201
.WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1855
here by thousands to overturn our free governmentr--that if we did not stop the tide of Foreign paupers to our shores, we should all become paupers ourselves, for they were actually eating out ·our substance-that our children were obliged to wait twenty- one years before they could vote, and that he thought all for- eigners should be made to do the same thing . . . . . He then told the oft repeated story of Patrick and his wife Biddy with the six rosy-cheeked children, and how they were called up before another Irishman, Dennis, and how Patrick told Dennis that no bog-trotting Irishman should make laws for them." He then told what Kuhn of Galveston had advised a countryman of his, who had recently come to Texas, and applied to him, "to vote the American ticket, as Americans know more about their affairs than other people-that if they made good laws, he would par- ticipate in the benefits, and if they made bad ones, they should have to take their share of the evils."-He said there was no pro- scription in the principles of the Know-Nothing party more than there was in the constitution of the United States which provided that no foreigner should be made President of the United States, or in the Whig or Democratic party, each of which proscribed the other, when in Power-and that if it was a secret party, that the Whigs and Democrats had set the example of secrecy by · their caucusing. · He then spoke of the Roman Catholic religion-said the Cath- olic citizens all owed a divided allegiance, that the allegiance they hold to our Constitution and to our laws was subordinate to that which they held to the Pope at Rome, and that Mr. Pierce bought from the Pope the Catholic vote for the Presidency by a Cabinet appointment, at least, that charge had been made public, and it never had been denied, and he believed it. He said that General Cass had formally announced his approbation of the Philadelphia .Know-Nothing Platform, and that the Democratic party h1d been beaten in Michigan by the balance vote of naturalized citizens who were abolitionists, and opposed to the Nebraska Act. He said that the "Washington Union," the organ and mouthpiece of the Democratic party, had openly and expressly avowed the in- tention to ignore the whole Slavery Question in the future, and to take that plank out of their platform. He spoke in high com- mendation of the Philadelphia Know-Nothing platform, said it was sound nationally, that it was conservative, and that he stood firmly on. it.
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