CALIFORNIA. 



77 



The Legislature shall have and shall exercise the 

 power to enact all needful laws, and prescribe ne- 

 cessary regulations for the protection of the State, 

 and the counties, cities, and towns thereof, from the 

 burdens and evils arising from the presence of aliens, 

 who are or who may become vagrants, paupers, men- 

 dicants, criminals, or invalids afflicted with conta- 

 gious or infectious diseases, and aliens ortherwise 

 dangerous or detrimental to the well-being or peace 

 of the State, and to impose conditions upon which 

 such persons may reside in the State, and to provide 

 the means and mode of their removal from the State 

 upon failure or refusal to comply with such condi- 

 tions : provided, that nothing contained in the fore- 

 going shall be construed to impair or limit the power 

 of the Legislature to pass such other police laws or 

 regulations as it may deem necessary. 



This plan was based on the assumption that 

 the State had not the power within itself to set- 

 tle this question. It was believed, however, by 

 all the Committee that the State had the pow- 

 er to protect itself from vagrants, paupers, crim- 

 inals, etc., under its police powers, and for self- 

 preservation. This did not interfere with the 

 rights of Congress to regulate commerce. It 

 was proposed that courts should be established 

 in San Francisco and elsewhere, where vagrants, 

 mendicants, and others could be examined, and, 

 if it was found that they were likely to become 

 chargeable upon the tax-payers, placed in safe 

 keeping until they could be removed from the 

 State. With respect to criminals it was pro- 

 posed that after they had been convicted, in- 

 stead of being sent to prison, they should be 

 deported from the State. This was a sort of 

 banishment. California had tried, by means 

 of the capitation tax and by preventing the 

 landing of lewd women, to rid itself from the 

 dangers of Chinese immigration, but these 

 statutes had been declared in contravention of 

 the Federal Constitution. The suggestions con- 

 tained in the first section did not come within 

 the inhibition of the Federal Constitution, and 

 the opinion of Justice Wayne in passengers' 

 cases was quoted in support of this theory. 

 In the passenger cases it was proposed by the 

 Legislatures of New York and Massachusetts to 

 impose a tax of $1.50 on each passenger, or re- 

 quire bonds of $450 from captains of vessels 

 that the passengers should not become a charge 

 upon the States. The United States Supreme 

 Court decided that these enactments of the two 

 States were unconstitutional, being a regulation 

 of commerce ; but it was admitted in the deci- 

 sion that the States had the right in the exer- 

 cise of police powers to protect themselves 

 from criminal vagrants and other dangerous 

 classes. No denial was made that the pro- 

 visions contained in this section were strictly 

 within the limits of the police powers of the 

 State, and might have been exercised by the 

 Legislature. In Bump's notes on United States 

 decisions it is laid down : " A State has the 

 same undeniable and unlimited jurisdiction over 

 all persons and things within its territorial 

 limits as any foreign nation, where that juris- 

 diction is not surrendered or restrained by the 

 Constitution. By virtue of this, it not only is 



the right but the solemn and bounden duty of 

 a State to advance the safety, happiness, and 

 prosperity of its people, and to provide for its 

 general welfare by any and every act of legis- 

 lation which it may deem to be conducive to 

 those ends, where the power over the particu- 

 lar subject, or the manner of its exercise, is 

 not surrendered or restrained. All these pow- 

 ers, which relate to merely municipal legisla- 

 tion, or what may perhaps more properly be 

 called internal police, are not thus surrendered 

 or restrained ; and consequently in relation to 

 these the authority of a State is complete, un- 

 qualified, and exclusive." The same author 

 also states: "The State may pass poor-laws 

 and laws to prevent the introduction of paupers 

 or persons likely to become paupers." 



The remarks of the "Sacramento Record" 

 on this plan proposed to the Convention are 

 too appropriate to be omitted : 



If it is sought to regulate Chinese immigration on 

 the ground that the State has the right to prohibit 

 the importation of paupers, vagrants, and criminals, 

 we fear the attempt will prove a failure. The great 

 majority of the Chinese who land in this country 

 would not come under either of those heads, unless 

 the law was so strained in administering it as to per- 

 vert the language utterly. The Chinese are, as every- 

 body knows, one of the most industrious races on the 

 face of the earth. It is their industry that renders 

 them so dangerous to our civilization. They are not 

 only always willing to work, but they will work for 

 a wage which most white men would find insufficient 

 to support life upon. They are neither paupers nor 

 vagrants, and to attempt to put them in sucn a cate- 

 gory would almost certainly end in failure. 



The second plan of treating the subject was 

 embraced in the next section of the report of 

 the Committee, and was as follows : 



All further immigration to this State of Chinese, 

 and all other persons ineligible to become citizens of 

 the United States under the naturalization laws there- 

 of, is hereby prohibited. The Legislature shall pro- 

 vide for the enforcement of this section by appropri- 

 ate legislation. 



A division of opinion appeared before the 

 Committee relative to the powers of the State, 

 one side holding that the State had no power 

 to enforce such a prohibition, and the other 

 that it had the power. Several decisions of 

 the United States Supreme Court were referred 

 to, as showing that the section incorporated 

 a power belonging to the Federal Government. 

 A memorial to Congress was suggested, request- 

 ing legislation on the Chinese question, and 

 another to the treaty-making power to modify 

 the Burlingame treaty. It was urged that an 

 attempt to nullify an act of Congress, or to 

 interfere with the powers of the Government, 

 would raise an antagonistic feeling all through 

 the Eastern States. 



The third plan proposed in the report of 

 the Committee was contained in the following 

 sections : 



SEC. 6. Foreigners ineligible to become citizens of 

 the United States shall not have the right to sue or 

 be sued in any of the courts of this State ; and any 

 lawyer appearing for or against them, or any of them, 



