The growing feeling in the United States against unlimited immigration
which recently found vent in a statute directed against paupers has now found expression in a measure which forbids the entry of illiterates. No person above eighteen who cannot read or write some language will now be allowed to enter, nor any person who professes to labour for part of the year and then return to his own country. A Bill to this effect passed the House of Representatives on May 20th by 196 votes to 26, and will, it is believed, effectually prohibit the entry of Neapolitans and Hungarian Slays who have not passed through the Army, and thus prevent the entry of the crowds whose first motive is to avoid the con- scription. The labouring class throughout the Union, coloured as well as white, is in favour of this legis- lation, as are also all those politicians, now exceedingly numerous, who believe that the Union will be destroyed by the foreign vote. The late Mr. Charles Pearson always maintained that America and the British free Colonies would ultimately find limitless immigration from Europe unendurable, and once in conversation with the writer he suggested that the method of prevention ultimately adopted would be the severe taxation of all ships carrying more than a certain number of passengers to the hundred
tons. It is more than probable that within twenty years immigration as we now know it will be prohibited all over the world, and that Great Britain, Germany, and Italy will be compelled to meet the problem of growing populations without any relief from departures to other temperate climates, a change which will almost compel some grand alteration in the social systems of Europe.
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