122 Transactions of the 



to hotter his condition; wo will ask him to givo lis his aid in our 

 extreniity, for wo " aro not on hods of roses,'' and, working together, 

 stimulate human industry hy securing to its exercise the proper 

 reward, admitting the right of every man to state his own jn-oposi- 

 tions in his own language. I have givon the foregoing specimens as 

 illustrative of the tone, temper and exhaustive intolligonce of those 

 who demand our respect and confidence when they utter them. 



Let us turn now to the more important matters they i^ropose. In 

 this land of ours there has always hoen a paucity of i)eople. Our 

 resources have been undeveloped from that cause. The want is as 

 fully felt to-day as it was a hundred years ago. At the same time 

 the governments of those countries from which we could expect 

 recruits refused us the necessary encouragement to imniigration. To 

 this end they declared the dogma that the original allegiance of a 

 man to the country of his birth could not by any act of his he termi- 

 nated nor transferred. In short, self-expatriation was denounced. 

 Once a Briton, once a Prussian, always such, was declared to be the 

 law. 



In our early colonial history our people rejected this attempt to 

 limit man's right of selecting his own domicil. One of the assigned 

 causes of our revolt against George the Third was that he had refused 

 his assent to the right of expatriation, and we fought the war of the 

 Revolution in the maintainance of our ojjinion. In eighteen hun- 

 dred and twelve the question returned. Our seamen were impressed, 

 because England claimed tiiom as hers by birth. Another war suc- 

 ceeded, and a sort of grumbling acquiescence was given to our posi- 

 tion. 



Nearly a half century later, a man who was not a citizen, having 

 declared his intentions to become such, was attempted by the gov- 

 ernment of the country in which he was born to be subjected to its 

 service and control. An officer of our navy received him on board 

 his frigate and refused to surrender him, on the ground not that he 

 owed allegiance to the United States, but that he had taken the first 

 step in that direction, and, as having expatriated himself in that act 

 in our favor, was entitled to our protection. Our whole country 

 approved this act of Commander Tngraham, and Kosta was l)rought 

 or sent to America. When the liurlingamc treaty was made with 

 China, this American doctrine was reiterated in the most solemn 

 form and in its largest extent. 



To go back entirely or partially upon our former position, as to this 

 right of a man to go anywhere he i)leases to seek his fortune, seems 

 to be the general tendency of public o])inion. It is true that the 

 exciting cause of this new dej)arture is the presence of one national- 

 ity — the Chinese. But to be human is sometimes to be logical; and 

 it is seen that it will be necessary to devise expedients which, while 

 they will have a peculiar efiect upon the Chinese, will seem in their 

 terms to apply to all alike. I confess that when I see the possibility 

 of the myriads of the j)opulation of China jtouring down upon this 

 coast, I am dismayed ; but when I see that we found ourselves upon 

 the theory that all men aro created equal and aro ociually entitled to 

 life, liberty of locomotion, and pursuit of happiness whorovor that 

 X)anthom leads the way, I am sorry that the foun tiers of this govern- 

 ment had not excepted Asiatics from those men thus blessed ; and 

 when we see twenty millions of them dying of starvation in a land 

 where food is so abundant, simply from over-population, I confess I 



