Book Review

The Lustre of Our Country: The American Experience of Religious Freedom. By John T. Noonan Jr. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. xiii, 436 pp. $35.00, isbn 0-520-20997-4.)

In Common Sense (1776), Thomas Paine called upon Americans to "receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind." His words provide the title for Marilyn C. Baseler's careful study of the origins of immigration policy in the United States.	1
By 1800 the new nation had opened its doors to nearly all Europeans. American asylum was limited and flawed, "built at the expense of dispossessed natives and enslaved Africans." However, most European immigrants were offered virtually all of the rights guaranteed to native-born whites—including religious freedom. John T. Noonan Jr.'s book takes its title from James Madison, who wrote that freedom of religion promised "a lustre to our country."	2
The British, Baseler finds, were the first to see America as a place of asylum. While other nations tried to keep their populations at home, the British thought their colonies could siphon off troublesome people, including Catholics, Quakers, convicts, and the idle poor. After 1660 the British tried to attract settlers from other European nations. Toward that end, a greater degree of religious and political freedom was offered in the British colonies than anywhere in the Old World. But the British motives were pragmatic.	3
The new American nation came to support asylum on principle. As Bernard Bailyn (Baseler's mentor) has shown, Whigs had long considered England a haven for liberty. American Whigs came to believe that the king conspired against liberty both at home and in the colonies. Their Declaration of Independence charged, among other things, that he had limited immigration to the colonies. Ideas that drove Americans to Revolution led them to an ambiguous position on immigration: they cherished the notion of asylum but feared the influence of corrupt foreigners upon the Republic.	4
State legislatures closed the doors to convicts and were slow to repatriate returning Loyalists. Most did not subsidize immigration. Policy varied from one colony to the next and evolved over time—but Baseler concludes that policies were remarkably liberal by 1790.	5
In the next decade, political parties emerged that differed on this issue as well as others. At first, Federalists favored immigration, expecting immigrants to strengthen the economy without having much voice in politics. Jeffersonians, on the other hand, were torn between an abstract commitment to asylum and a fear of foreign corruption. Their positions changed as a result of the Quasi-War with France at the end of the decade. Federalists became xenophobic and passed the Alien, Sedition, and Naturalization Acts. Jeffersonians became the champions of a more open policy.	6
The Naturalization Act of 1802 set the basic outlines of American policy for the next century. The United States would not subsidize immigration or accept convicts from other nations. Aliens would be required to register with the government. "Alien enemies"—immigrants from nations at war with the United States—would be subject to scrutiny and restricted liberty. But most Europeans would be given full naturalization at the end of five years of residency.	. . .