An Act of general naturalisation would likewise probably increase
our numbers very fast, and repair what loss we may have suffered in
our people by the late war. It is a matter that has been very
warmly contended for by many good patriots; but peradventure it
carries also its danger with it, which perhaps would have the less
influence by this expedient, namely, if an Act of Parliament were
made, that no heads of families hereafter to be naturalised for the
first generation, should have votes in any of our elections. But as
the case stands, it seems against the nature of right government
that strangers (who may be spies, and who may have an interest
opposite to that of England, and who at best ever join in one link
of obsequiousness to the Ministers) should be suffered to
intermeddle in that important business of sending members to
Parliament. From their sons indeed there is less to fear, who by
birth and nature may come to have the same interest and inclinations
as the natives.
And though the expedient of Fabius Maximus, to contract the
strangers into four tribes, might be reasonable where the affairs of
a whole empire were transacted by magistrates chosen in one city,
yet the same policy may not hold good in England; foreigners cannot
influence elections here by being dispersed about in the several
counties of the kingdom, where they can never come to have any
considerable strength. But some time or other they may endanger the
government by being suffered to remain, such vast numbers of them
here in London where they inhabit altogether, at least 30,000
persons in two quarters of the town, without intermarrying with the
English, or learning our language, by which means for several years
to come they are in a way still to continue foreigners, and perhaps
may have a foreign interest and foreign inclinations; to permit this
cannot be advisable or safe.
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