CHINESE TREATY AND LEGISLATION
Much of what I have said in the preceding chapter is, in substance,
applicable to my vote on another matter in which I had been
compelled to take an attitude in opposition to a large majority
of my own party and to the temporary judgment of my countrymen:
that is the proposed legislation in violation of the Treaty
with China; the subsequent Treaty modifying that negotiated
in 1868 by Mr. Seward on our part, and Mr. Burlingame for
China; and the laws which have been enacted since, upon the
subject of Chinese immigration. I had the high honor of being
hung in effigy in Nevada by reason of the report that I had
opposed, in secret Session of the Senate, the Treaty of 1880.
My honored colleague, Mr. Dawes, and I were entirely agreed
in the matter. Mr. Dawes complained good-naturedly to Senator
Jones, of Nevada, that he had been neglected when the Nevada
people had singled me out for that sole honor, to which Mr.
Jones, with equal good-nature, replied that if Mr. Dawes
desired, he would have measures taken to correct the error,
which had inadvertently been made.
In 1868 the late Anson Burlingame, an old friend of mine
and a man highly esteemed in Massachusetts, who had been
sent to China as the American Minister in Mr. Lincoln's time,
was appointed by the Chinese Government its Ambassador, or
Envoy, to negotiate treaties with the United States and several
European powers. He made a journey through this country and
Europe, travelling with Oriental magnificence, in a state
which he was well calculated to maintain and adorn. It was
just after we had put down the Rebellion, abolished slavery,
and made of every slave a freeman and every freeman a citizen.
The hearts of the people were full of the great doctrines
of liberty which Jefferson and the Fathers of our country
had learned from Milton and the statesmen of the English Commonwealth.
The Chinese Treaty was concluded on the 28th of July, 1868,
between Mr. Seward and Mr. Burlingame and his associate Plenipotentiaries
Chih-Kang and Sun Chia-Ku. It contained the following clause:
"The United States of American and the Emperor of China cordially
recognize the inherent and inalienable right of man to change
his home and allegiance, and also the mutual advantage of
free migration and emigration of their citizens and subjects
respectively from one country to the other for purposes of
curiosity, of trade, or as permanent residents."
Article VII. of the same Treaty stipulated that citizens of
each power should enjoy all the privileges of the public
educational institutions under the control of the government of
the other, enjoyed by the citizens or the subjects of the most
favored nation, and that the citizens of each might, themselves,
establish schools in the others' country. Congress passed
an Act, July 27, 1868, to a like effect, to which the following
is the preamble to the first section:
"Whereas the right of expatriation is a natural and inherent
right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the
rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and
whereas in the recognition of this principle this government
has freely received emigrants from all nations, and invested
them with the rights of citizenship; and whereas it is claimed
that such American citizens, with their descendants, are subjects
of foreign states, owing allegiance to the governments thereof;
and whereas it is necessary to the maintenance of public peace
that this claim of foreign allegiance should be promptly and
finally disavowed: Therefore," etc.
Thereafter, in the first term of the Administration of President
Hayes, in the December Session of 1878, a bill was introduced
which, almost defiantly, as it seemed to me, violated the
faith of the country pledged by the Burlingame Treaty. There
had been no attempt to induce China to modify that Treaty.
I resisted its passage as well as I could. But my objection
had little effect in the excited condition of public sentiment.
The people of the Pacific coast were, not unnaturally, excited
and alarmed by the importation into their principal cities
of Chinese laborers, fearing, I think without much reason,
that American laboring men could not maintain themselves in
the competition with this thrifty and industrious race who
lived on food that no American could tolerate, and who had
no families to support, and who crowded together, like sardines
in a box, in close and unhealthy sleeping apartments.
I supposed that the labor of this inferior class would raise the
condition of better and more intelligent laborers. That,
however, was a fairly disputable question. But I could not
consent to striking at men, as I have just said, because of
their occupation. This bill was vetoed by President Hayes,
who put his objections solely upon the ground that the bill
was in violation of the terms of the existing Treaty. The
House, by a vote of 138 yeas to 116 nays, refused to pass
the bill over the veto.
But in 1880 a Treaty was negotiated, and approved by the Senate
and ratified July 19, 1881, which relieved the United States
from the provisions of the Burlingame Treaty, and permitted
the exclusion of Chinese laborers. I made a very earnest
speech, during a debate on this Treaty in Executive Session
of the Senate, in opposition to it. The Senate did me the
honor, on the motion of Mr. Dawes, of a vote authorizing my
speech to be published, notwithstanding the rule of secrecy.
But one Senator from the Pacific coast complained, I think
with some reason, that I was permitted to publish my argument
on one side when he not only was not permitted to publish
his on the other, but his constituents had no means of knowing
that he had defended his views or made proper answer to mine.
So I thought it hardly fair to make by speech public, and
it was not done.
Later, in the spring of 1882, a bill was passed to carry
into effect the Treaty of 1880. That I resisted as best I
could. In opposition to this bill I made an earnest speech
showing it to be in conflict with the doctrines on which our
fathers founded the Republic; with the principles of the
Constitutions of nearly all the States, including that of
California, and with the declarations of leading statesmen down
to the year 1868. I showed also that the Chinese race had
shown examples of the highest qualities of manhood, of intelligence,
probity and industry. I protested against a compact between
the two greatest nations of the Pacific, just as we were about
to assert our great influence there, which should place in
the public law of the world, and in the jurisprudence of America,
the principle that it is fitting that there should be hereafter
a distinction in the treatment of men by governments and in
the recognition of their right to the pursuit of happiness
by a peaceful change of their homes, based, not on conduct,
not on character, but upon race and occupation; by asserting
that you might justly deny to the Chinese what you might not
justly deny to the Irish, that you might justly deny to the
laborer what you might not deny to the idler. I pointed out
that this declaration was extorted from unwilling China by
the demand of America; and that laborers were henceforth to
be classed, in the enumeration of American public law, with
paupers, lazzaroni, harlots, and persons afflicted with pestilential
diseases. I ended what I had to say as follows:
"Humanity, capable of infinite depths of degradation, is also
capable of infinite heights of excellence. The Chinese,
like all other races, has given us its examples of both. To
rescue humanity from this degradation is, we are taught to
believe, the great object of God's moral government on earth.
It is not by injustice, exclusion, caste, but by reverence
for the individual soul that we can aid in this consummation.
It is not by Chinese policies that China is to be civilized.
I believe that the immortal truths of the Declaration of Independence
came from the same source with the Golden Rule and the Sermon
on the Mount. We can trust Him who promulgated these laws
to keep the country safe that obeys them. The laws of the
universe have their own sanction. They will not fail. The
power that causes the compass to point to the north, that
dismisses the star on its pathway through the skies, promising
that in a thousand years it shall return again true to its
hour and keeps His word, will vindicate His own moral law.
As surely as the path on which our fathers entered a hundred
years ago led to safety, to strength, to glory, so surely
will the path on which we now propose to enter bring us to
shame, to weakness, and to peril."
The Statute then enacted, expired by its own limitations
twenty years afterward. Meantime the prejudice against Chinese
labor had modified somewhat. The public had become somewhat
more considerate of their rights and, at any rate, there was
a desire to maintain some show of decency in legislating the
matter. So a more moderate Statute was enacted in 1902. I
was the only person who voted against it in either House.
It was, of course, clear that resistance was useless. It
was not worth while, it seemed to me, to undertake to express
my objections at length. I contented myself with the following
brief remonstrance:
"Mr. President, I think this bill and this debate indicate
a great progress in sentiment. The sentiment of the country
has passed, certainly so far as it is represented by a majority
of the Senate, the stage, if it ever was in it, of a reckless
seeking to accomplish the result of Chinese exclusion without
regard to constitutional restraints, treaty obligations, or
moral duties. There was in some quarters, as it seemed to
me, in olden times, a disregard of all these restraints, certainly
in the press, certainly in the harangues which were made to
excited crowds in various parts of the country. Among others
I can remember a visit of the apostle of Chinese exclusion
to Boston Common which indicated that spirit.
"Now, that has gone largely, and the Senate has discussed
this question with a temperate desire on the part of all classes
and all Senators, whatever ways of thinking they have, to
do what seemed to them for the benefit of labor, the quality
of the citizenship of this country, in a moderate and constitutional
fashion.
"But I cannot agree with the principle on which this legislation
or any legislation on the subject which we have had in the
country since 1870 rests. I feel bound to enter a protest.
I believe that everything in the way of Chinese exclusion
can be accomplished by reasonable, practical and wise measures
which will not involve the principle of striking at labor,
and will not involve the principle of striking at any class
of human beings merely because of race, without regard to
the personal and individual worth of the man struck at. I
hold that every human soul has its rights, dependent upon
its individual personal worth and not dependent upon color
or race, and that all races, all colors, all nationalities
contain persons entitled to be recognized everywhere they go
on the face of the earth as the equals of every other man."
I do not think any man ever hated more than I have hated the
affectation or the reality of singularity. I know very well
that the American people mean to do right, and I believe with
all my heart that the men and the party with whom I have acted
for fifty years mean to do right. I believe the judgment
of both far better than my own. But every man's conscience
is given to him as the lamp for his path. He cannot walk
by another light.
It is also true that the great political principles which
have been in issue for the last thirty years, have been, in
general, those that have been debated for centuries, and
which cannot be settled by a single vote, in a legislative
body, by the result of a single election, or even by the opinion
of a single generation. In nearly every one of what I am
sorry to say are the numerous instances where I have been
compelled to act upon my judgment against that of my own party,
and even against that of the majority of my own countrymen,
the people have subsequently come around to my way of thinking,
and in all of them, I believe, I have had on my side the opinion
of the great men of the great generations of the past. Certainly
the Chinese Exclusion Bill and the Chinese Treaty; the Spanish
Treaty and the War against the Philippine people could not
have lived an hour before the indignation of the American
people at any time from the beginning down to the time when,
in 1876, they celebrated the centennial of their Independence.