The whole population of Massachusetts in 1870 was 1,457,351
Of these were born in foreign lands 353,319
Born of foreign parents in Massachusetts 626,211 979,530
Thus, it seems, the population of Massachusetts is already foreign-born and of foreign parents, _over two-thirds_. What number of these foreign people are Roman Catholics, any other person can guess as well as I can. But it is quite certain that this blessing, such as it is, has reached us incidentally through our cheap labor; that is, it is a sort of superadded bliss, coming as an unexpected reward of unconscious virtue. In the words of Shakespeare, "We are twice blessed." We have got cheap labor and we have got the Catholic church crowning every hill and blooming in every valley.
At any rate it is quite certain that few if any of this class of the Massachusetts people are either Puritans, Unitarians, or Episcopalians; and some of them I strongly suspect are like the good sailor, neither Catholics nor Protestants, but "captains of the fore-top!" In Massachusetts, as I have said, there was in 1870 of this kind of population sixty-six per cent., and all have votes. In the whole United States there was forty-five per cent. of this sort, all of whom have votes. It is known also that New York, and Boston, and Lowell, and Fall River are intrinsically foreign cities. It is known that the majority of voters in those cities have no property which pays taxes; it is known that this class of voters are now well organized, and can and do vote and do elect such men as will _please them_--men who "will tickle me if I'll tickle you"--that is the sort of statesman we now welcome with effusion; indeed, we seek no other. We mean to deplete all over-grown fortunes; we mean through the taxes to equalize things and make Saturday afternoons pleasant. I have not at hand, just this moment, the figures to tell what good was done in Boston last year to the class called "the poor." But I have them for Cambridge, a small city almost a part of Boston. In that small select and intellectual city the expenditures in direct aid of "the poor," not counting work which was _made_ for them, was in dollars, $80,000, and that does not count a large sum besides given in private charity. This help was given to some 5,400 persons; stating it simply, in the words of political economy, one person in seven or eight of that cultivated and select community was a pauper. Another feature of this new and peculiar social state is this: that the voters who have no property and pay no taxes do not enjoy the possibility of starving, nor do they look with favor upon advice which tells them to "Go West." Why should they go West? They do not know where to go--indeed, they have no money to go with--nor do they know that there would be any work for them there. They _choose_ to stay where they are, and they will vote for people who will help them to stay; and they have five votes to the tax-payer's four, which significant little fact should not be lost sight of!