CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



163 



it is now the purpose of a majority of this body 

 to proceed to prohibit, not to suspend, but to 

 proceed to do the one thing which we promised 

 we would not do, and which our commission- 

 ers assured China might be left to the justice 

 and good faith of the people of the United 

 States." 



Mr. Edmunds, of Vermont : "The bill does 

 not provide that the subjects of the Emperor 

 of China who are now in the United States 

 lawfully shall go away; it does not provide 

 that any person who is within our borders 

 shall do or suffer anything whatever; but it 

 simply provides, with the consent of the Gov- 

 ernment of China (which has a right to be a 

 government of some kind or other, I suppose), 

 that a certain class of the subjects of that em- 

 pire shall not come into our community for a 

 certain period of years. 



"That is the proposition; and like every 

 other such proposition, whether you go into 

 the moral law about crimes or not, it is a 

 question that depends upon the just judgment 

 (and that every man must judge about for 

 himself), the policy of the community, the 

 State, or the nation. It has always been so; 

 it always must be so until every government is 

 broken down, as the Nihilists propose to break 

 down the Government of Russia and I wish 

 it were broken down as it is now organized, 

 not by such wicked means, but by such just 

 means as our forefathers broke down the gov- 

 ernment of the King of Great Britain in this 

 country but it must depend always upon 

 what the people organized into a community 

 think it is fit to do. 



" My learned friend says that that is not a 

 sound proposition. He says that homogeneity 

 is not, according to the historic experience of 

 civilized peoples, necessary to the success of a 

 republic, and he says that the Greek republics 

 did not have a homogeneous population. So 

 they did not ; and where are the Greek repub- 

 lics now? How long did they last, and what 

 caused their fall? Exactly that thing, that 

 they did not possess that quality in most of the 

 instances of the Greek republics, and away 

 they went. 



" My honorable friend says that the Swiss 

 Republic is not homogeneous. I deny it. The 

 difference in language, the difference, not in 

 race (for there is no difference in race in the 

 Swiss Republic), but the difference in varieties 

 of the same race that are analogous, that are 

 consistent with each other, does exist, and they 

 get on. Does my honorable friend think that 

 it is an advantage to a republic that its citizens 

 should be made up of diverse races, of diverse 

 views, of diverse obligations, of diverse opin- 

 ions as to what the common prosperity of all 

 requires ? He can not say so. I am sure he 

 will not. Therefore, why is it that we are so 

 continually reminded by my honorable friend 

 and others that we are violating the principles 

 of the foundation of republican governments 

 in undertaking to say this simple thing ? I am 



not speaking of the way we are saying it at 

 this moment, but the principle that lies at the 

 bottom of this bill and which surrounds it on 

 every side, as to the right of the people of the 

 United States, consistently with the moral law, 

 with the law of Christianity, and with the law 

 of nations, to make a regulation as to the re- 

 ception of foreigners into the body of our Com- 

 monwealths. That is the proposition. My 

 honorable friend has not denied what I stated 

 yesterday, that every book upon natural law or 

 public law that I have had the pleasure of read- 

 ing asserts what I have asserted. 



u I repeat what I stated yesterday, that so 

 long as jou are to have government at all, that 

 government, like a family or a partnership, 

 must be the judge for itself as to what persons 

 it will take into the body of the people, that at 

 the last in our form of government constitute 

 the Government itself. It has always been so ; 

 it always will be so as long as governments last. 

 You can not have a government without it ; 

 you never have had one without it. 



" So, then, we stand ; and these Chinamen 

 having a right to come here under the Burlin- 

 game treaty, and it being thought, wisely or un- 

 wisely, with prejudice or without, that their 

 coming in the numbers and in the way and 

 of the character that they did was injurious to 

 the interests of the United States, it was pro- 

 vided by another treaty that the old treaty 

 should be abrogated, and that the United States 

 should be remitted to its original natural right 

 as a government of determining as to a certain 

 part of these Chinese people, named, specified, 

 and described, whether they should come or 

 not within a reasonable period of time, in or- 

 der to test the question by the experiment as 

 far as we had it already. Where is the harm 

 in that upon the widest principles of fair play, 

 upon the widest humanity, unless you say that 

 there is nothing in the nature of a government 

 which entitles one people to be the judges for 

 themselves of whom they shall take in ? I say 

 that to maintain that doctrine is to maintain a 

 proposition that is contrary to all human ex- 

 perience, is contrary to all human discussion 

 almost, until within a very short period, and is 

 contrary to every step that our fathers from 

 their Declaration of Independence to this day 

 have declared. There is no w upon your statute- 

 book a law which condemns the cooly trade, 

 as it is called, and punishes it by penalties 

 more severe, I think I have not looked at it 

 lately than the penalties of this bill, and 

 which puts, on the argument of the Senator 

 from Massachusetts, the seal of its unjust con- 

 demnation upon the man who is a servant. 

 We may, therefore, if that law be one that can 

 stand, say that a man shall not be brought into 

 this country, or in an American vessel carried 

 to any other, who is under any contract to 

 serve another man as a servant ; but we may 

 not say that he shall not come into our coun- 

 try in his character as a mere laborer for ten 

 years or twenty years, as the case may be? 



