CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



ng it a pen*] offense for a citizen of the United 

 Ch'meM) subject* to take Chinese subjects 



laws mnkii 

 States or ' 



either to tin- United States or to any other foreign 



country, or for a Chine-to subject or citizen <>t' tin; 



<f States to take citizens of the United States to 



China or to any other foreign country, without their 



.(1 voluntary consent, reflectively. 

 \ itt. VI. Citizens of the United States visiting or 

 rcsidi'iir in china >hn\\ enjoy the same privileges, im- 

 munitic-i, or exemptions in' respect to travel or resi- 

 dence as may there bo enjoyed by the citizens or sub- 

 jects of the moat favored nation: and ; reciprocally. 

 Chinese subjects visiting or residing in the United 

 States shall enjoy the sumo privile/es, immunities, 

 and exemptions m respect to travel or residence as 

 may there bo enjoyed by the citizens or subjects ot 

 the most fUvorou nation. But nothing herein con- 

 tained shall be held to confer naturalization upon citi- 

 zens of the United States in China, nor upon the sub- 

 jects of China in the United States." 



An examination of these two articles in the light of 

 tho experience then influential in suggesting their 

 " necessity " will show that tho fifth articlo was mimed 

 in hostility to what seemed the principal mischief to 

 bo guarded against, to wit. the introduction of Chinese 

 laborers by methods whicn should have tho character 

 of a foroca and servile importation, and not of a vol- 

 untary emigration of freemen seeking our shores upon 

 motives and in a manner consonant with tho system 

 of our institutions and approved by tho experience of 

 the nation. Unquestionably tho adhesion of the Gov- 

 ernment of China to these liberal principles of free- 

 dom in emigration, with which wo wcro so familiar 

 and with which wo were so well satisfied, was a great 

 advance toward opening that empire to our civilization 

 and religion, and gave promise in the future of greater 

 and greater practical results in the diffusion through- 

 out that great population of our arts and industries, 

 our manufactures, our material improvements, and 

 the sentiments or government and religion which 

 seem to us so important to the welfare of mankind. 

 The first clause ofthu articlo secures this acceptance 

 by China of tho American doctrines of free migra- 

 tion to and fro among the peoples and races of the 

 earth. 



The second clause, however, in its reprobation of 

 "any other than entirely voluntary emigration" by 

 both the high contracting parties, and in the recipro- 

 cal obligations whereby we secured the solemn and 

 unqualified engagement on the part of the Government 

 of China " to pass laws making it a penal offense for 

 a citizen of the United States or Chinese subjects to 

 take Chinese subjects either to the United States or to 

 any other foreign country without their free and vol- 

 untary consent," constitutes the great force and value 

 of this article. Its importance both in principle and 

 in its practical service toward our protection against 

 servile importation in the guise of immigration can 

 not be over-estimated. It commits the Chinese Gov- 

 ernment to active and efficient measures to suppress 

 this iniquitous system where those measures are most 

 necessary and con be most effectual. It gives to this 

 Government the footing of a treaty right to such mea- 

 sures, and the means and opportunity of insisting upon 

 their adoption and of complaint and resentment at 

 their neglect. The fifth article, therefore, if it fall 

 short of what the pressure of the later experience of 

 OUT Pacific States may urge upon the attention of tills 

 Government as essential to the public welfare, seems 

 to be in the right direction and to contain important 

 advantages which onoe relinquished can not bo easily 

 recovered. 



The second topic which interested the two govern- 

 ments under the actual condition of things which 

 prompted the Burlingame treaty was adequate protec- 

 tion, under the solemn and definite guarantees of a 

 treaty, of the Chinese already in this country and 

 those who should seek our shores. This was the 

 object and forms the subject of tho sixth article, by 

 whose reciprocal engagement the citizens and subjects 

 of the two governments, respectively, visiting or re- 

 VOL. xix. 15 A 



hiding in the country of the other, are secured the 

 same privileges, immunities or exemption* there en- 

 joyed by the citizens or subject* of the most favored 

 nations. Tho treaty of 1858, to which these article* 

 are made supplemental, provides for a great amount 

 of privilege und protection, both of person and prop- 

 erty, to American citizens in China, but it is upon 

 this sixth article that the main body of the treaty 

 righto and securities of the Chinese already in thw 

 country depends. Its abrogation, were the rest of the 

 treaty left in force, would leave them to such treat- 

 ment as we should voluntarily accord them by our 

 laws and customs. Any treaty obligation would be 

 wanting to restrain our liberty of action toward them, 

 or to measure or sustain the nght of tho Chinese Gov- 

 ernment to complaint or redress in their behalf. 



The lapse of ten years since the negotiation of the 

 Burlingame treaty has exhibited to the notice of the 

 Chinese Government, as well as to our own people, the 

 working of this experiment of immigration in great 

 numbers of Chinese laborers to this country, and their 

 maintenance here of all the traits of race, religion, 

 manners and customs, habitations, mode of life, ana 

 segregation here, and the keeping up of the ties of 

 their original home, which stamp them as strangers 

 and sojourners, and not as incorporated elements of 

 our national life and growth. This experience may 

 naturally suggest the reconsideration of the subject, as 

 dealt with by the Burlingame treaty, and may proper- 

 ly become the occasion ot more direct and circumspect 

 recognition, in renewed negotiations, of the difficulties 

 surrounding this political and social problem. It may 

 well be that to the apprehension of the Chinese Gov- 

 ernment no less than our own the simple provisions 

 of the Burlingame treaty may need to be replaced by 

 more careful methods, securing the Chinese and our- 

 selves against a larger and more rapid infusion of this 

 foreign race than our system of industry and society 

 can take up and assimilate with ease and safety. This 

 ancient Government, ruling a polite and sensitive peo- 

 ple, distinguished by a high sense of national pride, 

 may properly desire an adjustment of their relations 

 with us, which would in all things confirm, and in no 

 degree endanger, the permanent peace and amity and 

 the growing commerce and prosperity which it has 

 been the object and the effect of our existing treaties 

 to cherish and perpetuate. 



I regard tho very grave discontents of the people of 

 the Pacific States with the present working of the Chi- 

 ne.-e immigration, and their still graver apprehensions 

 therefrom in the future, as deserving tho most serious 

 attention of the people of the whole country and a 

 solicitous interest on the part of Congress and the Ex- 

 ecutive. If thw were not my own judgment, the pas- 

 sage of this bill by both Houses of Congress would 

 impress upon me the seriousness of the situation, when 

 a majority of the representatives of the people of the 

 whole country had thought it to justify so serious a 

 measure of relief. 



The authority of Congress to terminate a treaty with 

 a foreign power, by expressing the will of the nation no 

 longer to adhere to it, is as free from controversy un- 

 der our Constitution as Is the further proposition that 

 the power of making new treaties or modifying existing 

 treaties is not lodged by the Constitution in Congress, 

 but hi the President, by and with tho advice and con- 

 sent of tho Senate, as shown by the concurrence of two 

 thirds of that body. A denunciation of- a treaty by 

 any government is ? confessedly ? justifiable only upon 

 some reason both ot the highest justice and of the high- 

 est necessity. The action of Congress in tho matter of 

 the French treaties in 1798, if it be regarded as an ab- 

 rogation by this nation of a subsisting treaty, strongly 

 illustrates the character and degree of justification 

 which was then thought suitable to such a proceeding. 

 Tho preamble of the act recites that " the treaties con- 

 cluded between the United States and France have 

 boon repeatedly violated on the part of the French 

 Government, and the just claims of the United States 

 for reparation of the injuries so committed have been 

 refused, and their attempts to negotiate an amicable 



