192 



CONGRESS. (CHINESE EXCLUSION.) 



owners of these vessels that the American flag 

 shall float above them instead of the flag of 

 Great Britain. It is the old flag and an ap- 

 propriation ' again. Patriotism always comes 

 to Congress, but it comes for dollars, and this 

 company would not be so desirous to transfer 

 the flag of Great Britain back to some British 

 vessels and place upon its own vessels the Stars 

 and Stripes, except that dollars are to be made 

 by the transaction. If this company has the 

 right to make these dollars, then every citizen of 

 the United States has the same equal right, and 

 this Senate, representing the States and the peo- 

 ple of the United States, ought to so make the 

 laws that they shall render equal and exact jus- 

 tice to all.'' 



The President approved of the measure May 

 11. 



Chinese Exclusion. On April 4, 1892, a bill 

 reported by Mr. Geary, of California, was passed 

 by the House, on suspension of the rules. It 

 was designed "to absolutely prohibit the coming 

 of Chinese persons into the United States." Mr. 

 Hitt, of Illinois, said in opposition to the meas- 

 ure: 



" Mr. Speaker, the great and fatal objection to 

 this bill in the mind of any man of truth who 

 regards his country's honor is, that it deliberate- 

 ly violates our plighted faith as we wrote it 

 down in a solemn treaty and proposed it to an- 

 other government, they assenting to it reluctant- 

 ly at our persuasion. That treaty is now in full 

 force and binding upon the American Govern- 

 ment. There are many considerations of inter- 

 est, many great losses in business, that will fol- 

 low the complete nonintercourse it would pro- 

 duce ; but they are of little importance compared 

 to this proposed shame in falsifying our word as 

 a nation in a legislative step so deliberately 

 taken. 



" We have had many anti-Chinese bills here, 

 each more stringent and harsher than the pre- 

 ceding. They come every other year with the 

 elections, and the writer searches the dictionary 

 for words to surpass predecessors. Heretofore 

 they were aimed at Chinese laborers, and I will 

 join in legislation to exclude laborers and sup- 

 port negotiations to exclude Chinese laborers. 

 But this bill goes far beyond that. It does not 

 mention them. The House has voted for severe 

 bills to exclude them, and tried to keep within 

 the treaty. This bill emulates barbarians, in ex- 

 cluding and punishing when found on our soil 

 every man, the most exalted and the humblest, 

 of a great nation, and does it in avowed viola- 

 tion of faith and truth. Never before did we, 

 nor any other legislative body, with cold cyni- 

 cism, with absolute disregard of the moral sense, 

 violate faith and avow that we were doing it. 

 We have now a treaty which says ' shall not ab- 

 solutely prohibit,' and this bill selects those 

 very words from the treaty Tor its title in order 

 to make it more insulting a bill to absolutely 

 prohibit the coming of Chinese persons into the 

 United States. 



" We have in that tre?ty a provision that 

 ' Chinese subjects, whether proceeding to the 

 United States as teachers, students, merchants, 

 or from curiosity, together with their body and 

 household servants, and Chinese laborers now in 

 the United States, shall be allowed to go and 



come of their own free will and accord, and 

 shall be accorded all the rights, privileges, im- 

 munities, and exemptions which are accorded to 

 the citizens and subjects of the most favored 

 nations.' This bill flagrantly violates that pro- 

 vision by excluding all these classes, and punish- 

 ing them cruelly if found here ; but it crowns 

 all in the last section, where it deliberately, with 

 a cold perfidy that language can not exceed, de- 

 clares that all treaties and parts of treaties that 

 are in conflict with this act are repealed, set 

 aside, and abrogated. Mark, it proposes to save 

 all those parts of the treaties which are of advan- 

 tage to us, such as the guarantee to American 

 citizens in China of the rights of the most 

 favored nation, and hold China as bound by 



Sublic faith to observe them. Suppose we were 

 ealing with England and the situations were 

 reversed, who is there here who would not vote 

 for a declaration of nonintercourse or war? 



"At this time we are claiming and exercising 

 in 20 cities in China wide privileges for Amer- 

 ican citizens under this treaty. 



" To-day the missionaries are trembling amid 

 dangers, and there are Chinese soldiers guarding 

 American citizens in the disorders which prevail 

 in the Chinese Empire this upon the demand 

 of our minister based on this treaty : and now 

 we propose to revoke all that part of the treaty 

 which gives any advantage or protection to a 

 subject of China, and then to claim that they, as 

 honorable men, shall carry out all that they 

 covenanted with us ! 



" Nothing akhrin form to the abrogation of a 

 treaty has ever been tried in the history of this 

 country, save once, in 1798, and then Congress 

 solemnly declared that the French having 

 violated their treaty obligations, carried on a war 

 of predatory violence upon us, rejected our 

 claims and repelled every offer of negotiation 

 with indignity, the treaty with them was at an 

 end. But the cold, deliberate assertion in the 

 solemn form of law that one party will, without 

 cause, set aside an international compact which 

 the other party has scrupulously observed, is 

 without precedent. Has China wronged us in 

 anything? She has scrupulously regarded the 

 treaty. Has she rejected our claims? You, sir, 

 have taken part in legislation here to send back 

 hundreds of thousands of dollars overpaid by 

 China on our claims. The Chinese have been pa- 

 tient in a way and to a degree unknown to us, 

 listening with calmness and dignity to our pro- 

 posals of successive harsh measures ; and shall 

 we now address them in such unchristian lan- 

 guage as this ? 



" We are sending missionaries there with the 

 Bible of God, and when the Chinese open its 

 pages they read, ' Thou shalt not lie.' The 

 Christian people we represent protest against 

 this. Here are protests from the conferences of 

 95.000 Methodists in New Jersey. We violate 

 faith to do acts that would be barbarism if there 

 were no treaty. If the late Chinese minister, 

 who recently left here, now a private subject, 

 and in whose house, while he was here, I have 

 seen Representatives and Senators as guests at 

 his entertainments, should dare now to come 

 back to call upon his successor, or to shake hands 

 with any of the gentlemen whom he then enter- 

 tained, under this bill, if it be 1 enacted, he would 



