with scorn, and asked tauntingly how the doctrine of self-government worked. They emptied their prisons and poor-houses on our shores, to be rid of a dangerous element at home, and we, with a readiness that bordered on insanity, not only took them into our bosoms, but invited them to aid us in making our laws and electing our rulers. To ask men, the greater part of whom could neither read nor write, who were ignorant of the first principles of true civil liberty, who could be bought and sold like sheep in the shambles, to assist us in founding a model republic, was a folly without a parallel in the history of the world, and one of which we have not yet begun to pay the full penalty. It was a cruel wrong, not only to ourselves, but to the oppressed masses of Europe, who turned their longing eyes on us for encouragement and the moral aid which our success would give them in their struggles against despotism.