The Daily Dispatch: February 4, 1861., [Electronic resource]

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Foreigners appealed to as a class--Mr. Botts
their Flatterer.

We do not remember so remarkable an instance of inconsistency as that of Mr. Jno. M. Botts' sudden change of relations towards foreigners. On Saturday night he bestowed upon them fulsome eulogies. Our own reporter, whose report is corroborated by a number of intelligent gentlemen, represents him as saying that as a member of the Know Nothing party he had thought the country was safer in the hands of Natives than Foreigners; but things had changed. He now had to call on foreigners to save the Union from desecration and destruction at the hands of the descendants of those who established the Government. He expressed his confidence in the foreigners and their readiness to save the Union. He took back all he had said hostile to them, and he did not believe he should ever say a word against them.

When it is remembered that only five years since, Mr. Botts used every effort in his power to disfranchise foreigners — that he entered a secret conclave and took an oath against them — that he was bound to oppose them for any office of trust, honor or profit — that he was bound to aid in restricting the immunities of all future emigrants to at least a twenty-one years residence before voting--(Mr. Botts declared himself in favor of denying them altogether the right to vote, in his own words, (‘"till doom's day"’)--and that he struggled with this organization, as one of its leaders in this State as long as it existed — we say when all this is remembered, we would be at a loss to account for his complete change of sentiment, and his expression of extreme confidence in the men he so lately distrusted, but that the change occurs just at the moment he wants their votes. He might have admitted his error; but to express that high faith in foreigners implied in the reliance upon them to save the Union from the descendants of those who established it, is as fulsome, and should be as disgusting to foreigners as it is offensive to his native fellow-citizens.

Such a shallow device to seduce the support of foreigners, who were so lately the object of his attacks, and whom he desired to deprive of all participation in the Government, and reduce to mere ‘"hewers of wood and drawers of water,"’ can hardly have its effect on any intelligent adopted citizen. Could any one be so influenced, he would indeed merit the disfranchisement Mr. Botts endeavored to visit upon him.

But what are native citizens to think of an attempt to bring in foreigners as a class to take upon themselves the province of preserving the Union from destruction at their hands? But is it not more than mere voting that Mr. Botts expects from foreigners in the matter of preserving the Constitution? Does he not count upon their enlistment to reduce the seceding States? Whatever be his expectations from the Germans, French, Italians and Irish, (as he himself enumerated them,) we believe he will be woefully disappointed. The foreigners are too shrewd and too patriotic to be deceived by Mr. Botts. and they will no doubt despise his disgusting effort to flatter and win them, to be again betrayed, whenever his personal interests make that politic.