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THE CHINESE 
 
 
 AND THE 
 
 CHINESE QUESTION 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES A. WHITNEY, LL.D. 
 
 CO UNSELLOR-A T-LA W 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 OF 
 
 NEW YORK 
 TIBBALS BOOK COMPANY 
 
 26 WARREN ST. 
 
 1888 
 
THE CHINESE 
 
 AND THE 
 
 CHINESE QUESTION 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES A. WHITNEY, LL.D. 
 
 CO UNSELLOR-A T-LA W 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 NEW YORK 
 TIBBALS BOOK COMPANY 
 
 26 WARREN ST. 
 
 1888 
 

 
 COPYRIGHT, 1888, 
 
 BY 
 JAMES A. WHITNEY. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 THE pages following are devoted to a subject second to 
 none in political importance ; one upon the determination 
 of which the ultimate destiny of our country and of our 
 people must depend. The events of the eight years that 
 have elapsed since the publication of the first edition have 
 but confirmed the views expressed in the latter, and have 
 afforded additional proof in abundance of the soundness 
 of the conclusions set forth therein. 
 
 Although, for convenience, it has been preferred to 
 divide the volume into chapters, the work as a whole, 
 relating to the Chinese question in its broad and varied 
 j phases, is composed of substantially four parts, each 
 I framed in the double aspect of illustrating in detail the 
 j branch to which it especially relates and the essential con- 
 / nection of that branch with the subject at large : thus, 
 ) from page i to page 72 relates to the Chinese, their work, 
 |i institutions, and character as a people, and their place and 
 ,\\ influence in former times among the nations and races of 
 the earth ; from page 72 to page 107, to their modern rela- 
 [ItioflS with the nations of the West ; from page 107 to page 
 j 141 to their advent and presence in our own country ; and 
 from page 141 et seq., to the methods dictated by policy 
 and law for their elimination from our domain. 
 
 The author may say here what he said in the preface to 
 the first edition, that in urging his convictions concerning 
 Chinese immigration, he speaks from no immature judg- 
 \ j ment and expresses no hastily formed opinion. His atten- 
 i 
 
iv PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 tion was first called to the subject during a visit to the 
 Pacific Coast eighteen years ago, and from that time to the : . 
 present it has been to him a matter of no inconsiderable 
 investigation and reflection. It is perhaps needless to 
 remark that these pages would not have been presented tc 
 public notice, had he not carefully verified his statement" 
 and were he not fully convinced as to what deductions 
 must inevitably be drawn from established facts. 
 
 140 Nassau Street, 
 
 NEW YORK CITY; September, 1888. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. Antiquity, solidarity, and racial persistence of the 
 
 Chinese, - l 
 
 II. Isolated evolution of China in Industries and Arts, 11 
 
 III. The traditions of China and the ideas of the West, - 19 
 
 IV. Chinese origin of prime factors in emergence of 
 
 Europe from barbarism, 24 
 
 V. Influence of the thought of China on the intellectual 
 
 development of the West, - 30 
 
 VI. Intensity and symmetry of the Chinese mind, - 34 
 
 VII. Racial proclivities of the Chinese and physical condi 
 tions under which they have developed, - 40 
 VIII. China but midway in her career, - 44 
 IX. Combined intellectual strength and savagery of the 
 
 Chinese, - 49 
 
 X. Vicious elements inherent in, but not impairing 
 
 strength of, Chinese character, 54 
 
 XI. Social and administrative sagacity of the Chinese, - 58 
 
 XII. Physical nature of the Chinese, - 63 
 
 XIII. Severity of conditions of life in China, 66 
 
 XIV. Origin of modern relations between the Caucasian 
 
 and the Chinese, 72 
 
 XV. Immediate results of interference with affairs of 
 
 China British trade and Tae-ping revolt, 81 
 
 XVI. Wanton aggressions of foreigners upon the govern 
 ment and people of China our national share in 
 the iniquity, - 87 
 
 XVII. Danger to China from industrial methods of the 
 
 West, - - 91 
 
VI 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PA8E 
 
 XVIII. American claims against China, 94 
 
 XIX. Unjustifiable interference of foreigners with local 
 
 and domestic affairs in China, - 97 
 
 XX. Military strength of China our foreign policy 
 
 with regard to her, 102 
 
 XXI. Inception and progress of Chinese immigration 
 
 to the Pacific Coast, - - 107 
 
 XXII. Injurious effects of Chinese immigration in Cali 
 
 fornia, 1 1 1 
 
 XXIII. True status of Chinese labor in this country, - 116 
 
 XXIV. Chinese cheap labor on the Pacific coast affects 
 
 industries even to the Atlantic seaboard, - 122 
 
 XXV. Chinese immigration is but in its infancy unless 
 promptly stopped by legislation vigorously 
 carried into effect, - - 125 
 
 XXVI. Our producing classes can bear no greater 
 competition from cheap labor than that from 
 Caucasian sources. The Italian and the 
 Hun, - - 131 
 
 XXVII. The Caucasian versus the emancipated negro 
 
 of the South, - 135 
 
 XXVIII. Persistent and increasing inflow of Chinese to all 
 
 available regions, - 137 
 
 XXIX. Chinese immigration should be stopped and the 
 Chinese element eliminated from our popula 
 tion, - 141 
 XXX. Our treaty relations with China, their legal bear 
 ing and effect ; right and necessity of abro 
 gating our conventions with the Chinese gov 
 ernment, - 141; 
 XXXI. The Chinese, the favored nation clause, and the 
 
 Federal courts, - 157 
 
 XXXII. Heed should be given to public opinion of the 
 Pacific coast, adverse to the presence of the 
 Chinese, 
 XXXIII. Analysis of the Burlingame treaty, 
 
CONTENTS. Vli 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XXXIV. China has herself failed to fulfil treaty conditions, 
 and the Burlingame treaty on accepted princi 
 ples is voidable thereby, 192 
 XXXV. Inception of the Burlingame treaty ; its ratifica 
 tion and attendant circumstances, - - 175 
 
 XXXVI. The Burlingame treaty gave a forced stimulus 
 to Chinese immigration ; the beneficiaries 
 thereof 179 
 
 XXXVII. Measures requisite to meet and suppress the in 
 vasion of the Chinese, - 182 
 XXXVIII. Quasi sentimentality and inaccurate averments 
 
 of pro-Chinese advocacy, 188 
 
 XXXIX. One course, and one only, can stay the eastward 
 migration of the Yellow race, and its gradual 
 conquest of the land) - - - - 196 
 
THE CHINESE, AND THE CHI 
 NESE QUESTION. 
 
 i. 
 
 ANTIQUITY, SOLIDARITY, AND RACIAL PERSISTENCE OF 
 THE CHINESE. 
 
 THE Chinese problem is not merely a question of 
 temporary disturbance to a single community. It is one 
 of the migration of races ; of the overflow of redundant 
 populations upon comparatively unsettled regions. In its 
 political, social, industrial and commercial bearings upon 
 the future of our country it is of broader import than any 
 other that has ever engaged the attention of the American 
 people. Its proper consideration calls for the laborious 
 examination of many facts, and for a careful investigation 
 of their numerous and complex relations. And it requires 
 that investigations be made, and that deductions be drawn, 
 with the calmness of judicial impartiality. In this, as in 
 every other matter of broad international concern, the 
 narrow pathway of truth is that which leads to safety, and 
 truth is gained only by taking facts without disguise and 
 treating them without prejudice. My own studies have 
 convinced me that Chinese immigration is full of danger to 
 our country, to our institutions, and to our people. My 
 reasons for this will be given in due course in these pages, 
 and it will be seen that they are based, not upon unreflect 
 ing hostility to any race, but upon proofs that we have 
 opened to a colossal people the opportunity for limitless 
 
2 THE CHINESE, 
 
 aggrandizement at our expense, and that we have done this 
 with a recklessness that could only be equalled by one who, 
 dwelling on lands below the level of the sea, should break 
 down the dykes that hold the impending waves. And if it 
 shall seem that I lay too much stress upon the historical 
 development of China, her industries, her laws, her customs, 
 the character of her people, the degree of her civilization, 
 and her relative strength among the nations, remember 
 that in a subject so wide and so deep, we shall be most 
 content with our conclusions if we deduce them, not from 
 merely proximate data, but from those that are original 
 and undeniable, even if remote. 
 
 For it is only through the study of the past of China 
 that one may form a clear conception of the present 
 character and tendencies of her people. And this concep 
 tion, when gained, must constitute the basis of all accurate 
 perception of her future relations with the outside world. 
 A population comprising substantially one-half of the 
 human race, of a mental, moral and physical type indig 
 enous to the soil, unmodified by external influences and 
 intensified by isolation and successive repetition through 
 tens of centuries, must, in the nature of things, possess an 
 inertia peculiarly its own. The future direction of this 
 can only be foreseen from a knowledge of its line of move 
 ment in former times. The slow but progressive develop 
 ment of China has produced a civilization in which the low 
 level of moral and physical life incident to debased and 
 enslaved races is strangely combined with an intellectual 
 vigor that, in all the requirements and vicissitudes of a 
 complex social and political system, has proved itself equal 
 to the promotion of learning and the extension of arts, and 
 to the elaboration of methods and traditions of state-craft 
 not inferior to those that have controlled the policy of 
 European countries and of our own. To understand this, 
 and the logical outcome thereof, is manifestly the first step 
 to a proper appreciation of the conditions of the conflict, 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 3 
 
 peaceful or otherwise, impending between the Turanian 
 and the Aryan races. And such an understanding is best 
 gained by the laborious but fruitful process of tracing the 
 development of China through its salient causes and more 
 noticeable results from the time when offshoots of un 
 lettered tribes crept downward from the Altaic mountains 
 to find homes on the marshy borders of the Hoang-Ho. 
 
 China is, for the most part, a fertile plain or basin 
 bounded on the east by the Pacific, on all other sides by 
 elevated and comparatively barren plateaus and ranges of 
 lofty mountains. It is watered by two great rivers, the 
 Yellow or Hoang-Ho, and the Blue or Yang-tse-Kiang, and 
 their tributaries, which, traced upon the map, show the 
 whole country to be veined with the means of internal 
 commerce, and fertile with alluvium from the slow subsi 
 dence of waters. It was in regions adjacent to these rivers 
 that the Scythian progenitors of the present population 
 formed in early settlements, the origin of which is lost in 
 the mists of legendary and mythical traditions. The first 
 authentic period of Chinese history begins with the intro 
 duction of arts and sciences among a people long settled 
 in the land ; and ages of gradual development must have 
 preceded this. The Yellow River is dyked along its 
 length to prevent its floods from overwhelming the adjoin 
 ing lands, and its bed is thirty feet above the level of the 
 surrounding country this elevation having been caused 
 by the gradual deposition of earthy material from the 
 heavily-laden waters. Assuming, although in the nature of 
 things it can be only an assumption, that this deposit has 
 been in the same ratio as that laid upon the valley of 
 Egypt by the inundations of the Nile four inches in a 
 century it is easy to infer how long a period may have 
 elapsed since the artificial banks were first raised by a 
 sedentary people to protect their fields from injurious 
 overflow. It is, however, unnecessary to resort to infer 
 ence. The annals of China, judged by the same standard 
 
4 THE CHINESE, 
 
 of criticism applied to those of other countries, disclose 
 clear evidences of substantial accuracy. The era adopted 
 by de Guignes, and based upon his investigation of the 
 Chinese records, may be taken as not far out of the way, 
 and this places the accession of Fo-hi, the first emperor, 
 as B. c. 2953. This was the period in which the character 
 of the race began to harden into permanent form, and the 
 institutions which illustrate if they have not caused its 
 permanence, began to have the force of organic laws. 
 
 It is as difficult for the mind to grasp the full measure 
 of four thousand eight hundred years as it is for the eye to 
 conceive the distance to the far horizon. In either it is 
 necessary that the thought dwell on standards of compar 
 ison, placed at wide intervals, before any adequate concep 
 tion can be had. The era of Fo-hi was less than a century 
 and a half after the Deluge, according to the date of the 
 latter as fixed by the best biblical scholars. It was more 
 than two hundred years earlier than the era of Menes, the 
 first ruler of Egypt ; it was more than four hundred years 
 earlier than the historical inception of Babylonian power as 
 unfolded from the study of the cuneiform inscriptions, and 
 five hundred earlier than the foundation of the city that 
 Nimrod built. Twelve hundred and fifty years were yet to 
 come and go before the shepherd kings should enter the 
 valley of the Nile to drive the Cushite from the throne of 
 Memphis ; fifteen hundred years before Joshua, amid the 
 hail of Bethhoron, should smite the kings of the Amorites 
 and cleave open the mountain pass that led to the promised 
 land ; and seventeen hundred before the Phenicians should 
 lay the first stones of their capital by the fishing huts of 
 Tyre. It was one thousand seven hundred and fifty years 
 before the siege of Troy ; it was a thousand and nine hun 
 dred and fifty years before the offerings of Solomon blazed 
 on the altar of Gibeon ; it was two thousand years before 
 the appearance of the Hellenes in Thessaly. China had 
 already a history of twenty-one centuries when Dido 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 5 
 
 founded Carthage. Her empire had endured two thousand 
 two hundred years when Israel mourned beside the willows 
 of Babylon, and more than two thousand five hundred years 
 when Greece rejoiced in the issue of the battle of Mara 
 thon. Gaze through the retrospective vista as we may, it 
 is difficult indeed for the intellect to arrive at a full con 
 ception of the reach and significance of the mighty lapse 
 of time embraced by Chinese history the history of a 
 single race. For those who till the fields of China to this 
 day sprang from the loins of those who founded the em 
 pire and who may well have gone up from the slopes of 
 Shen-si to join, at Babel, their liquid tones with the clamor 
 of ruder tongues. Race has followed race, and old races 
 have mingled to form the nations of the earth anew in every 
 land but one that between the Himalayas and the Yellow 
 Sea. In that there has been no change save by the normal 
 development of native faculties and the progress of original 
 tendencies acted upon by the unchanging agencies of soil 
 and climate, and fixed by the utter absence of fusion or 
 admixture with races of different mold. 
 
 If there had existed, from the beginning of time, no 
 other people on the face of the earth, the character of the 
 Chinese would scarcely have been different from what it is. 
 They separated from the world in an infancy whose speech 
 was in monosyllables, and which, as we shall see, had not 
 yet learned the use of the crudest of the implements of the 
 laborer s toil. In their daily converse and avocations still 
 are used words that were syllabled in the childhood of 
 humanity and symbols drawn from natural objects before 
 mankind had learned to resolve articulate speech into its 
 component sounds. 
 
 According to prehistoric legends the Chinese, before the 
 invention of letters, kept their records by means of knotted 
 cords corresponding to the quippus of the Peruvians. 
 Their alphabet, if such a term can be properly applied in 
 such connection, was heterogenetic and formed of pictorial 
 
6 THE CHINESE, 
 
 representations of natural objects, bearing in this regard a 
 close resemblance to the word-symbols of the Mexicans. 
 Their historians assert that the earliest use of emblematic 
 signs was suggested by bird tracks in the snow, and it is 
 easy to understand how a representation of such a track 
 would indicate to the eye and understanding a definite idea. 
 A circle is the symbol of the sun, a crescent that of the 
 moon, and man is represented by a single upright stroke 
 with divergent lines for the extremities. A tree is indicated 
 by its minute representation ; and by a natural step, the 
 representation of two trees indicates a thicket, of three, a 
 forest. The most common objects being thus denoted by 
 primal emblems, the more complex relation of things were 
 represented by adjuncts to, and modifications of, the 
 unitary signs, some of the compound characters compris 
 ing, it is said, no less than seventy distinct strokes or marks 
 in their structure. By a gradual and natural development 
 the pictorial signs passed into the character of abstract 
 symbols, these to united or compound characters in 
 which, however, the unitary sign was always included the 
 character, by a normal expansion, becoming finally, in a 
 great measure, arbitrary, so that its present meaning, al 
 though traceable in some shape to the primitive device from 
 which it sprang, is often far remote from its source. The 
 primal signs are termed Tsi-Moo or " mother characters," 
 by reason of the broods they have brought forth. The Tsi- 
 Moo for wood enters into the structure of no less than 
 twelve hundred and thirty-two derivative or compound 
 characters ; that soi for water into thirteen hundred and 
 thirty-three ; that tchou for grass or herbage, or gener 
 ally for vegetation, into fourteen hundred and twenty- 
 three ; that shoo for the hand, into more than a thousand, 
 and that for the heart, which by an odd phonetic coin 
 cidence with the theological ideas of the outside barbarian 
 is termed sin, into nine hundred and eighty-three. Silk is 
 taken as the representative of all things soft in texture or 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 7 
 
 delicate in kind, and its sign see enters into upwards of 
 six hundred and seventy derivative written words, and Te- 
 hok, the bamboo, into about as many. The practical work 
 ing portion, as it may be termed, of the language comprises 
 about thirty of the root words or mother characters, which 
 enter into the structure of about twenty thousand com 
 pound characters or about one-half of those in the lan 
 guage. The whole of the remaining root signs enter into 
 the structure of the other half and constitute, as it were, a 
 broad fringe to the substantial fabric of the language. If 
 we can imagine an acorn, the only one of its species, 
 springing into spontaneous life in favoring soil and grow 
 ing to the fullness of strength and verdure, unincumbered 
 by ingraft from any other stock and unchanged by alien 
 tillage, we would have a fit parallel of the origin, growth, 
 and nature of Chinese. It is with the language as with the 
 race, a normal, segregated growth, through the slow un 
 folding of centuries, unmodified and uninfluenced by the 
 outside world. 
 
 With a language so symmetrically a unit in itself, a like 
 unity of literature has resulted. As there is, further on, 
 occasion to remark, the intellect of China appears to have 
 kindled, to some degree, the intellect of the West ; but her 
 literature was of an origin too remote to have permitted 
 the converse. Five hundred years or more before the 
 Christian era the literature of China, in proportion to the 
 then existing limits of human knowledge, appears to have 
 more than equalled in volume and variety that of the most 
 advanced of modern nations at the present day. It was 
 from a collection of three thousand odes that Confucius 
 selected those which, under the title of She-king , he trans 
 mitted to posterity as the summum bonuin of Chinese 
 letters. It was from a similar plethora of materials that he 
 complied the Le-ke or ceremonial code, and the Shoo -king , 
 the history of the first three dynasties of the empire. Up 
 on the framework so formed from the accumulations of a 
 
8 THE CHINESE, 
 
 then antiquity, succeeding generations fashioned their work. 
 In the course of thirteen centuries the formulas of literary 
 elegance possible within the resources of the language had 
 become exhausted. In the eighth century of the Christian 
 era the golden age of letters had arrived. Upon observance 
 of the canons then formulated, all subsequent elegance de 
 pended. In style and form the Chinese scholar of to-day 
 follows the models of a thousand years ago, and instead of 
 seeking to enrich his pages with thoughts original with 
 himself, or with flights of fancy of his own, he garners into 
 them the excelling phrases of the masters of ancient days. 
 His thoughts are their thoughts, and their thoughts sprang 
 in lineal descent from those of their forefathers, the first 
 children of the soil : and the intellectual type of the race is 
 as fixed, as permanent and unchanging as is the physical 
 type inbred, generation after generation, from the beginning. 
 As with the intellectual, so with the sentimental elements 
 of the Chinese chaiacter. The Chinese were the first to 
 learn and appreciate the concord of sweet sounds, and the 
 Spanish mandolin to this day preserves in its semi-ovoid 
 shell the contour of the divided gourd upon which were 
 first strained the strings of its Chinese prototype. But that 
 which is soft and pleasing to the Chinese ear is discord 
 without mitigation in the hearing of the people of the West; 
 while, conversely, the music of the latter is unpleasing to 
 the Chinese. The sense which is gratified with the meas 
 ured recurrence of cadenced sounds has been developed 
 along a line so divergent from that of other races that the 
 ear attuned to the harmony of the one is wholly deaf to that 
 of the other. The vibrations that afford pleasure to the 
 brain of the one give only annoyance to that of the other. 
 The Chinese trace the origin of their musical instruments 
 to the days of Fo-hi, and in the joy of the lute or the exul 
 tation of the drum their sensations are those of the earliest 
 of the race, untaught by an alien idea, unchanged by a for 
 eign emotion. 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 9 
 
 The laws of a people spring from their interests, which are 
 defined by the intellect, and from their social sentiments, 
 which spring from the heart. The laws of China, like its 
 language, were evolved from the needs of the people, and, 
 like the language, have grown symmetrically from few and 
 simple roots native to the soil and springing from the sim 
 plest attributes of human nature, into a network of rules 
 and regulations which govern every relation of life, but 
 which, despite their complexity, may be traced back to 
 their primal stems as readily as the fibers of a palm may be 
 traced from the fronds at its summit to the strings at its 
 root. So also with religion, which is but a higher and nobler 
 name for law in the highest and best sense of the term. 
 The element of Chinese faith which no vicissitude has ever 
 shaken, and which has withstood the siege of every alien 
 creed the worship of ancestors is one derived from the 
 most primitive condition of mankind, that in which the will 
 of the father of the family was its supremest law, his wis 
 dom the highest guide, and his translation to another world 
 but the evidence of higher attributes and greater power ; 
 and to-day the soul of the Chinaman is cradled in the same 
 simple faith that guided the devotions of the first children 
 of his race. 
 
 Solidarity and unity are, therefore, the attributes of 
 China and its people, solidarity and unity in physical char 
 acter, in language, in literature, in laws, in the structure of 
 society, in the foundation principle of religion ; and in 
 usages and customs, for these are part and parcel of law and 
 religion, and in family character, for this follows inevitably 
 where, through hundreds of generations, there has been no 
 admixture of alien blood. But to every element of this 
 fixed and ingrained character are limits apparently impas 
 sable, limits that are unknown to the more free and ethereal 
 spirit of the Caucasian peoples. What is termed fixity of 
 type by modern scientists finds its strongest illustration in 
 the Chinese. Assuming the teachings of physiologists to 
 
10 THE CHINESE, 
 
 have substantial foundation in truth, if the whole population 
 of civilized Europe were mingled and merged with the 
 population of China in the close ties of the marriage rela 
 tion, the last traces of the Caucasian type would in a few 
 generations vanish from the face of the earth. The blood 
 of the complex and refined races would disappear in that of 
 the simple and unitary race, under the same law through 
 which, in all the animal kingdom, a derivative from the 
 union of a complex and of a simple type tends constantly 
 to return to the simpler and ruder of those from which it 
 sprang. 
 
 The first settled of the provinces of China was Shen-si, 
 which lies nearest the mountain fastnesses from which the 
 earliest of the race emerged to cultivate the regions below. 
 They spread in scattered settlements that gradually broad 
 ened and touched and coalesced. They repelled the Tartar 
 to the north ; they drove the rival tribes southward and 
 westward from the irrigable lands. Slow, laborious, and 
 patient, obedient with a superstitious obedience to the 
 elders whose age gave them experience and made them 
 conservative, they invented for each difficulty only a remedy 
 that met its sharpest detriment and rested content without 
 thought or care for more. In all things every advance from 
 the very outset was self-evolved, sprang from some cause 
 ingrained and inherent in the race itself and its conditions 
 of existence ; and each in its time and place, instead of 
 revolutionizing, intensified and perpetuated the character 
 that gave it birth. It is not without utility that we may 
 thus trace the development of this peculiar race and note the 
 fixedness of the mental, moral, and physical type, the fixed 
 ness of social and political institutions, due to a strong but 
 coarse racial individuality at the outset, and an environment 
 that, supplying all physical needs, left that individuality 
 to work out its tendencies without hindrance or modi 
 fication, 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. n 
 
 II. 
 
 ISOLATED EVOLUTION OF CHINA IN INDUSTRIES AND ARTS. 
 
 As with the general attributes of the race, so also with 
 the minor elements embraced in its industries and the 
 ordinary pursuits of its daily life. 
 
 Nothing affords more facile proof of the common origin 
 of races, now remote from each other, than does the iden 
 tity of the terms applied to the necessaries of life, and the 
 similarity of the rude implements by which the simple 
 operations of industry are performed. The former has 
 shown the primal unity of Sanscrit and Zend, and traced 
 to its farthest source the origin of the Aryan peoples ; the 
 latter shows that the arts of craftsmen had reached a cer 
 tain excellence before the European parted company with 
 the natives of India. But by neither of these clues can 
 any connection be traced between China and other lands. 
 The language, even in its simplest roots, has no analogue ; 
 and the implements of industry have characteristic forms 
 that demonstrate their origin to be distinct. The anvil of 
 the Chinese smith is not flat like the anvils of other coun 
 tries, but convex on its face or working surface, and the 
 bellows of a Chinese forge, instead of moving vertically, 
 has a horizontal stroke. The paper of the Chinese is thin 
 and weak, is printed on one side only, but doubled to 
 present a folded edge at the rim of the leaf and a printed 
 surface on each side. The chain-pump of China has a 
 square barrel, that of other lands is cylindric. Brass is 
 made elsewhere by melting together copper and zinc in a 
 crucible ; in China by suspending thin sheets of copper, 
 heated almost to melting, in the vapor of molten zinc. 
 The german-silver of Europe is made by combining the 
 materials in their metallic condition ; its Chinese equivalent 
 by mingling the ores of the metals and reducing them 
 together to produce the alloy. Spangles are made, not by 
 
12 THE CHINESE, 
 
 cutting or stamping from sheet metal, but by flattening 
 wire first bent into annular form. Pewter vessels are not 
 cast, but shaped by hammering upon a block. The primi 
 tive mill used in many countries in Normandy for crush 
 ing apples for cider, in South America for pulverizing ores, 
 in our own country for powdering the scoria of assaying 
 pots, and composed of a wheel travelling in a groove or 
 channel, has, among Western nations its wheel running 
 continuously in a circular track around a vertical axis ; 
 in China its wheel working to and fro in a semicircular 
 track, and around a horizontal centre of movement. 
 
 And so, also, of almost every industry and art. The Chi 
 nese bell has no vibratory tongue to awake its echoes, but 
 is struck on the outside with a mallet, and instead of having 
 a pear-shaped or conical form it is cylindric in shape and 
 slightly swelled at the middle. The seams of the Western 
 ships are caulked with oakum sodden with tar, those of the 
 vessels of China with a cement composed of oil and cal 
 cined gypsum. The dulcimer of the Occident has strained 
 strings of wire, that of the Chinese is formed of resonant 
 stones suspended from a ring and tuned in unison. The 
 Caucasian organ gives forth its sound when its holes are 
 opened, that of the Chinese, the ching^ one of the sweetest 
 and most charming of instruments, gives forth its slender 
 tones only when one or more of its open orifices are closed. 
 The sheet-lead of the industrial arts of Europe and America 
 is dense and compact, formed by repeatedly passing an 
 ingot between pressure rollers ; that of the artisan of the 
 Middle Kingdom, known to us as the universal lining of 
 tea chests, is porous and friable, made by pouring molten 
 lead upon a smooth flat stone, of which the counterpart is 
 pressed down upon the metal to crush it into a thin broad 
 leaf before it has time to solidify. The flail used by the 
 farmer on the banks of the Hudson, the Thames, or the 
 Seine has its swingle attached by a flexible string which 
 permits its universal movement with regard to the staff ; 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 13 
 
 that of the farmer by the Yang-tse-Kiang has it attached 
 by a pivot, which limits its swing to a single direction. The 
 thin metal-ware of the West is of sheet-iron spun or pressed 
 to shape ; that of the Chinese is skilfully made of cast-iron 
 as skilfully annealed in hot ovens. The tinker of England 
 rivets a patch on a broken kettle, his Chinese compeer 
 makes a more permanent repair by flowing molten metal 
 upon the fractured edges until the crevice is filled and the 
 patch made integral with the rest. The European gardener 
 multiplies plants by placing the smoothed ends of cuttings 
 in the ground, the Chinese by taking a ring of bark from a 
 branch left upon the tree and packing around it loam, kept 
 constantly moist by dripping water, until a mass of roots 
 has grown from within the cloven bark. The " outside 
 barbarians" put a misdemeanant in a stationary pillory ; 
 not less barbarous than this, the Chinese place an ambu 
 latory pillory the cangue upon the shoulders of the 
 offender, and in this he must walk, and wake, and sleep. 
 The Chinese blacksmith, instead of forming a hard edge on 
 an implement by welding a strip of steel thereto, by deft 
 and skilful treatment with fire and water slowly brings the 
 edge of the iron itself to a firm and hardened temper. The 
 Chinese tailor heats his smoothing iron, not by placing it 
 upon a hot surface, but by kindling a charcoal fire in a 
 little furnace within it. The moxa of our physicians is a 
 gliding hot plate, that of the physicians of China is a tiny 
 conical heap of burning leaves of the artemesia. The 
 jaded appetite of an European epicure is urged by sauces 
 of spiced and peppered mushrooms, that of the Chinese 
 bon-vivant by soy, a preparation of beans rotted under the 
 heat and vapor of fermenting manure. Chinese lanterns 
 are not made of horn like those used by the Romans, or of 
 perforated metal, as long since in our own country, or of 
 glass as now universal, but are of varnished paper stretched 
 on bamboo frames, sometimes of little cost for the multi 
 tude, sometimes of intrinsic worth and blazoned with titles 
 

 
 f^ THE CHINESE, 
 
 for the mandarins. The domestic industry of other lands 
 has obtained the healthful acid of vinegar from the acetic 
 fermentation of the sweet juices of fruits ; the Chinese by 
 placing in water the sea polypus found along the coasts. 
 The scientists of the west have envolved anaesthetics 
 through intricate processes of chemistry, the experimenters 
 of China from the exudations of a frog in torment. Fish 
 culture, now a matter of government solicitude in our own 
 and other countries, is old in China ; but the Chinese fish 
 culturist puts the spawn in an egg-shell and places it under 
 a sitting fowl, and after due delay breaks the shell into 
 water warmed by the sun. These are not trifles. They 
 show that in the earliest period of her existence, China 
 drew nothing from other lands. In what she required she 
 originated all, she imitated nothing. 
 
 And even in the things that for ages have been common 
 in other countries, we find that .in unnumbered instances 
 their parallelism with those of China is of but modern 
 date ; that they, too, at former periods have shown by their 
 use in China and nowhere else that they were but further 
 proofs of the self-sufficing and self-supplying character of 
 the Chinese mind. It was this that discovered the polarity 
 of the magnetic needle and applied it to use in the compass, 
 and obviated its dip by the simple device of placing its 
 weight below the point of suspension ; and it was this, too, 
 that first perceived and made allowance for the variation of 
 the needle from the true pole, these, as I have occasion to 
 remark in another place, having been transmitted through 
 Arabian channels to the merchants and mariners of Europe. 
 It was to the Chinese intellect that was due the invention 
 of printing and its perfection even beyond the requirements 
 of the language, for with the Chinese alphabet there is no ad 
 vantage in interchangeable types ; and this, like the com 
 pass, but by another route, passed from China into the pos 
 session of the west. 
 
 It was from this, also, that arose the invention of paper in 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 1 5 
 
 the first century of our era, the production of inks having 
 a carbon base, as with the printer s-ink of to-day, and the 
 manufacture of lamp-black from the burning of oils. It 
 was this that devised the drilling of grain as distinguished 
 from broadcast sowing, a method that saves in the annual 
 seedtime of China as much as would feed the inhabitants of 
 Great Britain and Ireland. The primitive Chinese mill for 
 the hulling of rice is substantially the same as the modern 
 mill for decorticating wheat ; and another apparatus for the 
 same purpose, a lever armed with a stone at its outer end 
 and actuated at the other by arms radiating from the shaft 
 of a water-wheel, differs in no essential respect from the 
 principle of the trip-hammer. What in our day is known 
 as the Belgian system of canal propulsion, and recently on 
 trial on the Erie Canal, was derived from the Chinese 
 method of crossing rivers. The plan by which life-boats 
 are worked to and fro for the relief of stranded vessels is the 
 same as that by which the ships of mandarins were drawn 
 against the current of the Yellow River centuries ago. 
 The paddle-wheel was used for purposes of propulsion in 
 China long ages before it revolved in western waters. It 
 was the structure of the Chinese junk that afforded the 
 prototype of the water-tight bulkheads used in our mod 
 ern steamships. The use of the steelyard was common with 
 the Chinese two thousand years before the Christian era. 
 Upon rafts or hurdles of bamboo they spread layers of 
 earth which they cultivated like garden soil, and thus an 
 ticipated by ages the floating gardens of Mexico. 
 
 They invented the arch centuries before it was known to 
 the architects of Greece or of Rome. Their suspension 
 bridges, some of which were of iron, preceded by ages the 
 corresponding structures of European engineers. Bells were 
 cast by them of an alloy of copper and tin twenty-seven cen 
 turies before our era and generations before they tinkled in 
 miniature on the garments of the sons of Levi. From the 
 iron of the mountain, Ko-theen-loo, they made armor fifteen 
 
1 6 THE CHINESE, 
 
 hundred years before the time when, as chronicled by the 
 Arabian, El Mas udi, "the Lord made the metal soft to 
 David so that he made coats of mail." Within the past 
 sixty years the division of labor has become the distinguish 
 ing feature of the industrial systems of Europe and Amer 
 ica ; the potteries of King-te-Chin have practised the same 
 for many ages, the consecutive labor of fifty different work 
 men being necessary to the production of a piece of the 
 finest ware. In our own country a factory system of making 
 cheese and butter was initiated about forty years ago ; the 
 like was done by Chinese sugar-makers generations before 
 the existence of our continent was known to the eastern 
 world ; and the same workers of the cane first used the 
 waste bagasse for heating the evaporating pans. The 
 Chinese terraced the slopes of the mountains with walls of 
 stone for the growth of vegetables, as the shores of Lake 
 Leman are terraced to-day for the cultivation of the vine. 
 Mindful of the chemistry of the soil, they early learned to 
 temper sandy lands with clay, and clay lands with sand ; and 
 they carefully gathered and applied all manner of fertilizers 
 at a time when the wealth of the Roman plains was passing 
 through the great cloaca to the Tiber and the sea. They 
 were the first to unwind the cocoon of the silk-worm and 
 weave fabrics from its threads. They were the originators 
 of porcelain, and Kao-li?i y the name for the clay of which it 
 is made, has passed into the industrial nomenclature of 
 Europe. They invented gunpowder, not only for fireworks 
 and for explosive mines in war, but for fire-arms, for the 
 embrasures of the Great Wall are fitted for the reception of 
 the swivels of wall-pieces ; and more than six centuries be 
 fore the Christian era their cannon bore the inscription : " I 
 hurl death to the traitor and extermination to the rebel." 
 They discovered, too, in remote times, that the best char 
 coal is made from willow, a fact recognized to this day by 
 manufacturers of gunpowder in all parts of the world : and 
 their proportions of sulphur, carbon, and nitre are almost 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 17 
 
 identical with those of the best powder manufactured in 
 Europe. They burned petroleum in lamps long before such 
 use was dreamed of among the western peoples ; they sunk 
 salt-wells hundreds of feet through varying strata and, 
 finding that inflammable vapors arose in large volumes, 
 they led them to the furnaces for use as fuel in heating the 
 evaporators. They rendered potable the muddy waters of 
 the rivers by treatment with alum a process employed in 
 Europe with effect for removing clay and other earths from 
 water intended for use in various branches of mannfacture. 
 
 But these are far from all. They adopted the decimal 
 system, for measures of quantity and weight and value, 
 centuries before French legislators recognized its utility or 
 French scientists formulated its application to the traffic of 
 Europe ; and now, as in the days of the first coinage of 
 copper, the lee or cash, a disk with a square hole in the cen 
 ter to permit it to be placed on a string, is the tenth of a 
 fen, and \.\\z fen is the tenth of a chen, and a chen the tenth 
 of the value of an ounce of silver. Their units of volume 
 and length were literally native to the soil, for the one is 
 the cubic contents of a hundred of the grains of the Kow- 
 leang or high millet, the Holcus sorghum of the botanists, 
 and the latter, for the purposes of the artisan, the linear 
 space occupied by a certain number of the same grains. 
 For the measurement of distances they adopted a different 
 standard equally indigenous to the land. This was the /<?, 
 about two-fifths of a mile, the distance to which a man s 
 voice, in shrill halloo, can be heard on a clear and windless 
 day on the level fields of Ho-Nan. 
 
 In minor industries the Chinese long ago saved the culm 
 and dust of coal and mixed it with clay and soft earth from 
 the marshes, to form an artificial fuel, an invention currently 
 believed in other countries to be of recent years. They 
 were the first to make spectacle-glasses from sections cut 
 from rock-crystal. They made cloth from the bark of the 
 nettle, a project revived from Germany as new within the past 
 
1 3 THE CHINESE, 
 
 few years ; and they applied to the extraction of color from 
 a native plant the processes by which indigo is extracted 
 from the Indigofera. They hatched the eggs of fowls by 
 artificial heat, the method by which ostriches are incubated 
 on the ostrich plantations of South Africa. They found food 
 in the roots and the seeds of the lily growing in reedy ponds ; 
 they purified the nauseous product of the Palma-Christi 
 until it became edible and sweet ; they made oil from the 
 seeds of the camellia and from the crushed kernels of the 
 apricot. They trained the sheep to carry burdens through 
 the highest denies of neighboring mountains, and taught 
 the brown cormorant to fish in behalf of his owner in the 
 dun canals. With a keenness of observation and refinement 
 of practice unknown to our industries they spun the fibre 
 of cotton as it came from the boll, lest its strength should 
 be impaired by the processes of compression and separa 
 tion ; and reeled silk from the living cocoon lest the purity 
 of its natural tint should be impaired by the death of the 
 worm. 
 
 Such were the manifestations of the Chinese intellect as 
 applied to the useful arts. Such were the implements and 
 methods by which the genius of China manifested itself in 
 originating the industries by which her constantly increas 
 ing population has been sustained, and which through 
 almost unnumbered ages have formed the basis of. her 
 power and the foundations of her home and foreign policy. 
 But it is to be remarked, and the fact illustrates not only 
 the nature of the people but the policy of the government, 
 that every art, every implement or method, related only to 
 the furtherance of manual operations. Nowhere is there 
 the slightest evidence of intent to encourage labor-saving 
 machinery, which, in less densely populated countries, by 
 dispensing with the labor of some, lessens the cost of the 
 products of labor to all ; but everywhere the ready devis 
 ing and adoption of whatever furnished employment for 
 human hands or opened new sources from which the indi- 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 19 
 
 vidual could derive food and raiment by personal labor. 
 Within these limits all was devised that was required for use 
 in the agriculture or manufactures of the country. But the 
 limit was early reached. Hence the lack, through many 
 ages past, of industrial advancement, so far as concerns 
 the use of improved machinery or processes, which has 
 given to the arts of China the almost stereotyped char 
 acter manifest in her social and political institutions. 
 Arts and industries thus restricted could only attain excel 
 lence through the highest development of mechanical skill ; 
 and their rewards could only be obtained through the culti 
 vation of certain faculties, and these not separately but 
 together, which may be briefly enumerated as accuracy of 
 perception, closeness of calculation, curiosity active but 
 trained and disciplined to a rare degree, and unwearying 
 patience. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE TRADITIONS OF CHINA AND THE IDEAS OF THE WEST. 
 
 THERE is a strange identity between the legends 
 and traditions of the earlier branches of the Caucasian 
 race and those of a remote period of Chinese civili 
 zation. To a Chinaman the story of the deluge, as rela 
 ted in the book of Genesis, is but an echo of the story 
 told in the Chinese records more than two thousand two 
 hundred years before our era, in which the land was sub 
 merged, and after which several generations were required 
 to turn the rivers back to their courses and -recover the 
 plains from the flood. The account of the famine of Egypt 
 reads like a paraphrase of the seven years famine in China 
 in the middle of the eighteenth century before our era. 
 The theologians of the west speak of the tree that grew in 
 Eden as the tree of life ; the Chinese place in their para 
 dise a peach-tree, and he who eats of the fruit thereof shall 
 
20 THE CHINESE, 
 
 be immortal. The scriptural story of Samson is paralleled 
 in nearly the same age by that of the tyrant Chow, who was 
 strong enough to conquer wild beasts by his physical 
 strength, and was deluded to his ruin by an evil woman. 
 When Jonah watched the Nineveh which he thought 
 doomed by his prophecy, a gourd grew up in the night, 
 and withered as speedily. Sixteen hundred and thirty-six 
 years before Christ, in the reign of Tae-Suh, two trees 
 grew up in his palace in a single night, and withered again 
 in three days. Greece, in its mythology, had its legend of 
 the golden age of Saturn ; the golden age of China endured 
 through forty years and ended with the reign of Kang- 
 Wang, in the eleventh century before our era, and in that age 
 no man did wrong and no man was punished. The story 
 of Orpheus is a variant only of that of the Emperor Shun, 
 who, according to the Shoe-King, declared, " When I strike 
 upon the musical stones the most ferocious wild beasts 
 testify their joy." The Shoo-King dates from the age of 
 Confucius. The Emperor Hoang-Ti built a temple to 
 Peace two thousand years before the walls of the first tem 
 ple to Janus were built by the banks of the Tiber. 
 
 The dragon of St. George dates from the Crusades, and 
 was derived from the Saracens ; the Chinese annals 
 describe the dragon as a living animal, seen upon their 
 sea-coast three thousand years earlier, the last, and per 
 haps the only, example of the Saurian of geologic times 
 beheld by human eyes. The use of armorial bearings in 
 the west arose in the age of chivalry, at the beginning of 
 the twelfth century. It is written that Tsao-hao " dis 
 tinguished the principal officers of his realm by figures of 
 birds and of savage beasts, which the great still carry on 
 their clothes to mark their dignity" : and Tsao-Hao lived 
 two thousand five hundred and ninety-seven years B.C. 
 So far as concerns the traditions of the deluge and of the 
 famine, they may have independently arisen from the oper 
 ation of similar natural causes, although even then their 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 21 
 
 substantial correspondence is still a matter of surprise 
 As concerns the others referred to, it is difficult to avoid the 
 conclusion that those of the later date must have been 
 derived in some manner from the earlier. The practice of 
 astrology which, like the search for the elixir of life and the 
 transmutation of metals, passed to Europe from Arabia, 
 was doubtless like them derived from the Chinese, with 
 whom its practice appears to have been coeval with the 
 earliest period of their history. The same remark applies 
 to much else, even to matters of minor moment, and some 
 almost ludicrous in their nature. We apply the term 
 "boozy "to the good-natured stupidity incident to a cer 
 tain degree of intoxication. The term is from the Arabian 
 " boozah," a beverage identical with a fermented liquor of 
 China, described by travelers there as early as the ninth 
 century, and made from rice ; but the Arabians having no 
 rice, substituted in its place dough made from the grains of 
 the Dourah or millet. To this day the superstitious among 
 the Arabs believe that an eclipse of the moon is produced 
 by the attempt of a huge fish to swallow the planet, and 
 they strive to drive it away by the noise of drums and brass 
 kettles ; the Arabs having substituted the fish with which 
 they were familiar for the dragon of China, which though 
 to them an alien myth, was the source of their belief. In the 
 earlier ages of China a person executing a written instru 
 ment made his signature by tracing the outline of his hand 
 with a pencil, and it is hardly avoidable to believe that this 
 was the origin of the phrase, " Witness my hand," etc., in our 
 modern usage. We speak of a "man of straw." It is told 
 how, in the early ages of China, images of straw were 
 placed in graves at the burial of the dead ; this no doubt 
 being the substitute of an advancing civilization for the 
 burial alive with a dead chief of slaves and retainers who, 
 as with the savage islanders of the Pacific in recent times, 
 were believed to accompany him in another world. Even 
 words legitimately a portion of the English language of 
 
22 THE CHINESE, 
 
 to-day bear witness to the transfer of ideas from China to 
 the west ; thus the word " typhoon " is the Arabic tafun 
 from tai-fong, the term" applied by the Chinese to the 
 storms that, in the early ages of the world, scattered the 
 wrecks of their vessels along the coast of Malabar and the 
 eastern seas. 
 
 More than a century before the Christian era the Chinese 
 treasury cashed its own checks written upon leather and 
 forming an artificial currency for the people, and this was 
 followed by paper money through several hundred years ; 
 and there can be little doubt that while to the Hebrews of 
 Venice is due the credit of initiating in Europe the use of 
 drafts and checks and the methods of banking, they derived 
 it in their turn through their co-religionists who were famil 
 iar with it in China. There seems, indeed, to be scarcely 
 a phase of development, short of the sciences and inventions 
 of the western nations during the past one hundred and 
 twenty years, through which China has not passed or from 
 which she has not contributed to the ideas of the west ; in 
 many instances antedating by centuries its experience. 
 Thus, among ourselves in recent years much thought has 
 been given to the discussion of the taxation of land values 
 as a means of preventing the accumulation of unearned 
 wealth by the owners of uncultivated soil. In China, if a 
 piece of land be left uncultivated those who occupy, or if 
 there be none such, those who dwell nearest it, are com 
 pelled to pay taxes thereon. It is for this reason, said a 
 traveller centuries ago, that " in the whole country you will 
 not find a plot of ground lying fallow." 
 
 In some instances the acute skill of the Chinese has 
 anticipated by centuries the use of modern methods. 
 The art of photography has enabled a criminal to be iden 
 tified wherever he may be found. Ibn Batuta says that 
 the Chinese " excel in portraiture " and that the portrait of 
 every stranger in the country was painted, and that if for 
 any reason he was compelled to flee the country they sent 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 23 
 
 the picture to the outlying regions to secure his recognition 
 and arrest. The Chinese invented chess a thousand years 
 before it is first mentioned in the Arabian annals, and it is 
 known that they used playing cards a century and a half 
 before their first mention in Europe. Of the products, the 
 merits of which they discovered and gave to the world, in 
 addition to those I have mentioned, were ginseng, which 
 their physicians prepared by seventy-seven different 
 methods and which was formerly sold for eight times its 
 weight of silver, and also curcuma and turmeric ; the 
 quince and the peony, the latter called in their lan 
 guage " the hundred ounces of gold " and comprising two 
 hundred and forty species, flowering through spring, 
 summer, and autumn ; in later times the hortensia and the 
 odorless Chinese lily passed westward from China. The 
 orange, now grown in every part of the civilized world 
 where the climate permits, and which, ripening in the oases 
 of the Barcan deserts, gave the golden apples of the Hes- 
 perides to the Greek, was first cultivated in China ; and its 
 Arabian name Aranj indicates the channel through which 
 it came to the west, and the origin of its present desig 
 nation in every language of Europe. It was from Asia 
 Minor, which received them from China, that the peach 
 and the apricot were brought to the gardens of Lucullus. 
 From China, also, came the cinnamon-tree to the white 
 sands of Ceylon, the product of the camphor to the phar 
 macies of Venice, and the roots of the rhubarb to the her- 
 bals of India, from which they passed to all other lands. 
 The sorghum, which forms so large a portion of the sugar 
 producing material of our country, was introduced from 
 China direct less than thirty years ago. In almost every 
 phase of intellectual and industrial effort China, isolated as 
 she has been, has contributed her share to the civilization 
 and progress of the human race, but throughout all, it is to 
 be noted, there have been limits far within those which 
 have formed the boundaries of Caucasian thought. Where 
 
2 4 THE CHINESE, 
 
 the Chinese intellect in the arts and industries, and even in 
 the manifestations of fancy and imagination, has paused, 
 there the Caucasian intellect has seized the crude results 
 and carried them to higher development. But while 
 the bolder spirit of the west has accomplished this, it has 
 fallen short in certain excellences which are inherent in the 
 resolute yet patient and crafty character of the Chinese. 
 
 IV. 
 
 CHINESE ORIGIN OF PRIME FACTORS IN EMERGENCE OF 
 EUROPE FROM BARBARISM. 
 
 WE have already seen that the industries of China were 
 self-evolved ; sprang from no foreign source, and were un 
 affected by any external agency. This carries with it the 
 conviction that the intellectual type must have been devel 
 oped in like manner. For the same conditions which exclude 
 the idea of any external force in the formation of industries 
 necessarily exclude any corresponding idea as to the for 
 mation, development, or progress of the racial mind, the 
 characteristics of which are shown in every phase and aspect, 
 great or minute, of Chinese history and progress, and on 
 them have been framed, from the beginning, the life and the 
 strength of China. From them, as embodied in the Chinese 
 of remote periods of time, have been drawn many of the 
 discoveries without which the civilization of our western 
 world would have been incomplete if not impossible. In 
 considering this, a by no means unimportant factor in the 
 relations of China with the Caucasian nations, we are to 
 remember that while the masses of the populations of 
 each were ignorant of those of the other, no such remark 
 applies to the learned classes of either. Century after 
 century while the world grew old, the traders from the west 
 passed to and fro in yearly journeys across the plains of 
 Persia to the entrepots of Shen-si. Century after century, 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 25 
 
 from times almost coeval with the birth of traffic, merchants 
 passed back and forth from Asia Minor to the coasts of 
 India, and thence back and forth through the Archipelago 
 and the Malaccan seas to the distant harbor of Canton: 
 while at various periods the priesthood of Israel, the 
 followers of Buddha, and the disciples of Mahomet, main 
 tained unbroken intercourse with co-religionists in the land 
 known to the Persians as Seres, to the Indians as Sinensis, 
 and to the Mediterranean nations as Cathay. 
 
 Prior to the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope 
 Europe sought China only by way of the Levant. From 
 this latter there were two, or rather three, routes: the north 
 ern by way of Persia, the southern by way of the Red sea, 
 the Indian ocean and the western shores of the Pacific, the 
 third overland to the cities of the Euphrates and the harbors 
 of India, and thence by sea. The former led to Cambaluor 
 Pekin ; the two latter to Kingsai or Canton and Zaitun or 
 Amoy. All of them were traversed by travellers, by traders 
 and by ambassadors, at a date so early that no record thereof 
 remains. It is known that there were Hebrews settled in 
 China before the Christian era, and in the year A.D. 73, two 
 years after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, sixty fami 
 lies of the tribes of Juda, Benjamin and Levi, journeying by 
 way of Persia, found refuge in China, and for fifteen hun 
 dred years thereafter kept up communication with the peo 
 ples of the west ; and two centuries later yet there remained 
 six families of them who were still adherent to their faith. 
 There appears to have been no century during the past 
 two thousand years when the descendants of Israel have 
 not been settled among the Chinese. Political relations 
 between China and Persia are known to have existed as 
 early as the middle of the second century of our era, and 
 some of the great families of the latter country in early 
 times traced their origin to a Chinese source. In the third 
 century the Emperor of China offered mediation between 
 the rival kings of Persia and Armenia. In the latter part 
 
26 THE CHINESE, 
 
 of the sixth century the King of Persia asked the aid of 
 China against an invasion that threatened from Bactria, and 
 in the seventh the last of the Sassanide kings asked, with 
 out success, and from the same source, assistance against 
 the Saracens. In that same age the Chinese made tribu 
 tary the regions of the west as far as the borders of Persia, 
 including the regions now marked as Turkestan and Kho- 
 rassan upon the maps of Central Asia ; and for several gen 
 erations the kings of Samarcand, one of the marts of west 
 ern traffic, were tributary to China. In the middle of the 
 tenth century the ruler of one of the kingdoms of the 
 Caspian sent his son to the Emperor of China from whom 
 he received high military honors. .According to the chron 
 icles of the Eastern Church the Metropolitan sees of Herat 
 and Samarcand were linked with those of China in times 
 as remote as the eighth century. 
 
 The Chinese records show that Christianity was estab 
 lished in China at least as early as 620, and in 745 the 
 emperor made an edict that the Christian temples should 
 no longer be known as temples of Persia, but as temples of 
 Tathsi/i, the Chinese name for Rome. At still earlier dates 
 the Buddhist missionaries had reached China and perme 
 ated the country with their principles. The ease with 
 which China was reached overland, despite the waterless 
 deserts that lay in the way, is illustrated by an instance given 
 on hearsay by Abu-Zind, who wrote, in the year 851, of a 
 man seen at Khanfu bearing a bagful of musk, who had 
 travelled on foot to that seaport from Samarcand. For 
 centuries the road from the Mediterranean to the shores of 
 the Yellow sea was traversed by regular annual traffic, and 
 the itineraries still remain which set forth the journey from 
 Tana, near Azov, on the Black Sea, via Astrakan to the 
 Great Canal at King-sze and thence to Cambalu or Pekin. 
 In the latter part of the thirteenth century Rashid-uddin 
 gives full instructions to those who would go thither from 
 " Venice or Genoa." In the early part of the fourteenth 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 27 
 
 century Ibn Batuta passed through India to Calcutta and 
 thence by sea to China, and his account shows how open, at 
 that time, China was to travellers from the west. He saw, 
 he says, in the heart of China, one of his countrymen from 
 Ceuta, at the western end of Morocco, and afterward, in 
 other journeys, met the brother of this compatriot at Segel- 
 messa, on the southern borders of Sahara. Thirteen ships 
 from China were lying in the harbor of Calcutta when Ibn 
 Batuta started thence. It is he who first gave to the Pa 
 cific ocean its present name, Ul-Bahr-ul-Kahil, the sea 
 which has neither winds nor waves ; and over which his 
 ship was towed by her boats aided by great oars swinging 
 from her decks. In the time of this traveller there were 
 many Mussulman merchants in China, and the Mahom 
 etan faith was widely introduced. As with the northern 
 and central routes, so also with that from Arabia. The 
 products of Europe, Asia and Africa were gathered there 
 and sent thence by sea to the ports of the Euphrates and 
 of the Indian seas, whence they passed in Chinese keels to 
 the markets of China. The writings of various Arab trav 
 ellers on this head are still extant. The work of the Vene 
 tian, Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, bears abundant 
 evidence that in his time China was open to foreigners 
 from Western Europe* 
 
 It will be seen, therefore, that China has been far from 
 an idle factor in the history of the world. In ages when 
 civilization was greatest in regions now barren and desolate, 
 her arms were as powerful in war as was her influence in 
 peace. If it be said that this belongs to dead history, it 
 may be answered that the genius and character of the peo 
 ple remain, and remain unchanged, and that if other 
 nations have grown to colossal strength China has increased 
 in power and resources in a no less degree. 
 
 But the influence of China in war or statesmanship was 
 trifling in comparison with her influence exerted upon the 
 western nations through the agency of inventions that 
 
* 8 77//J CHINESE, 
 
 sprang from the skill of her people, and the ideas that, born 
 from the dreams of her sectaries, passed into the intellect 
 ual life alike of the Semite of Asia and the Caucasian of 
 Europe. 
 
 I have spoken of the invention of printing. It has been 
 said that this had independent and spontaneous origin in 
 Holland because it was there devised before the discovery 
 of the Cape of Good Hope. But the writers who have 
 advocated this ignored the familiar converse of China with 
 the western world through the channels I have mentioned. 
 The impartial investigator cannot doubt that the first in 
 Europe to print with movable and separate type was 
 Laurentius Coster, of Haerlem, about the year 1430. 
 Printing with movable types, although not advantageous 
 with the Chinese language, is a Chinese invention, and is 
 described in a Persian history of China Raschid-Eddin s 
 Chronicles of the Rulers of Khatai, in A.D. 1310, and a 
 description of the invention may well have passed to the 
 commercial cities of Holland by the same path as that by 
 which, two centuries later, the tulips of Isphahan were car 
 ried to the gardens along the Scheldt. Often an incident, 
 slight in itself, is more convincing proof than pages of 
 argument. When Laurentius fastened together his wooden 
 type with a surrounding string, the" common material for 
 writing was made to receive the character on both sides of 
 the sheet. But with the instinct of the imitator, Lauren 
 tius printed but one side of the paper, and pasted the backs 
 of the two sheets together in semblance of the printed 
 pages of China. The knowledge of gunpowder came from 
 the same source, but passed from the Chinese to the 
 Saracen, and from the Saracen to the European. As al 
 ready mentioned it was invented in China before the 
 Christian era. It is mentioned by Arabian authors in the 
 year 1249, more than thirty years before the first dim hint, 
 in % Europe, of its composition in the writings of Roger 
 Bacon, and also by them in 1312, and again in 1323. It 
 
AND 7 HE CHINESE QUESTION. 29 
 
 was first used in Europe in 1330 in the wars between 
 Venice and Genoa, and sixteen years later in France at the 
 battle of Crecy. The magnetic needle was borne on land 
 carriages by the Chinese, and by its means the Emperor 
 Hoang-ti is said in the chronicles to have been able to fol 
 low a retreating enemy, twenty-six hundred years before our 
 era. "By this method," says the historian, " he overtook 
 Tehi-Yeon, made him prisoner and put him to death." 
 According to Humbolt s researches, the compass was used 
 by the Chinese on their vessels sailing in the Indian ocean 
 seven hundred years before it was known in Europe. It 
 was used after the Chinese manner a magnetic needle 
 placed upon a buoyant sliver of reed floated upon a basin 
 of water in the Syrian seas as early as 1242. In 1260 
 Marco Polo brought it to Italy direct from China, and, in 
 the century after, Flavio Gioja, the Neapolitan, gave it its 
 present form. To the Chinese also the western world is 
 indebted for paper. It was invented by a mandarin Tsai 
 Lun one hundred and fifty years B.C. He made it from 
 the bark of trees and from old linen. Improved from time 
 to time, it found its way at last, in the eighth century, to 
 Samarcancl, from which, over the routes of traffic, it passed 
 to Greece, and thence to Western Europe. 
 
 The art of printing, the manufacture of gunpowder, the 
 mariner s compass, and the production of paper the- 
 cording to all European authorities, are the agencies that 
 made possible the transition from the intellectual gloom and 
 stagnation of the middle ages to the glory of modern civil 
 ization : from the introduction of these in Europe dates 
 the modern development, in all its varied and abundant 
 phases, of the genius and strength of the Caucasian race. 
 They were the gift of China to the countries of the west. 
 If races were capable of gratitude, and sentiment could 
 weigh in the intercourse of nations, our obligations to this 
 oldest of peoples would be great indeed. 
 
30 THE CHINESE, 
 
 V. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE THOUGHT OF CHINA ON THE INTEL 
 LECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPE. 
 
 EVEN more than in the inventions to which I have 
 referred, China has contributed to the development of the 
 west. For, while I do not intend to trench on ground that 
 may be debatable, there appears to be little or no doubt 
 that much which has had a controlling influence on Euro 
 pean thought has been derived from the earlier manifesta 
 tions of the Chinese intellect, transmitted, like the compass, 
 through Arab channels. It is from Arabia that we derive 
 our earliest knowledge of China. Its intercourse with that 
 country by sea dates from the time of Han-Hwan the 
 middle of the second century of our era and was con 
 tinued for hundreds of years. So far as diligent study has 
 enabled me to ascertain, the dream of an elixir which would 
 prolong human life to an immortality on earth, and of a 
 means that would convert base materials into gold, dates in 
 Europe no farther back than the middle ages ; and it is 
 known that the study of alchemy in Europe was derived 
 from the Arabian, Gebir, who wrote in the eighth century 
 of our era. It is more than two thousand years since a 
 devotee of Laou-tze declared the discovery of both to the 
 Emperor Woo-te ; and it is notable that the inseparability 
 of the two, the elixir of life and the transmutation of 
 metals, which runs through every theory of the alchemists, 
 occurs in that of the Chinese original. It is also worthy 
 of remark that the two substances, sulphur and quicksilver, 
 which the alchemists held to be the most necessary in the 
 transmutation of metals, are combined in cinnabar ver 
 milion which the Chinese visionary declares to be essen 
 tial in his method. After referring to the miraculous 
 potion, the Chinese philosopher avers, "you shall mix some 
 vermilion with it, and this vermilion becomes gold, and 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 31 
 
 this gold gives everlasting life." Like many a ruler of 
 later and lesser times, the emperor believed the glittering 
 promise, and was misled to his disappointment and sorrow 
 by this Chinese Paracelsus. 
 
 So also with the not less entrancing belief that nature 
 herself, from her mysterious resources, may provide the 
 means of an eternal youth. The story of Ponce de Leon 
 in our own country is no myth. From the sunny fields of 
 Spain the adventurers came to seek in the sub-tropical 
 forests of the New World the fountain whose waters 
 should resist old age. But the dream came to Spain from 
 Arabia Felix, and Arabia hearkened its promise from far 
 Sinensis. The annals of China and Japan agreethat no less 
 than two hundred and nine years before the Christian era 
 the physician Ziko-Fuku led six hundred people in a wan 
 dering quest for a drug that would confer immortality. 
 They found it no more than the Spaniard found it in the 
 springs of Florida, but they settled in Japan, and gave a 
 long line of kings to its provinces, and the letters and civil 
 ization of. China to its people. 
 
 Again, but here I am treading close to the realm of con 
 jecture, it is difficult to account for the sudden and luxuriant 
 growth of Arabian literature, except upon the hypothesis 
 of a foreign influence. The Arabian mind was not origina 
 tive. It was skilled in the arts of trade and disciplined in 
 the faculties of war and of toil, but in all else was receptive 
 to the last degree. It had nowhere the gloomy magnifi 
 cence of the Hebrew mind, but rested content with sensuous 
 sights and sounds and thoughts. Nowhere in the literary 
 style of the Arabians do we find the stern and almost awful 
 grandeur of the writings of the children of Judah, but 
 everywhere florid and extravagant forms of expression that 
 indicate by their different character a different source. Far 
 closer to the literary manner of the Chinese than to that of 
 any of the adjacent peoples are the works of those who 
 wrote in the Syrio-Koreish, which formed the later and 
 
32 THE CHINESE, 
 
 learned language of Arabia. " Meadows of Gold and 
 Mines of Gems " sounds like the title of a Chinese tale, but 
 it is that of the history of El Mas udi, an Arabian of the 
 thirteenth century. This floridness and abundance of 
 metaphor exists also among the Persians. We have seen 
 how nearly allied that country has been to China in periods 
 extending over centuries of time, and it is known that the 
 pictorial and keramic art of Persia is strongly tinctured 
 with that of China introduced more than sixteen hundred 
 years ago. The literature of China abounds in the use of 
 superlatives framed in shapes the most elegant and refined. 
 Their tcha or tea, as we term it, is in their literature no 
 common stimulant. It is termed " the leaf that drives away 
 the five causes of sorrow." The National Institute, whose 
 members are those who have taken the highest degrees in 
 letters, is " The Court of the Forest of Pencils." The 
 progress of the poetic art is itself designated under the 
 metaphor of a tree, of which the ancient book of odes is 
 the root, the literature of the time of Soo-loo the stem, and 
 that of Kien-gan the foliaged branches ; while in the 
 period of the Tang dynasty came forth the perfect flowers 
 and fruit. This, the Augustan age of Chinese literature, 
 was, in the eighth century, the same that beheld the Arabians 
 conquering and flourishing at Canton, and the same that 
 witnessed in the writings of the Arabian Gebir the rise of 
 that alchemy the study of which swept like wildfire through 
 Arabia and the whole of the Orient. In this culminating- 
 period the Chinese intellect, in the perfection of its verbal 
 forms, and the Chinese imagination, in the luxuriance and 
 audacity of its visions, was the same as that in which the 
 intellect and fancy of the Arab first awoke to abounding 
 strength and vivacity. Taking into view the close connec 
 tion of the two peoples at, and long before and after, that 
 time, it is not difficult to deduce with clearness that the new- 
 sown seed of Arabian letters was garnered from the older 
 harvests of Cathay. 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 33 
 
 It is true that in this same century the Caliph Almanzor 
 gathered together at Bagdad all that was available of the 
 remnants of Greek, Chaldean, Egyptian and Persian writ 
 ings, and that from these the sciences of medicine, of 
 astronomy and of mathematics were revivified to the ultimate 
 benefit of the west. But it is not these that this paragraph 
 concerns. The florid exuberance of the Arabic writers 
 came not from the chastely symmetrical elegance of 
 the Greek, from the severity of the Egyptian, or from the 
 obscurity of Chaldea. If it be said that the character of 
 Persian literature has the same elements, it may be replied 
 that they may have come from the same source. The 
 founder of the Manichean faith in the second century of 
 the Christian era passed a portion of his life in China, and 
 it was through him that Chinese pictorial art exercised an 
 enduring influence in Iran. 
 
 We are in this connection to remember that the words 
 of the Koran, now regarded by the Moslem as the perfec 
 tion of style, are the later vesture of thoughts spoken orally 
 by the Prophet, and taken down at different times by his 
 disciples, sometimes " written by their pens on the leaves 
 of the palm-tree, the skins of animals, or even the shoulder- 
 bones of sheep "; that these fragments were arranged into 
 a volume by Abu-Bekr ; that this and subsequent manu 
 scripts were so unreliable that Othman, the third Caliph, 
 burned them all and gave a new rescript of their contents 
 for the guidance of the faithful. The intimacy of China 
 with the west at that time is shown by the fact that before 
 the advent of Othman to the Caliphate, the grandson of 
 Chosroes, flying from the " victory of victories " won by 
 the Arabians over the Persians at Nehavend, took refuge 
 in China. In the Koran of Othman appear traces of ima 
 gery more like that of a follower of Lao-Tze than of an 
 Arab limited to indigenous forms of expression. " The 
 wounds of the warrior at the day of judgment," it says, 
 " shall be resplendent as vermilion, and odoriferous as 
 
34 THE CHINESE, 
 
 musk." Neither vermilion or musk were the products of 
 Arabia ; they were brought thither from the marts of 
 China. Where the illustrations of a rising literature are 
 drawn from that of another land the influence of the latter 
 upon the former needs little further proof. 
 
 It may be asked, at this point, what bearing have such 
 researches upon the practical questions of to-day. They 
 may be considered as not unworthy of remark when we reflect 
 that the intellect which gave to the west the means through 
 which it passed to its triumphs of modern times, the dreams 
 through which its science awoke to the use of the alembic 
 and the crucible, and, it may be, the first impulse toward 
 the renaissance of letters, is existent and active still ; 1is- 
 ciplined by the experience of added centuries, and destined, 
 after the vicissitudes of ages, to confront and antagonize 
 our own. If I have dwelt at some length upon the past of 
 China and her people, upon her attributes, and upon what 
 she has done in the world, it is because these imply her 
 resources and indicate her moral and material strength. 
 
 VI. 
 
 INTENSITY AND SYMMETRY OF THE CHINESE MIND. 
 
 The conditions of existence from a time anterior to the 
 extension of their villages along the lengths of the great 
 rivers, have developed the peculiar qualities of the Chinese 
 intellect with an intensity not equalled elsewhere in the 
 world ; and thus a symmetry, perfect of its kind, in the 
 nature of the people enabled them to excel to the utmost 
 within the narrow boundaries assigned by policy, by usage 
 and tradition. This excellence and others akin to it, 
 which constitute an indefeasible merit so far as concerns 
 the Chinese in their own country, is a standing menace 
 as an element in the relations of China with the rest of the 
 world. 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 35 
 
 In any employment where the qualities referred to are 
 essential to success, the Chinaman, their inheritor through 
 a hundred generations, is to be esteemed for his skill and 
 feared for his rivalry. The Chinese waterman will hold 
 the sheet of his sail with one hand and steer the craft with 
 the other, while with his foot he feathers an oar to aid the 
 work of propulsion ; without the sail, his boat, having a 
 tiller worked by the hands and sculls worked by the feet, 
 moves regardless of wind and tide, at seven miles an hour, 
 which is sixteen per cent, faster than the speed on land of 
 mail stages in the United States. The Chinese farmer, in 
 the working of tilled fields, fits the ground for the seed by 
 causing one laborer to dig the stubble with a hoe, another 
 to shake off the earth and lay the haulm in little bundles, 
 while a third stirs the untouched soil between ; this man 
 ual labor rendering the ground suitable to be further 
 broken by a plow drawn by men and women yoked thereto, 
 or, if the ground be tough from the presence of clay, by a 
 single buffalo. The Chinese colorist uses the pigments 
 common in Europe, but secures a higher brilliancy by 
 longer and more careful ievigation in their production. 
 What the Chinamen has once seen done he can do himself, 
 with refinements of execution due to his close perception 
 and habits of accurate work. Once taught, he works as an 
 automaton, but as an automaton endowed with conscious 
 ness. I shall never forget my first sight, years ago in San 
 Francisco, of a Chinese artisan at his work. It was only the 
 making of cigars, but the tawny fingers moved as if di 
 rected by the regular stroke of steam, and with an accu 
 racy that no mechanism could have surpassed. Making no 
 haste and no pause, impassive to the curious gaze of the 
 onlooker, his horizon apparently bounded by the space of 
 the bench before him, stunted in figure, and with the dull 
 and animalized visage peculiar to his race, he stood, a 
 being trained to manual dexterity by almost fifty centuries 
 of labor, but devoid of the wants, the aspirations, the high 
 
3 6 THE CHINESE, 
 
 humanity with all its attendant needs which ages of intel 
 lectual, emotional, and physical advancement have given to 
 the races with which time and circumstance had brought 
 him face to face. As concerns the capacity for labor of 
 of the Chinese, all travellers, through many centuries, unite 
 in the praise of their industry, their skill, and their patience. 
 Ibn Batuta, writing nearly five hundred and fifty years ago, 
 declares that " The people of China, of all mankind, have 
 the greatest taste and skill in the arts." He says of the 
 country along the yellow river, that it is more flourishing 
 than that of the Nile, that the sugar is better than that of 
 Egypt, the melons better than those of Ispahan, the plums 
 better than those " which you get at Damascus." What 
 the Chinese were in his time they were a thousand years 
 before and are to-day, the most patient, persistent and in 
 dustrious workers on the face of the globe. They are to 
 the rest of mankind what the ant, praised by Solomon of 
 old, is to the bee, the butterfly and the beetle. 
 
 The conditions of soil, climate, and geographical position 
 which have moulded the industries of China have furnished 
 the basis of her governmental policy. The country is a 
 substantially level land, with no considerable mountain 
 ranges to divide the territory into separate or separable 
 nations such as have grown up between the mountain 
 barriers of Europe, nor even mountainous regions to 
 shelter rebellious tribes such, for example, as the sixty that 
 inhabit the Caucasus. Threaded in all directions by water 
 ways converging from the natural boundaries of the region 
 on the west until they mingle with the two great rivers, 
 and these latter united in early ages by the great canal, 
 the same facilities that promoted internal commerce facili 
 tated the control by government from the capital to the 
 remotest portion of the empire. Extending over many 
 degrees of latitude, the climate permitted the growth of 
 widely varying products. The general contour of the sur 
 face being low and level, watered by great streams, and 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 37 
 
 favorable to the construction of canals, the productions of 
 one part of the country supplied the needs of others, and 
 an internal commerce served at once to provide occupation 
 and livelihood to a large proportion of the people, and to 
 supply all actual necessities of the whole. Many articles, 
 both agricultural and manufactured, are produced in their 
 greatest excellence in but few localities, from which they 
 are, and for many centuries have been, distributed to other 
 parts of the country. For instance, from its northern 
 portions have been drawn its supplies of salt, and in a less 
 degree of coal, iron, and porphyry, copper, and gold, musk 
 from the mountains of Kansuh, and strange drugs from the 
 plain of Shantung. From Kansuh, also tobacco, milder 
 than ours, but none the less esteemed. From the eastern 
 provinces, the most fertile, healthful, and productive of the 
 whole kingdom, and containing nearly half its population, 
 are derived the woven silks of Soochoo, and the vividly 
 colored crapes and fine embroideries of its rhyming neigh 
 bor, Hoochoo. Witness, also, the raw silks of Kangsoo, 
 the satins of Nankin, and the fermented liquors of Shaou- 
 king ; the green teas, inks, and varnish of Gahnwuy, the 
 hemp and grass-cloth of Keangsi, the latter made from 
 the China grass or ramie which has baffled the inventors 
 of Europe and America in attempts to successfully apply 
 machinery to the separation of its fibres ; the fine porcelain 
 of Kinkinching, and the hams of delicate curing from 
 Kimwha ; the rhubarb and musk, the paper and lead of 
 Honan. From the western regions, nearer the sources of 
 the two great rivers, and bordered by mountain fastnesses 
 occupied by tribes yet wild and unsubdued, are brought 
 herbs and roots of medicinal fame ; copper, gold, and 
 brass and silver, iron also, and cinnabar from which the 
 celebrated vermilion is made. From the south the black 
 teas, the iron, alum, and tobacco, the camphor, sugar, and 
 indigo of Fokeen ; the sugar, cassia, and betel-nuts of 
 Kwangtung, and the varied and unrivalled manufactures 
 
3 7 HE CHINESE, 
 
 of Canton. Such are a few of the sources of traffic which 
 unite the whole of China in a network of business relations 
 that, by their constant attrition, excite the national intellect 
 to the highest activity in the practical affairs of life. 
 
 Because of its diversified productions, each more plenti 
 ful in a few favored districts, each portion of the country 
 has found itself more or less dependent upon all the others, 
 and each has found in the others its sources of profitable 
 labor and remunerative trade. And although traffic, as we 
 have seen, naturally arose between China and the landward 
 regions adjoining, and with adjacent coasts, and there afar, 
 she found herself practically independent of foreign com 
 merce, free from all great need of it, at a period so remote 
 that no record exists of its beginning. In the watered 
 lowlands or irrigable regions abundant crops of rice, in the 
 northern provinces of millet, gave sustenance and afforded 
 occupation to the great mass of the people ; while the 
 other arable lands cultivated by manual labor, or only by 
 the use of the buffalo as an animal of draft, fertilized and 
 tilled like gardens, gave variety to the agricultural pro 
 ductions of the country, and yielded for a given area more 
 than could otherwise by any possibility be obtained ; for 
 the Chinese learned early that the surface of soil required 
 to support a farm animal is threefold that required for 
 the sustenance of a human being. The localization of 
 special products and special industries, and the interchange 
 of commodities, afforded still other outlets for industrial 
 energy and provided the means of supplying the wants of 
 each from the resources of all. It was not without wisdom, 
 therefore, that the rulers of China accepted the belief that 
 a system of national isolation which arose originally from 
 geographical position, and which had worked well for un 
 numbered generations, should not be given up; that a 
 foreign commerce, of which she had little need, should be 
 discouraged as a disturbing element having, to her, stronger 
 possibilities of mischief than of good. 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 39 
 
 The principle of exclusion which has marked the modern 
 policy of China became definite only about two hundred 
 and fifty years ago. Up to that time, as we have seen, 
 communication with other nations had been common. It 
 began, it is true, when the discovery of the passage around 
 the Cape of Good Hope threw the Indian travel aside from 
 the old routes by the ways of Arabia and of Persia, and the 
 ruder peoples of the Atlantic coast began to frequent direct 
 the Chinese seas. But with the end of the thirty years war in 
 Europe, and during the succeeding thirty years between the 
 peace of Westphalia and the treaty of Ryswick, a change 
 had come over the spirit of Europe. The end of great re 
 ligious wars was come. Henceforth the energies of the Ger 
 manic and Latin races were to be bent upon the worship of 
 lucre, upon conquests in the interests of trade, upon terri 
 torial aggrandizements not merely for political power, but 
 for the possession of colonies as trading posts in remote 
 parts of the world. With a prescience almost marvellous 
 of what the two succeeding centuries were to bring forth, 
 China drew within herself, and reiterated with firm purpose 
 her policy of keeping her own people at home, and of ex 
 cluding all foreigners from her borders. This was carried 
 into effect with characteristic thoroughness. Except under 
 very peculiar circumstances the wandering alien was killed 
 at short notice and with shorter shrift. The Chinaman 
 who taught the language of the country to a foreigner was 
 subject to the penalty of death. When the missionaries, 
 in 1805, attempted to send a map of the country to Europe 
 their colony was destroyed by the sword. The western 
 world laughed her course to scorn as the short-sighted de 
 vice of a barbarian nation. Its wisdom was demonstrated 
 by two hundred years of almost incomparable internal prog 
 ress. Two centuries of peace, broken only by slight and 
 local rebellions, followed the enforcement of the policy of 
 exclusion. Her sorrows began when that policy was broken 
 down by the cupidity and the artillery of the west. 
 
40 THE CHINESE, 
 
 VII. 
 
 RACIAL PROCLIVITIES OF THE CHINESE, AND PHYSICAL 
 CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH THEY HAVE DEVELOPED. 
 
 We may now pass to a more complex phase of the in 
 quiry ; that in which racial proclivities are added to phys 
 ical conditions as factors in the development of Chinese 
 character, and of the elements, good or bad, of Chinese 
 power. And in this we should trace the induration of 
 native endowments by the reiterated effect, through nearly 
 five thousand years, of moral and intellectual laws, as we 
 have sought to trace the results of physical conditions upon 
 those of their institutions more directly formed by the 
 moulding action of subjective influences. The process is 
 perhaps more difficult in the one case than in the other, 
 because we must judge of character by its manifestations, 
 while the facts of the physical world lie upon the surface. 
 But it is not necessarily more obscure in its inductions or 
 uncertain in its results. In the pursuit of this branch of 
 our study we may learn that current Caucasian public opin 
 ion has underrated the strength and astuteness of the 
 Chinese intellect, and has overrated any other claim which 
 China may have to the favorable consideration of Caucasian 
 communities. We may find, if I mistake not, that the 
 Chinese character is strong not only in its positive but in 
 its negative elements ; that the very absence of those finer 
 and higher qualities, which are with us believed to be essen 
 tial to enlightened communities, has given, and will con 
 tinue to give, a preponderating power to the Chinese in all 
 that relates to merely material success ; in brief, that their 
 civilization bears the same relation to that of Europe and 
 America that the proverbial iron pot bore to the flask of 
 porcelain as the two in contact floated down the stream. 
 
 We have already seen that the language, the music, the 
 institutions, the forms and principles of government, th" 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 41 
 
 underlying idea of the religious principles of the masses, 
 the fine arts, the literature, and the industries of China 
 were, all of them, self -evolved sprang from no foreign 
 source, and were unaffected by any external agency. This 
 carries with it the conviction that the intellectual type, of 
 which these are exponents, must have been developed, in 
 all its essentials, in like manner: for the same conditions 
 which exclude the idea of external force in the formation 
 of any of these necessarily exclude any such ide a as to the 
 formation, development, or progress of the racial mind. 
 
 That this is the case is also shown by the fact that the 
 governmental, social, and religious institutions are simply 
 an extension of those which control the family in the earliest 
 stages of society. This can be traced in the constitution of 
 the Chinese Empire as clearly and certainly as the banyan 
 tree, spreading its connected trunks over many acres, can be 
 traced to the solitary stem from which it originally sprang. 
 The emperor stands as paterfamilias to all his people ; the 
 governors of the eighteen provinces are in the same relation 
 to those below them, and so on, through all the grades of 
 authority, down to the family over which the father exer 
 cises absolute control. The social duties have for their 
 essential foundation, first, reverence for the head of the 
 family, and second, reverence for the paternal authority 
 embodied in the officers of the law. Religion, although 
 tolerated in almost all its forms by the State, is, with the 
 Chinese, little else than the worship of ancestors, notwith 
 standing that their mythology is full of gods, some of 
 them mortals who died within historic times, and others 
 merely the personifications of evils which they dread, for to 
 them even the small-pox is an object of adoration. In the 
 dwellings of the great mandarins are sanctuaries sacred to 
 the burning of perfumes, the presentation of offerings, and 
 the making of prostrations to the memories of their fore 
 fathers, and for communication with the spirits of the dead. 
 The poorest laborer, crowded with a score of others in a 
 
42 THE CHINESE, 
 
 single room of a mud-built dwelling, has, in a corner of his 
 lodgement, a shelf sacred to the same purpose. Sacrilege it 
 self is denned by the Book of Rites as disrespect to one s 
 progenitors. This, strange and puerile as it may seem to 
 us, becomes grand in view of its depth and intensity. It 
 shows how far after all, the emotional nature of man is supe 
 rior to external surroundings. For this worship, which dom 
 inates China to day. as it has done for thousands of years, is 
 but the survival, developed and intensified, of the awe with 
 which the earliest Scythians, impressed with the fearful 
 mystery of death, heard the voices of the departed in the 
 storms of the mountain valleys or the rustle of the wind 
 through the grass of the starlit steppes of the North. Neces 
 sarily associated with this reverence of their forefathers is a 
 like reverence for the forms, usages, and customs of an 
 tiquity. Hence the permanence of their laws, their stability 
 as a people, notwithstanding the turmoil of many terrible 
 revolutions. These usages and customs have sprung from 
 the same source as the beliefs of the people, and are the 
 outgrowth of the idea of the family. For although the in 
 habitants of northern China may readily be distinguished 
 by speech and appearance from those of the south, yet all 
 read, the same language, and all, in essential things, obey 
 the same rules and follow the same principles of life and 
 conduct, and this not only as individuals, but as a colossal 
 community. 
 
 Carrying one of the most sacred laws of the family into 
 the organization of the state, the members of any one of 
 the twelve tribes, each having a common name, must marry 
 outside of his tribe, and with one whose name is different 
 from his own. As a result of this, the relationship of blood 
 extends through all parts of the Central Kingdom; and 
 each tribe, though distinct in itself, is bound by innumer 
 able ties with all the others. The idea of the family 
 implies mutual cooperation and helpfulness, and thus, in 
 theory and practice, that which is the controlling motive of 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 43 
 
 the civil organization becomes also the leading method by 
 which the ordinary affairs of life are carried on. Nowhere 
 else in the world is the principle of cooperation so well 
 understood, and nowhere else is it carried into effect with 
 so much utility. No man stands unsupported and alone 
 among the Chinese. Throughout the whole country there 
 are loan societies by which the burdens of high interest 
 are lessened. Every trade, profession, and business has its 
 associations ; even the robbers and beggars form them 
 selves into guilds ; and in locations where the govern 
 mental authority has for the time proved too weak to 
 maintain order, voluntary combinations of the inhabitants 
 have supplied its place. 
 
 Thus in the nation, as in the families from which it 
 sprang and which formed its archetype, the most absolute 
 form of a centralized government is made consistent with 
 the utmost freedom of individual action. The personal 
 volition of the Chinese is subject only to the rites, obser 
 vances, and convictions, which are as much a portion of the 
 people as is heart or brain, and as necessary to their 
 normal existence as the air they breathe or the soil they 
 cultivate. For their convictions are so strong, their rites 
 and observances so fixed and permanent, that no conquer 
 ing dynasty has ever changed them ; so strong and so 
 permanent indeed, that every ruler has respected and 
 adopted them. When, centuries ago, Genghiz Khan, the 
 Tartar chieftain, subdued the land, he held it for himself 
 and his descendants only by conforming in every possible 
 way to its established customs ; and when one of his line 
 1 attempted to disregard these, the rule of the Tartar gave 
 1 way to that of a descendant of the native kings. In 
 modern times the conquering Mongols, who for two 
 | hundred and forty years have been the political rulers of 
 China, have held their place only by becoming the embodi 
 ment of Chinese traditions. The paternal idea is indeed 
 carried consistently to the utmost limit, in providing for 
 
44 THE CHINESE, 
 
 the distant as well as for the immediate welfare of the 
 people. It is this that from remote times has instituted 
 the multiplicity of schools, and has opened the highest 
 ranks, below that of the emperor, to those excelling in 
 scholarly attainments without regard to their original 
 condition of life. It is rare to find in China an individual 
 who cannot read and write. The precepts of their wise 
 men are painted upon the fronts of the buildings, so that, 
 literally, he who runs may read ; and an official gazette, 
 probably the oldest newspaper in the world, carries the 
 intelligence of the work of the government to the remotest 
 parts of the empire. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 CHINA YET BUT MIDWAY IN HER CAREER. 
 
 NOR must it be imagined that this organization, so 
 simple in its intricacy, and so strong in its apparent weak 
 ness, is a thing that has culminated and is now passing 
 to decay. The life of China has been long, and her 
 growth proportionally slow. But it needs but a brief 
 recurrence to her history to show that there has been 
 constant progress toward an end not yet reached, a devel 
 opment that is not yet completed. We have seen that 
 nearly three thousand years before our era the Chinese 
 possessed laws and institutions, had invented instruments 
 of music, and already entered upon the pursuits of a 
 sedentary people, kept their records by arbitrary signs 
 formed by or upon knotted cords. It was more than six 
 hundred years before letters were devised and marked 
 with an iron stylus on bamboo, to formulate thought in 
 written speech, long ages passed before the painting of the 
 characters substituted the use of the graving point, and 
 then long lapse of time preceded the invention and use of 
 type. It required seventeen hundred years from the 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 45 
 
 time of the invention of letters for the outgrowth of the 
 Chinese intellect to take intelligible form in the writ 
 ings of Confucius and Lao-Tze. It was one thousand 
 years later still before the system of the great exponent 
 of philosophy and of the laws was regularly organized. 
 And it was four hundred years after this before the gov 
 ernment itself adopted a system of promoting to the 
 utmost those arts and industries upon which the pros 
 perity of the people more and more depended as the popu 
 lation increased, and the conditions of life became more 
 complex. For it was in the ninth century of our era, 
 according to an Arabian chronicler, that the Chinese were, 
 " of all the creatures of God, those who have the most 
 skill in the hand, in all that concerns the arts of design 
 and fabrication, and for every kind of work." The same 
 writer says " that when a man has made anything that 
 probably no one else could be able to, he carries it to the 
 governor, demanding a recompense for the progress he has 
 made in the art." The test of its excellence was, that it 
 should be kept for a year subject to the criticism of all who 
 came, and if no real fault was found, the maker was pro 
 moted by being taken into service of the government. 
 Quaint tales are told in Chinese history of the working of 
 this plan, and illustrating, not only the excellence to which 
 the arts were brought by this method, but the closeness of 
 observation and severity of judgment then, as now, one of 
 the salient characteristics of the race. It is said than an 
 artist represented a sparrow, perched on an ear of standing 
 grain, with such consummate skill that none doubted that 
 the bird was alive ; but it so happened that the ear was 
 shown as standing straight, whereas if the bird were 
 perched upon it the stem would be bent, and so the artist 
 lost his reward. In the arts, as in letters and policy, the 
 same slow gradation of successive progressive steps is 
 seen. It certainly required many hundred years to con 
 struct the immense system of canals which, even in the 
 
46 THE CHINESE, 
 
 beginning of our era, are known to have aided agriculture 
 and facilitated the inland commerce of China. But it was 
 not until the year A.D. 605, that the Emperor Yangti en 
 larged the entire system and connected the two great 
 rivers. The manufacture of porcelain commenced in A.D. 
 630. In A.D. 684, began the public examination of candi 
 dates for literary honors, and it was only in AD. 757, or 
 thereabouts, that books were bound in leaves. In A.D. 
 1277 cotton cloth came into use, although the fibre is men 
 tioned in the annals more than eight centuries before. 
 In A.D. 1333 the grand canal was completed to unite the 
 two great rivers. It was not until the thirteenth century 
 that the distillation of grain for the production of alcohol 
 was discovered by the Chinese ; and it is only since the 
 accession of the Manchoo dynasty that foreign grapes 
 were brought into the country, and acclimated. During 
 all the centuries China has been expanding from the 
 nucleus of Shen-si and its adjacent lands, until it embraces 
 the whole region east to the ocean, north to the Tartar 
 steppes, and south to the mountain ridges that divide it 
 from Tonquin. But I shall speak, further on, of the expan 
 sion of China in dominion and population. 
 
 Although, as we have seen, progress has been slow in 
 China it has been sure ; and every forward movement, 
 whether slight or great, has added to the resources and 
 the permanent prosperity of the people. The relations of 
 China with other nations during the past century have 
 forced upon her a policy that, when carefully examined, 
 will show a more rapid and more aggressive advancement 
 than any other portion of her history ; a policy which, as 
 we shall have occasion to consider, cannot, if continued, 
 fail to have the most important bearing upon the future of 
 our own country and, indeed, upon the future of the civil 
 ization of our race. 
 
 The retrospect of the past of China and her people 
 shows absolute fixedness and absolute permanence in the 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 47 
 
 direction of the Chinese character, but nothing that indi 
 cates that this character is stationary. Its scope is limited 
 in certain ways, but in the line of the course which it 
 has followed for almost five thousand years its path lies 
 open, broad and clear, as it did in the infancy of recorded 
 time. Yet, with all that we have thus far seen, a fair con 
 ception of the favorable side of the Chinese character is 
 not yet fully given. Reference has already been made to 
 their close and accurate powers of observation as displayed 
 nearly ten centuries ago, and which form no inconsiderate 
 element of mental strength and intellectual success. A 
 distinguished traveller, in the early part of the present 
 century, attributed to this the numerous discoveries of the 
 Chinese in agriculture, by which they utilized plants of no 
 worth in other parts of the world. And the thoroughness 
 and completeness of Chinese ethics and practice, as applied 
 to the paternal guidance of the population, is demonstrated 
 by the fact that this faculty of observation has been 
 encouraged by imperial teaching and example. "I would 
 rather," said the emperor Kiang-hi, when the vine was 
 introduced, " give a new fruit or grain to my country than 
 to build an hundred porcelain towers." It is written in the 
 Chinese books that the same emperor saw, in the first day 
 of the sixth moon, a field where rice was sown to be 
 harvested in the ninth. But amid all the myriad ears there 
 was one already ripe. He gathered it ; planted it through 
 thirty successive seasons, and from it came the ya-mi or 
 imperial rice, the only kind that can ripen north of the 
 Great Wall, or that will yield two harvests a year in the 
 south. This new cereal added to the food resources of the 
 multitudes of Mantchuria, and may yet find its place among 
 the grains grown in our own country, if, indeed, it has not 
 already done so. 
 
 This faculty of observing the importance of apparently 
 trivial things lay literally at the foundation of one of the 
 greatest works of China. The Tartar horsemen from their 
 
4^ THE CHINESE, 
 
 infancy were seen to have legs bandied to the curva 
 ture of the sides of the saddle, and therefore weak in 
 inarching or fighting on foot. Hence the Great Wall, a 
 thousand miles in length, was built, and the Tartars were 
 shut out in the same manner and with the same childlike 
 forecast as the wild beasts that shared with them the wide 
 pastoral wildernesses of the North. The accuracy of per 
 ception and the close study of what passes under their 
 observation form the basis of the strong imitative power of 
 the Chinese the faculty that renders them such dangerous 
 competitors in the practice of every art affording scope for 
 manual dexterity. The same faculty has also made them 
 proficient in arts which they employ alike in the ordinary 
 relations of life and in the highest work of diplomacy. 
 They have been well said to be a nation of actors. The 
 Chinaman is as subtle and facile in whatever requires intel 
 lectual work as he is in the performance of manual labor. 
 Add to these faculties that of a suavity and politeness 
 which, though ordinarily formal in the extreme, is never 
 theless refined and delicate. In nothing does this appear 
 more clearly than in Chinese diplomatic correspondence 
 with the representatives of other countries. The communi 
 cations from Caucasian powers have often been singularly 
 rude and uncourteous when compared with the polished 
 and considerate phraseology employed by the Chinese 
 dignitaries, ^o^ civilization can be wholly deprecated 
 which has fostered and developed the characteristics which 
 we have thus far seen to be inherent in the people of 
 China characteristics that, almost without exception, are 
 found to be universal with her people ; with the ignorant 
 as with the educated, with the laborer as with the mandarin. 
 And these qualities, always formidable in contests of diplo 
 macy between nations as between individuals, become 
 doubly so when, through long growth and persistence, they 
 have been intensified, and made unchangeable as elements 
 of national character. 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 49 
 
 IX. 
 
 COMBINED INTELLECTUAL STRENGTH AND SAVAGERY OF 
 THE CHINESE. 
 
 HOWEVER objectionable from our standpoint the Chi 
 nese type may be, it is of marvellous symmetry when consid 
 ered by itself. Its more ignoble parts are not in any wise 
 inconsistent with those which compel respect ; on the con 
 trary, its virtues give vigor to its vices, and the two 
 together, combined in closest union, afford a racial individ 
 uality that for aggressive purposes is of more than giant 
 strength. 
 
 The slow and deliberate savagery of the Chinese has 
 heen remarked from the earliest times in which they came 
 in contact with the western peoples, and is shown in every 
 relation of personal life and national policy. In the ninth 
 century the foreign trade of China temporarily acquired 
 considerable magnitude, and led to the settlement of many 
 foreigners in her seaport cities. One hundred and twenty 
 thousand of these were massacred at one time in the capital 
 city of Tche-Kiang. These were Christians, Hebrews, 
 Mahometans and Magians, whose numbers were ascer 
 tained from tax-lists ; of the number of natives who were 
 murdered on the same occasion, no record exists. There 
 is no reason to suppose that this was the first instance of 
 the promiscuous slaughter of a large population. Nor from 
 that time to this has there been a single instance in which 
 bloodshed has not been carried to the utmost, wherever 
 territory has been conquered by arms, or cities have been 
 subjugated by siege. Less than fifteen years ago, the city 
 of Schu-chang, in the province of Kansuh, was held by 
 rebels, and was invested by the imperial forces. The 
 fortifications were breached by the explosion of mines and 
 then carried by storm. After the surrender the chiefs 
 were hacked in pieces. Nearly sixteen hundred men were 
 
5 THE CHINESE, 
 
 laid on the ground in rows and then beheaded. In the 
 words of the Pekin Gazette: " The same night the same 
 corps entered the city, and set it on fire ; bullets and 
 spears did their work till the whole local Mahometan 
 population, numbering more than five thousand and four 
 hundred, save about nine hundred females, children and 
 old folk, were given to the flames, and peace reigned in 
 Schu-chang." The official account adds, with the greatest 
 equanimity, that " the maiden and the wife had far from 
 escaped violation," and closes with the statement that the 
 enemies of the emperor " had been executed as their 
 muster-roll was called, like sheep or pigs in their pens, not 
 one escaping." Twenty years previously the insurgents 
 exploded a mine under an angle of the walls of Nankin and 
 through the breach thus obtained took the city by storm. 
 It contained twenty thousand men, women and children, of 
 whom not more than one hundred escaped. The rebels 
 proclaimed, " We killed them all, to the babes at the breast ; 
 we left not a root to sprout from." After the slaughter the 
 dead bodies were thrown into the Yang-tse-Kiang. One of 
 the rebel chiefs captured by the imperial forces was 
 subjected to torture and was then slowly cut up into small 
 pieces until he expired. Such is now and has been from 
 the earliest times the Chinese idea of conducting war. 
 
 The savagery of the Chinese like everything else in 
 China, dates back unchanged to remote ages, and inheres 
 in every phase of life or vicissitude of fortune. The Shoc 
 king or ancient code set forth what should have been a 
 very effective means of insuring accuracy in astronomical 
 observations. If the astronomers failed to forecast a 
 coming eclipse at the proper time they were put to death, 
 and if a prophesied eclipse did not take place they met 
 with the same desert. 
 
 The ingrained ferocity of the people, however, both in 
 the present and the past, is even better illustrated by their 
 laws and by their social customs, which, as we have seen- 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 51 
 
 have been the slow and determinate outgrowth of the 
 nature of the people through unnumbered ages. 
 
 The intent of the Chinese law is to strike the innocent 
 as well as the guilty, and to punish the offender by inflict 
 ing suffering, not only upon upon him, but on all connected 
 with him. A person convicted of high treason is con 
 demned to a slow and painful death a death preceded by 
 torture many times repeated ; for executioners are skilful 
 in reviving the victim for renewed torments. Not only the 
 criminal, but his father, grandfather, sons, grandsons, 
 paternal uncles and their sons, are condemned to death, 
 while all the male relations under sixteen are subjected to 
 a treatment too gross to be mentioned here, and given to 
 the great mandarins for slaves. The female relatives of 
 all ages are consigned to slavery, and all the property is 
 confiscated. Notwithstanding these terrible penalties, no 
 trial, in the proper sense of the term, is afforded the 
 culprit ; his case is heard without a jury before a mandarin, 
 who is at liberty to hear or reject as much of the testimony 
 as he pleases ; and although a rehearing may be had at the 
 instance of relatives, yet no counsel can be heard, and even 
 the argument of the relations is a matter of favor and not 
 of right. The debtors of the emperor, if shown or claimed 
 to be guilty of fraud, are strangled, but if the non-payment 
 be due merely to misfortune, the imperial creditor con 
 fiscates their property, and sells their wives and children 
 to slavery. A slave who strikes his master is beheaded ; 
 if he strike with intent to kill, he suffers death by torture ; 
 if he accidentally kill his master he is imprisoned for a 
 certain time and then strangled ; if he accidentally wound 
 him, he is banished to the distance of three thousand 
 le, but not until he has received one hundred blows. 
 If a slave is impudent to his master, he is strangled ; 
 if to any of the relatives of his master in the first degree, 
 he is banished for two years and receives fifty strokes 
 with the bamboo. The nature of this common method 
 
52 THE CHINESE, 
 
 of punishment In China should be understood. The 
 victim is suspended from a beam by means of a rope 
 tied to his wrists and feet, leaving his body bent in the 
 form of a bow ; his flesh is torn to tatters by executioners 
 standing beneath. It is the common custom, after the 
 prisoner has fainted, to restore his strength by remedies, 
 in order to permit a repetition of the operation. The extent 
 to which the law, in other words, the bamboo, is brought 
 to bear in all the relations of life, is shown by the fact that 
 when a trader deliberately plans to undersell his neighbors 
 so that they cannot dispose of their goods, he is punished 
 with forty strokes. Chinese marriages are not arranged by 
 the parties directly interested, but by their relatives. If 
 one of the family recalcitrates, after a betrothal has been 
 agreed upon, the head thereof receives fifty strokes with 
 the bamboo, and under this legal process the wedding 
 ceremony takes place perforce. 
 
 But the intent and practice of Chinese legislation do not 
 stop with even this, for wherever a person observes a line 
 of conduct that may be alleged as offending propriety, 
 even if there be no special infraction of any established 
 enactment, he is liable upon a very informal trial and 
 at the arbitrary will of a mandarin, to the penalty of forty to 
 eighty blows. The treatment of offenders is barbarous in 
 the extreme. A French traveller recalls an instance in 
 which a number of prisoners, who were being carried 
 through the country, had their hands spiked to the cart 
 in default of ropes with which to tie them. Manacled 
 prisoners are caused to lie down on their faces and, chained 
 fast in this recumbent position, have heavy timbers placed 
 upon and across them, and in this manner pass the night. 
 An inferior official who neglects, or is believed to neglect, 
 his duty, has a long bamboo thrust through his ears, and 
 a flag on the end of the quivering rod tells in legible 
 characters the alleged cause of his disgrace. 
 
 These peculiarities of Chinese jurisprudence readily ac- 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 53 
 
 count for the fact that many of the mandarins speedily grow 
 rich. Where torture is the mildest form of punishment, a 
 due gradation must render the death penalty frequent for 
 faults considered to be of a graver kind. About a hundred 
 years ago a subject ventured the advice that the emperor 
 declare his successor, for which heinous offence he was put 
 to death. The Ming dynasty declared that paper money 
 should be considered the same as copper coin, and that 
 whoever demurred to this should be beheaded. Up to the 
 beginning of the present century, death was the punish 
 ment of natives who taught Europeans the Chinese language, 
 or who revealed to foreigners the methods of Chinese 
 manufacture. During the inception of the opium trade, 
 the penalty of death was put into effect to deter the native 
 population from purchasing or dealing in the article. 
 Before the power of the western nations had made itself so 
 effectually felt in China, foreigners penetrating to the interior 
 were beaten, starved, and finally beheaded for their temerity. 
 But more exacting and more terrific even than the cus 
 tomary law, is that voluntarily assumed by the members 
 of the trade guilds which control the various industries 
 of the country. A consular report of the past year relates 
 that an employer in the gold leaf manufacture infringed a 
 rule of his craft relating to apprentices. He was bitten 
 to death, each one of the one hundred and thirty members 
 of the guild in turn fastening his teeth in the flesh of the 
 culprit. 
 
 A people living under such institutions must necessa 
 rily be given over to all the vices that form the common 
 heritage of slaves, at the same time that their peculiar 
 structure of society secures to them many of the strength 
 ening attributes of freedom. Out of the condition of con 
 tinual subjection to physical force, and the fear of bodily 
 and financial harm, have been developed two notable facul 
 ties in an inordinate degree : one, that of acute deceit, by 
 which punishment may be avoided and personal benefit ob- 
 
54 THE CHINESE, 
 
 tained ; the other, that of avarice, and desire for the accu 
 mulation of wealth and the enjoyment of physical ease. 
 For it is a lav/ of nature that people appreciate and value 
 most that which they are in most danger of losing. Out of 
 the same conditions, also, has sprung a disregard of human 
 life which permeates all classes of society. When, thirty 
 years ago, a new emperor ascended the throne, he put to 
 death the counsellors of his father, who, under the stress of 
 necessity, had added somewhat to the privileges of the 
 Europeans. Among the lower orders, the same merciless 
 spirit is shown in the common practice of infanticide ; and 
 incidentally and in a less degree, by the almost uniform 
 neglect of the boatmen on the Chinese water-ways to rescue 
 those whom they may see drowning in their immediate 
 neighborhood. The sick are sometimes turned out of 
 doors to die, not merely to save the labor and expense of 
 attention ; but to avoid that of purifying the dwelling from 
 their ghosts. It has been recorded as frequently occurring 
 that gamblers, after having lost even their clothing, have, 
 in the northern provinces, been deliberately allowed in the 
 depth of winter to freeze to death. The propensity to gam 
 ing, it maybe remarked, exists among the Chinese to an ex 
 tent seen nowhere else in the world. When his last coin or 
 his last rag is gone, the Chinaman has been known to gamble 
 for his fingers each player, as he loses, suffering the finger 
 to be chopped from his hand. It would be almost impossible 
 to comprehend a character so frantic or so debased, were it 
 not that the statements are made on authority that can 
 hardly be doubted. 
 
 X. 
 
 VICIOUS ELEMENTS INHERENT IN, BUT NOT IMPAIRING 
 STRENGTH OF, THE CHINESE CHARACTER. 
 
 As there is seldom a wide discrepancy between the social 
 circumstances of a people and the laws under which they 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 55 
 
 live, the social condition of the Chinese might be inferred 
 from what has been already said. It is best proven, how 
 ever, by their treatment of women. There is every reason 
 to suppose that jealousy was the original motive that led to 
 the mutilation of the feet of females, common from the re 
 motest times among all except the very lowest classes of the 
 population ; and the custom may also serve as an example of 
 the brutal directness with which the Chinese pursue any ob 
 ject they may have in view. The women are treated as 
 slaves ; are presumed to have no souls ; and are in many cases 
 subjects of established and regular traffic. A member of the 
 British Legislative Council at Hong Kong said, nearly fifty 
 years ago, " The traffic in females is too disgusting to de 
 tail the facts are revolting to humanity." Their place in 
 the household is one of abject drudgery ; and, as in infancy 
 they are believed to be hardly worth the trouble of main 
 tenance, so in youth they are not thought to be worth the 
 expense of education, save in the arts of embroidery and 
 the like ; and when fully grown, are measured only by their 
 value as instruments of labor or pleasure. It is said that 
 the experience of the Chinese women, abject and degraded 
 as it is, has led many of them to a faith, repudiated by 
 their masters, in a hereafter where sorrow does not exist 
 a faith springing from suffering ; the strange fruit of 
 earthly despair. 
 
 The debasement of women is a principle that appears to 
 dominate all Chinese society, notwithstanding the fact that 
 at various periods women have had no insignificant part in 
 the government ; and that, among the ruling classes, the 
 wives of the mandarins share with their husbands the hon 
 ors and deference due to the high position. Fromthe foun 
 dation of the great dynasty of Han, the Chinese laws have 
 recognized the right of parents to sell their children, and 
 this, as may be supposed, has borne with especial severity 
 upon females; some writers have estimated that one-tenth of 
 the women of China are sold as slaves. Ibn Batuta, whose 
 
5 6 THE CHINESE, 
 
 travels throw so much light on Chinese life five centuries and 
 more ago, says that it is accounted no disgrace to sell sons 
 and daughters, and dwells with especial emphasis upon the 
 fact that "young slave girls are very cheap in China." It is 
 so to this day, and in these present years of grace it is com 
 mon for foreign sailors to purchase young females and at 
 the end of their short sojourn in port to abandon them. 
 The current price for a female slave in China is from ten 
 to thirty-five dollars, according to youth and comeliness. 
 The slaughter of the innocents has attracted the attention 
 of travellers in China in all ages. Barrow, who wrote from 
 observation early in the present century, places the number 
 of female infants thrown out to die among the swarms of 
 hungry dogs in the narrow streets of Pekin at nine thou 
 sand each year. According to high authority the number 
 of female infants annually destroyed in the Central King 
 dom is not less than thirty thousand. 
 
 It may be very easily conceived that in such a society 
 religion, as we understand the term, can hardly exist. In 
 all countries, religious or ethical belief is subject to the 
 peculiarly resisting inertia of racial tendencies, and with the 
 Chinese abstract teachings have clearly defined limits when 
 it is sought to apply them in practice. To the average China 
 man the idea of sin as laid down by the theologians and 
 understood by the religionists of the west is unintelligible. 
 To him wrong-doing is the infraction of law laid down by 
 human authority. What legislation has not forbidden, his 
 conscience leaves him free to indulge in, and to him the 
 human law, that is not enforced by the authority from 
 which it emanates, is a dead letter. As there is always a 
 wide margin, commonly indicated by the word "vice," 
 between what legislation can practically prevent and what 
 is desired by sound morality, the Chinese sees no wrong 
 in many things that are condemned as wickedness by the 
 religious, and stamped as infamous by the public opinion of 
 Caucasian peoples. 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 57 
 
 It may be very readily conceived that in such a society 
 religion, in the Occidental sense of the term, can hardly 
 exist. That the Chinese worship the spirits of their ances 
 tors we have already seen ; and as this is the oldest faith 
 that they have ever known, so also it is the only one in 
 which the belief can be said to be in reality more than for- 
 11, al. The creed of Confucius held by the educated classes 
 is simply a formula of materialism, in which morality is 
 taught because of its beneficent results on earth, but in 
 which there is no gleam or glimmer of the higher truths 
 which lead humanity to loftier levels of thought or emotion, 
 or which finds in a future life the rewards or punishments of 
 good or evil. Mahometanism in China is even less in 
 morals and ethics than it is in Turkey or in the Barbary 
 States ; and Buddhism there retains no spark of the lam 
 bent light which shone on India in the earlier days of the 
 cult of Guatama. The Chinese character intellectual, 
 moral, or emotional appears to have in it nothing of the 
 religious element, as the term is understood among other 
 races. It has successfully resisted or debased creed after 
 creed that has found either a temporary or permanent place 
 within its borders. The soiled streams of Mahometan and 
 Buddhistic belief found deeper soilure in the degraded ideas 
 of the Chinese, while the purer faith taught by the Nestorians 
 a thousand years ago was extinguished by fire and sword ; 
 and the efforts of the Roman missionaries, fervent, earnest, 
 and continued through centuries, have grasped only a 
 spotted handful here and there from the sodden harvests 
 of Chinese belief. Whatever may be claimed as to the suc 
 cesses of the missionaries of more recent times, or other 
 churches, we shall see further on that they afford little en 
 couragement to Christian hope ; and if in the future they 
 shall bourgeon into promise of greater fruitfulness, it must 
 be under conditions widely different from those that now 
 exist. 
 
nTTy/?^ THE CHINESE, 
 
 
 
 XL 
 
 SOCIAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE SAGACITY OF THE CHINESE. 
 
 HAVING considered those characteristics which belong 
 to the Chinese as a practically homogeneous people, and 
 which are common to all grades and classes, we may well 
 ask by what standard of intellect and attainment this 
 colossal population is managed and controlled. In other 
 words, our study now leads us to an examination of the 
 status for governmental purposes of the dominant classes. 
 These include, of course, the emperor and his subordinates, 
 the mandarins. Forty years ago, these latter were stated 
 as numbering somewhat less than fourteen thousand 
 scattered through the country, together with two 
 thousand four hundred at the court. These belong to 
 the civil branch of the government ; the military man 
 darins numbered eighteen thousand five hundred. The 
 former, however, rank the highest in point of popular 
 respect and administrative power, and with them mainly 
 lies the control of the vast empire. They are, and have 
 been, for many hundred years, drawn from all ranks 
 of the people ; their promotion through the several 
 grades being dependent upon their proficiency in literary 
 studies and their success in passing literary examinations. 
 As these studies are those that have been accepted and 
 formulated through many centuries, the officers of the 
 empire are necessarily imbued with the popular reverence 
 for antiquity, and are fixed and riveted to established 
 usages. As the examinations are competitive, it follows 
 that the strongest intellects are those which rise the most 
 readily and rise the highest. As craft and subtlety have 
 no less scope in this than in any other department of effort, 
 it results that the keenest minds come soonest into power 
 and longest maintain their place on the treacherous sands 
 of official responsibility. As politeness, not less than the 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 59 
 
 other characteristics we have mentioned, is always an 
 element of success, those who combine urbanity with 
 the stronger intellectual traits are first to receive the 
 management of questions of state requiring high adminis 
 trative skill. 
 
 Reasoning from such data, we may infer with certainty 
 that both the home and foreign policy of China is founded 
 on far-sighted ideas of national welfare, and is carried into 
 effect with no inferior degree of executive talent and ex 
 perience ; but this conclusion need not rest on inference 
 only. It is demonstrated by what is known of the civil 
 policy of China during many centuries past, and foreign 
 ambassadors have not been slow to concede qualities 
 of consummate statesmanship to the high officials with 
 whom they have been brought in contact. These qualities 
 are displayed in the strict ceremonial by which the honors 
 of office are held before the eyes of the populace, in order 
 that authority may receive its full meed of the respect 
 which tends to insure obedience to law ; each grade among 
 the mandarins being entitled to special observances of 
 regard from all below, and the emperor being held as the 
 incarnation of all that is to be reverenced by men. They 
 are shown also by the extent to which the people are 
 regularly informed of all that is believed necessary for 
 them to know, and yet systematically misled in whatever 
 becomes the interest, for the time being, of the govern 
 ment to withhold, as was well illustrated after the victories 
 of the English, when the Chinese throughout the empire 
 were made to believe that the invaders, instead of being 
 victorious, had paid tribute for permission to retire from 
 Canton. They are illustrated in a stronger degree in the 
 mingled force and acuteness with which the outlying de 
 pendencies are held in allegiance to the Central Kingdom, 
 a leading example of which exists in the political subju 
 gation of Thibet, which is ruled through a Grand Lama 
 whose appointment by sinuous methods has long been con- 
 
60 THE CHINESE, 
 
 trolled by the emperor. The same craft and astuteness 
 were also displayed in the influence brought to bear upon 
 Nepaul as against the interests of Great Britain, and with 
 the manifest intent of maintaining an independent State as 
 a barrier between British India and the western confines of 
 the empire. The statesmanship of the Chinese rulers is 
 further shown in the systematic knowledge of the condition 
 of the outside nations, and the manner in which the im 
 perial policy has been modified according to the necessities 
 indicated by external circumstances. 
 
 A few passing references to historic events will illustrate 
 this. A thousand years before our era, foreign embassies 
 passed from India to China, and from that time to the 
 present there has been no exigency requiring the exercise 
 of astute foreign diplomacy that has failed to call it forth. 
 Wherever interest, whether of trade or of policy, has made 
 it requisite that the representatives of China should pass to 
 foreign governments, they have done so. And what is now 
 deemed a step forward on her part in sending envoys to 
 the United States and the western powers is but a recur 
 rence to what she has done, on occasion, during many 
 centuries. In the year 141 B.C., the Emperor Woo-te sent 
 embassies to encourage foreign trade, and twenty years 
 later his successor sent a plenipotentiary, with a retinue of 
 one hundred persons, to visit the regions of the west ; and 
 only twenty years later still, the Chinese Emperor received 
 tribute-bearing embassies from Japan. Two centuries and 
 a half after this a similar tribute came from the King of 
 India ; and after this in rapid succession were embassies 
 from Rome and India ; and so onward, although at com 
 paratively long intervals, down to the present time, ambas 
 sadors have been sent and received by the Chinese Govern 
 ment. Where Chinese interests have required it, her 
 embassies have gone forth with pomp to distant nations, 
 and, in like manner, when she had no purpose to serve, 
 those of other countries have been met with the same pomp 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 6* 
 
 harnessed in the guise of contempt. But whatever her 
 course, there has seldom been an instance in which, from 
 her standpoint, her methods have not been dictated by a 
 far-sighted and enlightened regard for the welfare of her 
 people. 
 
 We have already seen that more than two thousand years 
 ago she encouraged trade with nations less powerful than 
 herself, and that in the ninth century her ports were open 
 to the commerce of other lands. This was continued down 
 through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and we 
 have no record of systematic opposition to foreign com 
 merce so long as the nations from which it came were 
 comparatively weak. Two centuries ago the continent of 
 America was almost a wilderness, and Europe was com 
 posed of small, despotic, and far from prosperous States. 
 But the spirit of commercial enterprise, directed by state 
 craft and supported by force, was rampant among the 
 people of the west, and during the latter part of the 
 eighteenth century aggrandized the western powers. In 
 proportion as these, which form the world external to 
 China, grew great and prosperous, in proportion as their 
 military strength and commercial enterprise increased, just 
 in this same ratio did China close her seaboard to for 
 eign access. It was not for nothing that the Chinese 
 rulers foresaw that the rapid strides of Caucasian civili 
 zation would render them dangerous in the same degree 
 that they were permitted to obtain a foothold on Chinese 
 soil. 
 
 Nor was it alone the material advancement of the west 
 ern nations that bore out this policy and justified this prin 
 ciple of. national action. The spread of liberty which has 
 successively changed and modified the administration of 
 every government of Europe, saving that of Turkey, would 
 have been inimical to the permanence of the Chinese politi 
 cal hierarchy ; and it is not without interest and instruction 
 that we learn that it was a knowledge of the French revolu- 
 
62 THE CHINESE, 
 
 tion that, in the latter part of the last century, caused the 
 authorities of China to restrict the privileges of foreign 
 traffic, to attempt to exclude foreigners from Canton, and 
 to commit other works of quasi hostility which were des 
 tined ultimately to end in war. 
 
 Nor is the statesmanship of the Chinese displayed in a 
 less degree in their home policy. Every Chinese male is 
 registered, and he can depart to no corner of the earth but 
 his place and locality are known, and the idea of fealty to 
 his native land kept before him as a governing principle. 
 He belongs to his country during life, his country watches 
 his course from the cradle to the grave, and indicates his 
 burial-place when life has departed. Within a few weeks 
 after the unhappy occurrences in Colorado in 1885, a re 
 port of the Chinese Consul gave the name and age of every 
 Chinaman injured or killed, the place of his birth, and his 
 nearest relative in China. The system of espionage ex 
 tends even to business relations, and its thoroughness and 
 accuracy are sometimes surprisingly displayed. When, in 
 1839, tne opium was delivered up by the British at the 
 Bogue forts, the Chinese Commissioner, Lin, was aware, 
 before any account had been rendered, of the exact number 
 of chests of the drug on board the several vessels in the 
 harbor. The paternal character of the government, as well 
 as the rugged statesmanship of the Chinese, is further 
 illustrated by the fact that this opium, upwards of twenty 
 thousand chests, and having an actual value of six millions 
 of dollars, was totally destroyed. The ferocity with which 
 their laws are executed, to which allusion has already been 
 made, is also further illustrated by the fact that a miserable 
 creature who attempted to carry off some small pieces from 
 the general destruction was, on detection, immediately put 
 to death. 
 
 Such is the Chinese nationality ; such are its people ; 
 and such its rulers. It only remains for the completion of 
 our analysis of this people, to consider their purely physical 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 63 
 
 conditions, as we have already considered their industrial, 
 political, and moral nature. 
 
 XII. 
 
 PHYSICAL NATURE OF THE CHINESE. 
 
 THE Chinese are children of the temperate zone, and 
 have developed under the influence of a climate sufficiently 
 cold and variable to insure considerable strength, together 
 with great endurance and elasticity to the physical frame, 
 and yet warm enough to yield in abundance the staple food 
 of more tropical lands. Rice, in the larger part of the 
 kingdom, has been from time immemorial the principal 
 sustenance of the people ; and the fact that they have not 
 deteriorated to a greater extent under the influence of a 
 crowded population and, with many classes, of a compara 
 tive insufficiency of food, is doubtless because this grain 
 contains a larger proportion of phosphates than any other, 
 and thus renders possible the full development of brain 
 and bone even when ordinary nutrition is diminished. 
 Physiologically considered, the organization of the Chinese 
 is coarse, as is indicated, for example, by the hair, ordinarily 
 so thick and strong that they, by comparison, liken that of 
 Europeans to soft and downy fur. This coarseness of 
 physical fibre has, however, for them, one great advantage, 
 for, as is the case with animals, they recover from all kinds 
 of accidents, wounds and bruises with much greater rapidity 
 and, as one writer has stated, " with fewer symptoms of 
 any kind of danger," than is the case with Caucasians. As 
 concerns ability for labor, they are generally considered as 
 possessed of great endurance rather than of great bodily 
 strength. It was calculated that, of those employed in the 
 construction of the Pacific Railway, it required five Chinese 
 laborers to do the work of four of those of our own country ; 
 and I was informed in Nevada that wnile they were ad- 
 
64 THE CHINESE, 
 
 mirably fitted for lighter work, they were unable to per 
 form the heavy labor in the deep silver mines. Yet this opin 
 ion, upon the testimony of many who have been familiar with 
 the Chinaman at home, is subject to modification in their 
 favor. One writer says that " a more powerful race of men 
 exists nowhere than the coolies of the port of Canton," and 
 that " the weights which they carry with ease on a bamboo 
 would break down most other Asiatics." And another, in 
 speaking of the bearers who carried him in a sedan-chair 
 over a precipitous road, declares that though " clad in a few 
 rags and looking as emaciated as if just ready to fall down 
 dead," they were very strong, and that a well-fed horse 
 could not have carried the burden which of course was 
 borne by two men with the same ease, speed, and sure- 
 footedness. They are conceded to be much stronger and 
 better sailors than the Lascars often shipped on British 
 vessels on the eastern seas. In point of endurance their 
 low nervous organization for the Chinaman certainly 
 seems far less sensitive to physical pain than are the people 
 of any other civilized race secures to them a manifest ad 
 vantage. In resisting the effects of hunger and cold the 
 Chinaman is the equal of any, savage or other, on the face 
 of the earth. In any event, it is to be remembered that 
 the number of occupations in which his strength is inad 
 equate to the greatest performance possible with laboring 
 men, is comparatively small. It should be kept in mind 
 that, both in civil and military pursuits, the value of physi 
 cal strength, pure and simple, has been constantly diminish 
 ing for more than two hundred years. What gunpowder 
 and arms of precision have done to degrade the value 
 of physical prowess in war, improvements in implements 
 and machinery have done to debase the value of phy 
 sical strength in arts and industries, and the Chinaman 
 is equal to all the demands, whether of peace or war, of 
 civilized or barbaric existence. 
 
 Among the Chinese, the usual marriageable age is 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 65 
 
 fifteen with both sexes. They marry young for the reason 
 that the male children become at an early age a source of 
 profit to their parents, and the marriages are usually pro 
 lific. Such being the reason instead of early maturity, as 
 in tropical or semi-tropical climates there is not that pre 
 mature old age among them which one would otherwise 
 expect ; for although the proportion who reach seventy 
 years is perhaps less than in Europe or America, probably 
 the number that are capable of severe labor at the age of 
 sixty is equal to that of any other country. In the eastern 
 provinces especially, the largest and most populous of the 
 empire, the people are hale and hearty, and have well 
 been characterized by a close observer as " a great and 
 healthy mass of human beings, athletic and industrious, and 
 capable of the most enormous and unwearied industry." 
 That life in China has reached a certain balance an equi 
 librium between the influences which sustain and those 
 which destroy is manifest when we consider that by far the 
 larger portion of this immense population live in the depths 
 of indigence, and under conditions of life that, if endured 
 by the people of other civilized countries, would quickly 
 reduce them to mental and physical inanition. 
 
 Some of the causes of this we have already considered, 
 but there is still another not less important. Owing to the 
 low ebb of medical knowledge among the Chinese and the 
 hardships incident to the lives of the masses, the weaker 
 among the children die early, and only the stronger sur 
 vive to perpetuate the race. This, continued through a 
 hundred and fifty generations, has produced the physical 
 type of the people ; a type in which a maximum of mental 
 activity and muscular endurance is derived from a mini 
 mum of comfort and nutrition. 
 
66 THE CHINESE, 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 SEVERITY OF CONDITIONS OF LIFE IN CHINA. 
 
 THE fact that the extent of the population has been 
 limited only by the means of subsistence, has produced 
 the rigorous and severe conditions of life and society which 
 provide to the Chinese the strongest motives for leaving 
 their own country, when the barriers of emigration are 
 thrown down, and at the same time render them most 
 dangerous competitors wherever they may find their way. 
 In their own country their condition is manifested by the 
 crowding of their dwellings, by low rates of wages, by a 
 small scale of business when they rise above the status of 
 mere laborers; and by the narrowest profits on any ordi 
 nary business transaction, and by the desperate penury 
 which assails the laboring population at every turn. In 
 their necessities they have laid hold of every material for 
 food that will sustain life on however low a plane. The 
 common belief that they devour rats, mice, and snakes is no 
 myth, but rests on testimony too strong to be disputed. 
 The common rat reaches a great size on the rich alluvials 
 and is hunted by the full-grown Chinaman as a desirable 
 morsel, with as much gusto as a rabbit is snared by an 
 American boy. With them dogs and cats sell in the markets 
 for the same price as the flesh of swine. Even the mineral 
 kingdom is laid under tribute, and it is common to mix 
 gypsum with grain to form a jelly which is used for food. 
 Two pounds of rice per day meets the wants, and often ex 
 ceeds the expectations, of the Chinese laborer. Often a 
 much less quantity supplemented by salted fish or by vege 
 tables, especially by the leaves of a huge cabbage .which 
 the Chinese raise in enormous quantities, and which, as pre 
 pared by them with vinegar and salt, is probably the origi 
 nal of the sauerkraut of Europe, forms the staple food of 
 the laboring Chinese. Frequent inundations, that which 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 67 
 
 occurred on the Yellow River but a few weeks since des 
 troyed two millions of people and wasted the substance of 
 myriads of others seasons of drought, swarms of locusts, 
 and other disasters, weigh heavily upon the masses, for they 
 live continually up to the limit of their miserable resources 
 with no margin to cover misfortune. 
 
 The home of the coolie is utterly devoid of comforts. 
 At his meals the whole family sits a-squat around the large 
 pot which, with a frying pan and a few earthen jars, consti 
 tutes the furniture of the dwelling. The bed of the average 
 Chinaman at home consists of boards supported on saw- 
 horses and covered with a mat. " In judging the Chinese " 
 says an English historian, " it ought never to be forgotten 
 how fearful is the struggle for daily subsistence. The 
 entire produce of the land is but just capable of maintain 
 ing the population ; millions have no other thought save 
 that of obtaining by toil sufficient to ward off starvation to 
 themselves and their families." Amid so much of suffering 
 the precepts of charity concerning others and the principle 
 that its benefits should begin at home inevitably collide. 
 But the Chinese coolie has reconciled their inconsistency. 
 He will not deny a beggar, but custom sanctions the gift of 
 as much rice as will lie on his thumb-nail. Nor is this devoid- 
 of the practical common sense inherent in all grades of the 
 people of China. The infinitesimal dole can hardly injure 
 the poorest donor ; with diligence the donee can manage 
 to keep body and soul together, and yet is hardly encouraged 
 to mendicancy by the extent of the bounty. 
 
 The houses of China vary in construction in different 
 portion of the country. In some parts they are of brick ; 
 in others, built of mud laid up the same as concrete walls 
 are sometimes made with us ; in others, the sides are com 
 posed mainly of matting coated with mud ; while in one 
 large district the habitations are dug in the earth and form 
 a system of caves or subterranean dwellings. Even in the 
 large cities a family of ten persons can live for about four 
 
68 THE CHINESE, 
 
 hundred dollars a year, including clothing and food, and 
 with the unusual accommodation of a whole dwelling to 
 themselves. The expense of living to a laborer is stated 
 at from two to two and a half dollars a month, which in 
 cludes food, clothes and rent. Away from the cities the 
 expense is reduced fifty per cent. In some cases from fifty 
 to sixty people inhabit a single dwelling, which reduces the 
 expense to each still further. The Chinese emigrants at 
 Batavia, the Dutch capital of Java, showed in each house 
 ten men fit to bear arms. 
 
 Under such conditions, comfort, health, and morals must 
 be reduced to the lowest degree. This is illustrated by the 
 fact that in the north of China the beds are made larger or 
 smaller in proportion to the family, are constructed of brick 
 and are warmed by small stoves. The usual size of Chinese 
 houses, except among the limited wealthy class, is thirty 
 feet long, ten wide, and eight high, with streets from ten to 
 twenty feet broad running parallel between the buildings, 
 and crossed by narrow and dirty lanes ; and, according to 
 observant travellers, " neither table, chair, nor other article 
 of furniture can be seen in the dwellings of the poor." 
 
 The rates of wages correspond with the squalor and dire 
 necessities of the modes of life. A traveller in China, who 
 wrote about fifteen years ago, states the wages of an agricul 
 tural laborer at from eight to ten dollars per year and board, 
 Out of this he pays eighty cents tax ; a dollar is devoted to 
 the tablets which in even the poorest dwellings are placed 
 upon the walls as objects of worship; two dollars for rent, 
 and the balance for clothing for himself and family, and 
 food for the latter. The wages of a female laborer are 
 stated to be from four to five dollars per year, without board. 
 The taxes are onerous upon all classes and bring down the 
 twenty-two cents per diem, boarding themselves, of carpen 
 ters and masons to about the wages of the laborer in the 
 field. Medhurst, an English official who resided in China 
 for many years, states the suffering of the people from 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 69 
 
 poverty as " indescribable," and that a man working from 
 morning till night obtains about four pence, which may be 
 fairly translated as eight cents, for the sustenance of his 
 wife and children. 
 
 Neither does skilled labor fare much better. In the cities, 
 a tailor, though protected by his guild, receives only from 
 four to five dollars per month, if supplied, in addition, with 
 his food, which is estimated at a dollar and a half. For 
 this, says the authority a consular report from which I 
 quote, " he toils unceasingly, except on the last five days of 
 the year, the first ten days of the new year and four other 
 holidays." As concerns the farm laborer, " the average 
 wages of an able-bodied young man is twelve dollars per 
 annum, food! and straw shoes." If he be steady, temperate, 
 industrious, and economical he saves eight dollars per annum, 
 and the accumulations of ten years will enable him to be 
 come the possessor of one-third of an acre of land. Such, 
 it is stated, is the outlook for the laboring Chinaman at 
 home. Contrast it with what he beholds afar when he listens 
 to the tales of his countrymen from California or Oregon, 
 a land in which the offal cast into the streets is better than 
 his daily food, and in which, even at the lowest rates, his 
 wages may be twenty-fold what he can hope for in China. 
 
 The intensity of the struggle for existence is shown by 
 the small scale to which business is subdivided, and this 
 latter is illustrated by the copper coins which constitute the 
 usual medium of exchange, and which form the smallest 
 currency in the world ; silver being used only for the larger 
 transactions. An undertaking requiring one hundred 
 dollars of capital is frequently divided among numerous 
 shareholders. It follows that, money having relatively so 
 great a value, the slightest profit is acceptable, and hence 
 in all ordinary transactions bargains are made upon a mar 
 gin that would be deemed impossible in other countries. 
 As one writer has said, " the Chinese will refuse no money 
 in selling if they can be ever so little gainers." Of course, 
 
70 s THE CHINESE, 
 
 where business is conducted upon so narrow a limit, slight 
 depressions in the general prosperity of any district produce 
 extreme suffering, such as, for instance, has often resulted 
 from famines. Eleven years ago, in the provinces of Shan 
 tung and Chih-li, a drought destroyed the crops, and as 
 soon as the reserve of food was consumed the people re 
 sorted to chaff, the bark of trees, turnip leaves, etc., and 
 were finally reduced to devour the half-decayed sorghum 
 stalks of which the roofs of their rude buildings were com 
 posed. It was this famine which was so great that in one 
 place a shop was opened for the sale of human flesh, and 
 many thousands of children were sold into slavery in order 
 that their parents might sustain life upon the proceeds. 
 Aid was given from the other provinces, and it was said, 
 apparently with truth, that but for such assistance not one- 
 half of the population would have survived until the ripen 
 ing of another harvest. 
 
 Even under ordinary conditions the destitution is very 
 great, and beggars are brought to almost unimaginable 
 depths. In some cases systematic relief is afforded ; but the 
 kind and character of this assistance only further shows the 
 necessities of the people. In Pekin there was long since 
 established a phalanstery, which in Chinese was termed 
 " the House of Hen s Feathers." This was a large building, 
 upon the floor of which was a thick layer of feathers, over 
 which was spread one immense coverlet, provided with in 
 numerable holes, each large enough for a human head to 
 pass through. The lodgers men, women and children 
 buried themselves indiscriminately in this mass of feathers, 
 each thrusting a head through one of the holes, and each 
 paying the value of a tenth of a cent for a night in this dor 
 mitory. In the morning the noise of a tam-tam afforded the 
 signal for lifting the coverlet by a pulley suspended from the 
 ceiling, and for starting the mendicants each upon his way. 
 
 Such are the conditions of life with the working multi 
 tudes of China, a population of which, from the best data 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 7 1 
 
 available, may be reasonably calculated at seven hundred 
 and fifty millions, confined within a territory of twelve hun 
 dred and eighty thousand square miles, or six hundred and 
 twenty to the square mile. "The mere habitations," says 
 Abbe" Hue, one of the most noted and accurate among 
 recent travellers in China, " seem to cover the whole land "; 
 and again, " often you meet huge cities containing not less 
 than two or three millions of inhabitants "; and again, " the 
 mind endeavors vainly to penetrate the future of a race so 
 numerous that the land will no longer hold it." The north 
 ern, western, and southern boundaries of this region are 
 formed by the dependencies of the central state. Each of 
 these tributary countries has a less capacity than China 
 proper for sustaining a numerous population, and all have 
 already reached the maximum they are able to support. In 
 adjoining regions, that is to say, the countries to the west 
 and south beyond the Himalayas, the conditions are the 
 same. For although the British taskmaster gathers wheat 
 for export from the ryots of India, the productive capacity 
 of the soil is hardly equal to the needs of the population, as 
 is evidenced by the famines of frequent occurrence, in one 
 of which, but a few years ago, more than a million of the 
 natives died of starvation. The only outlet, therefore, for 
 the population of China is to the westward, to Australasia, 
 and to the distant coasts of America. Toward these, when 
 existing obstructions to Chinese immigration are overcome, 
 the population of China must as naturally flow as the waters 
 of pent-up rivers flow to adjacent lowlands when the levees 
 are broken down. Thus the prospect of the near future (for 
 fifty or a hundred years are but a brief space in the life of 
 nations) is that the outflow of this great people, with its in 
 grained characteristics and its hoary institutions, will sweep 
 down upon the slightly settled western portion of this con 
 tinent, especially upon that richest part of the Pacific slope 
 where the presence of the Asiatics has already produced 
 mischief and discontent. 
 
72 THE CHINESE, 
 
 XIV 
 
 ORIGIN OF MODERN RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CAUCASIAN 
 AND THE CHINESE. 
 
 BUT before proceeding to a consideration of Chinese 
 immigration, as it affects and is likely to affect the interests 
 of our own country, it may throw much light upon our rela 
 tions with China if we consider how those relations began, 
 and how they have been evolved to their present degree of 
 intricacy and importance. We shall find that our course 
 has been tributary to European interests, detrimental to our 
 own, and counter, in many instances, to the plain dictates 
 of international justice. 
 
 In this connection we may review in brief the course pur 
 sued toward China by the Western Powers during the past 
 three-fourths of a century. It has been a record of iniquity; 
 it is unjustified and unjustifiable upon any principle of 
 Christian ethics. In it lay the germs of colossal dangers 
 with which our own country is now confronted, for without 
 it there would have been no material breaking down of the 
 twin principles of Chinese policy the exclusion of foreign 
 ers and the retention of her people within her own 
 borders. 
 
 The origin of the Chinese question of to-day lay in the 
 action of Great Britain in forcing the opium traffic upon 
 China, and this in its turn arose from the unholy conquest 
 of India by the same power. After the superficial spoils 
 the gold and diamonds and varied wealth of the Indian 
 treasuries had been absorbed, there remained the serious 
 question of supporting an alien government upon resources 
 drawn from an already overburdened and impoverished 
 people. This was solved by the merciless faculty of organ 
 ization inherent in the Anglo-Saxon. The people of Hm- 
 dostan comprised two classes, the one the ryots, or culti 
 vators of the soil, who occupied their farms or holdings 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 73 
 
 theoretically as tenants at will from the government, but 
 in fact by prescription amounting almost to freehold title 
 so long as the taxes were duly paid ; the other, the zemin 
 dars or local magistrates, who were the agents by and 
 through whom the taxes were collected. The British sys 
 tem ignored the former, and dealt with the latter as the 
 actual owners of the soil, and thus accomplished the double 
 object of crushing the masses into helplessness and of 
 luring the local native officials into accord with the foreign 
 administration. But although the taxes became by this 
 method certain and easy of collection, they failed to supply 
 the necessities of the state, which comprised not only the 
 support of a foreign military and civil establishment, but the 
 contribution to Great Britain of a large annual return. As 
 the ordinary produce of the soil could not yield the requi 
 site amount, a subject for special and extended revenue 
 was sought. This was found in the inspissated juice of the 
 white poppy of Bengal, a product worth, weight for weight, 
 more than one-third the value of silver in the markets of the 
 world, and the possible production of which was limited 
 only by the limits of land and labor. By means of forced 
 contracts the ryots were compelled to cultivate the opium 
 plant and to sell it to the administration at prices fixed by 
 the latter. This made the ryot practically a slave, and 
 placed a monopoly of the drug in the hands of the East 
 India Company, and, after its dissolution, in the hands of 
 the British Government direct. In one province where this 
 was effectually resisted the price was maintained by internal 
 customs-duties which taxed the article heavily as it passed 
 to other parts of the country. It needed only an open mar 
 ket to secure from this source a public income of many 
 millions beyond what could otherwise have been drained 
 from the people of India. This market was secured at first 
 by fraud, and later by the sword, among the people of 
 China. 
 
 The Chinese, to a notable degree, are prone to sensuous 
 
74 THE CHINESE, 
 
 enjoyment, and had long found in opium a source of pleasure 
 at little pecuniary cost, although at a fearful expense of 
 health. But so severe were the repressive means of the 
 Chinese Government that the habit was held in check to 
 an extent never elsewhere accomplished with any form of 
 dissipation. The importation of the drug was forbidden 
 under penalty of death. Through the vigilance of the 
 officials the quantity introduced by smuggling was extremely 
 limited, and the cultivation of the poppy for opium-growing 
 purposes was restricted to one or two small localities. 
 This immunity from the scourge continued until the British 
 possession of the Carnatic, when, it being apparent that 
 opium would be the one great staple of export, the finan 
 cial condition of these dependencies rendered its sale abroad 
 a matter of vital import to the maintenance of British 
 power. 
 
 The opium trade began with an armed vessel sent out by 
 the goverment of Bengal. It was continued by private 
 armed cruisers, fitted out to resist the Chinese Government 
 vessels in their attempts to prevent the introduction of the 
 drug, and which acted as receiving and distributing ships at 
 convenient places along the coasts. In proportion as the 
 illicit trade increased the Chinese Government redoubled 
 its efforts to prevent it. Those who purchased and those 
 who smoked opium were devoted to a hundred strokes of 
 the bamboo, and to wear the cangue or portable pillory, a 
 large square wooden frame resting on the shoulders, with a 
 central opening for the head for two months. If they 
 refused to reveal the vender, their punishment was doubled 
 with the addition of three years of penal banishment. 
 This was for ordinary offenders; like offences by mandarins 
 met with greater punishment. > In spite of all, the traffic 
 increased until in the first third of the present century 
 every port from Canton to Tartary had been supplied with 
 clandestine opium. Within gun-shot of the Chinese port of 
 Canton half a-dozen vessels, under foreign flags, and pro- 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 75 
 
 tected by foreign governments, lay continuously at anchor, 
 laden with opium. Smaller vessels tenders to these 
 receiving ships sailed up and down the river, manned with 
 armed men, and supplied the article in defiance of all the 
 authorities. It was in this manner that England opened 
 the market for the Indian product. And a peaceful nation, 
 striving to shield its people from one of the greatest scourges 
 that ever afflicted humanity, was in a few years assailed by 
 armed squadrons, its fortified cities stormed, its people 
 slaughtered, and its government brought, against its will, 
 into direct relations with other countries and compelled to 
 witness the debasement of millions of its people by the use 
 of a drug that destroys physical and mental health, which 
 renders manhood miserable, and old age degraded. The 
 import of opium into China amounts to upwards of seventy 
 millions of dollars annually, so that seventy-five per cent, 
 of all the exports of tea and silk are paid for by the infernal 
 drug ; and the quantity consumed, including the native 
 growth, is more than twenty-one million pounds, or ten 
 thousand five hundred tons. The extent to which the con 
 sumption of this drug has debased the energies of the 
 people and induced profligacy and poverty, cannot be 
 measured. Nor does the mischief end with this, for, the 
 industrial capacity of the people being diminished, the pro 
 perty and products subject to taxation are lessened, the 
 difficulty of collecting the revenue is enhanced, and the 
 administration of the government is retarded. Nor is this 
 all ; the markets of China being thus forcibly opened to 
 the foreign drug, it was found useless to attempt to restrain 
 its home production. The extended cultivation of the 
 poppy, in a country where all the arable land is tilled, 
 necessarily displaced the production of cereals to a pro 
 portionate degree and the result has been, in some of the 
 provinces, a material diminution of the food supply. 
 
 This perversion of the cultivated lands of a densely pop 
 ulated country is productive of evil even beyond that 
 
76 THE CHINESE, 
 
 previously inflicted by the importation of the drug. For 
 example, in the remote province of Kwei-chow, one of the 
 most thinly populated in China, the opium poppy has, dur 
 ing nearly thirty years, been cultivated to the diminution, to 
 a proportionate degree, of the wheat, barley and similar 
 food crops, and with corresponding diminution in the food 
 resources of the people. The morale of the population 
 has been impaired, for the major portion of the opium 
 product has been consumed at home. The increased in 
 dolence, carelessness, and poverty invited pestilence and 
 famine, and a province having formerly six millions of 
 people has been reduced to one million ; the population of 
 one town was diminished from fifty thousand, to six families 
 only, of its original inhabitants. 
 
 Similar results have followed in even the wealthiest 
 provinces. In that of Sze-Chuen the price of rice has 
 doubled, the wheat, barley and other food crops have been 
 to a great extent displaced by the poppy, and the cost of 
 living to the laborer has thus been practically doubled, 
 which is only another way of saying that his wages have 
 been reduced one-half. This region, from its fertility and 
 accumulated wealth, has organized the production of native 
 opium to a high degree, and not less than the value of three 
 millions of taels or about four and one-half millions of dol 
 larsequivalent in purchasing power to ten times that 
 amount in the United States of the native product is 
 exported annually to other parts of the country. The 
 extent to which the scourge has been fastened upon the 
 vitals of China is shown not only by the utter nullity of all 
 attempts of the government to suppress the native produc 
 tion of opium it was twice prohibited by imperial procla 
 mation in one period of five years, once in 1865 and again 
 in 1869, but each edict proved a brutum fulmen only but 
 by the further fact that twenty years ago it had brought the 
 import from India to an almost stationary figure. The 
 import of foreign opium rose from four thousand chests in 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 77 
 
 1799 to twelve thousand in 1829, to forty-five thousand in 
 1849, to nearly seventy-five thousand in 1859, and to nearly 
 seventy-seven thousand nine years later. The ratio of 
 increase in consumption of the drug is indicated by the 
 rate of increase in importation from 1799 to 1859. While 
 the importation since that time has been relatively light, the 
 increase in consumption has continued, and this increase 
 has been met by the native drug. The growth of opium, 
 says the authority from which these data are taken, " has 
 gradually spread into every province of China." Its cul 
 tivation " is very profitable and consequently increasing 
 everywhere"; "although the consumption in China in 
 creases year by year, yet year by year does the cultivation 
 of the poppy also increase"; "at least one-half of the 
 opium produced in the province of Yun-nan is consumed 
 on the spot, while the other half is exported to the adjacent 
 provinces "; "of the Sze-Chuen opium about twenty-five per 
 cent, is kept for local consumption, forty per cent, goes to 
 the northern provinces, and thirty-five per cent, is disposed 
 of in the provinces watered by the Yang-tse "; "the 
 cultivation of the poppy is daily increasing "; " for centuries 
 it has been the proud boast of Sze-Chuen that it produced 
 in itself most of the products required for human use, 
 whereas at the present day, owing to the conversion of the 
 hillside and valley paddy (rice) grounds to poppy cultiva 
 tion, this province imports rice at the incredible wholesale 
 price of five dollars per picul" (a picul is 133 pounds 
 avoirdupois). " In the northern provinces it is calculated 
 that at least one member of every family smokes opium." 
 These quotations are from British Consular Reports. A 
 like authority states the production of native opium in 1874 
 to have been twice that of the preceding year. In four 
 years time the great plain of Sanpo, where scarcely a poppy 
 raised its head, became a " vast and ever-extending opium 
 farm." The cultivation has reached even into Western 
 China, and is extending throughout the whole of Man- 
 
7$ THE CHINESE, 
 
 chooria. Such is the legacy of deviltry and misfortune 
 forced upon China at the cannon s mouth in the name of 
 " Christian civilization," and " British trade." 
 
 The motive which induced Great Britain to force the 
 opium trade upon China still exists ; for the Indian Govern 
 ment derives at this present time each year a profit of eight 
 million pounds sterling, or forty millions of dollars, from its 
 opium monopoly, and without this the British power from 
 Cape Comorin to Lahore would in twenty years vanish into 
 air. It is not without interest, in this connection, that we 
 trace the cry of protection to American commerce in the 
 Chinese seas in part to the participation of Americans in 
 this iniquitous traffic. It was certified by the United States 
 Legation at Canton in 1858, that " the most active opium 
 business in any single ship was carried on in a steamer 
 built in New York, and floating the American flag." At 
 that time, upwards of one-quarter of the opium was carried 
 in American vessels. Had there been no opium war 
 between Great Britain and China and no attempt on the 
 part of our people to share in the advantages of the trade, 
 there would have been no Chinese question on the Pacific 
 coast of the United States ; for in the political as in the 
 organic world foul seeds spread rapidly their noisome 
 growths to distant places, and bear their rank and bitter 
 fruit under circumstances the least foreseen. 
 
 With the success of the English in securing trade with 
 China came the desire of other countries to profit by traffic 
 with this remotest East. The French soon joined with the 
 British. The Dutch, who, under severe restrictions, had long 
 traded with China, were quick to assert their claims. Then 
 came Germans and Americans, and all together united to 
 force upon China a policy repugnant to her national ideas, 
 and contrary to her traditional usages in commerce and 
 industries. In all these aggressions the interests of the 
 United States were of the slightest account, and the profits 
 from our ill-advised interference have been less than the 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 79 
 
 price of the birthright of Esau ; for in return for our little 
 gains we have had cast upon us one of the weightiest 
 problems known to historic times. We can only appreciate 
 the relations with China of the United States, and of the 
 western powers, by an analysis of their demands urged by 
 diplomacy, and enforced by cannon-shot. 
 
 In doing this, we should remember that China was a na 
 tionality independent and established ; one that dated from 
 the remotest ages ; one possessed of a distinctive civilization; 
 and one which had for its leading political idea non-inter 
 vention in the affairs of the nations whose people came 
 from the distant seas : and one that had demonstrated for 
 itself the wisdom of this policy by a normal and colossal 
 growth. Her institutions were the outgrowth of five thou 
 sand years of slow but permanent progress ; her social cus 
 toms had been handed down from generation to generation 
 for fifty centuries. These usages and customs were hallowed 
 by antiquity and were the object of idolatrous reverence on 
 the part of the entire people. Yet for their own benefit, 
 and not for hers, the distant nations have temporarily suc 
 ceeded in subjecting this great country to indignities that 
 they would not have dared to propose to each other, and 
 to which not one of them would have submitted for an 
 hour. 
 
 Thus, by force of arms, China was compelled to permit 
 a traffic which, in the course of twenty-five years, reduced 
 the normal increase of her population from three per cent, 
 annually to one per cent. But this was but the entering 
 wedge to foreign demands. 
 
 The same era that initiated British power in India, and 
 the evil and rapid development of her East Indian policy, 
 witnessed also the invention of the labor-saving machinery 
 which, especially in textiles, in less than half a century made 
 Britain the leading manufacturing country in the world. 
 But the rapid and cheap production of goods required- 
 a market for them if the profits of English industries were 
 
8o THE CHINESE. 
 
 to be maintained. The same ideas prevailed, and the same 
 principles were followed in this regard as with the opium 
 trade. The whole public opinion of Great Britain became 
 purulent with the demands of " British trade." Not con 
 tent with underselling in their own bazaars the products of 
 the simple Hindoo handicrafts, British manufacturers and 
 merchants turned longing eyes upon China, and the most 
 exuberant expectations were indulged as to the golden 
 streams which should flow into British coffers when her 
 sealed territories should be " opened to the advantages 
 of civilization and the blessings of religion," the well-known 
 synonyms of t4 British interests." To continued aggressions 
 China opposed a stolid patience and careful diplomacy 
 which not infrequently foiled for a time the direct brutality 
 of the foreigners. It was nevertheless impossible, in view of 
 the unrelaxing pressure of the latter, that hostilities should 
 long be avoided, and the British assault on Canton, in 1848, 
 was followed by the cession of Hong Kong and by the estab 
 lishment of the four open ports. This success formed the 
 basis of new demands, and Great Britain waited only until 
 a pretext could be manufactured for further attack. 
 
 This came in 1857, at a period when China was suffering 
 from internal misfortunes which weakened her in no slight 
 degree. At that time the Tae-ping rebellion, to which I 
 shall recur in speaking of the influence of the foreigners 
 upon the condition of China, was in full blast. Several of 
 the provinces were in indescribable anarchy and filled with 
 insurgents. In the great province of Ho-nan famine had 
 reduced the people to the extreme of misery. The two 
 Kiang provinces had been swept by locusts, the crops de 
 stroyed, and the people reduced to semi-starvation. Says a 
 historian of the Tae-ping revolt, " what with rebellions, 
 inundations, famines, and locusts, the country presented a 
 most lamentable appearance ; in many of the provinces rice 
 was selling at five times its usual price." It was at this 
 time and under these circumstances that " the government 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 8r 
 
 of her most Christian Majesty " instituted, on a pretext 
 framed in naked mendacity, the second war with China. 
 
 In October, 1856, a Chinese lorcha, the "Arrow," belong 
 ing to a class of vessels often employed in piracy on the 
 harbors and rivers of China, was found sailing, without a 
 shadow of right, under the British flag. She was captured 
 by the Chinese officials in the exercise of their lawful au 
 thority. Immediately the British agents spread abroad 
 the falsehood that a British colonial vessel had been fired 
 upon. A British vice-admiral was at hand to administer 
 " castigation." Canton was bombarded and captured, and 
 further concessions were exacted from China. It may be 
 well to remark that this iniquity, to the extent of our abil 
 ity was shared by the United States. Commodore Perry, 
 then in command of the American squadron in the Pacific, 
 ko-toed to the British commander, approved his proceedings, 
 and echoed his utterances ; and the American flag was 
 carried by an American sailor side by side with the Union 
 Jack through the breach at the storming of Canton, al 
 though we were at peace with China, and our people had no 
 possible excuse for meddling with the affair. During these 
 commotions, foreign influence was extended to favor the 
 rebellion of the Tae-pings. At a later date occurred the 
 capture of Pekin by the French and English forces, the 
 looting of the imperial palace, and the long succession of 
 outrages alien to the laws of civilized warfare which char 
 acterize European military operations in the East. 
 
 XV. 
 
 IMMEDIATE RESULTS OF INTERFERENCE WITH AFFAIRS OF 
 CHINA. BRITISH TRADE AND TAE-PING REVOLT. 
 
 THE immediate effects of the invasion of the territory 
 and domestic tranquillity of China were many and great, 
 and extended far beyond the limits of commercial and in- 
 
82 THE CHINESE, 
 
 dustrial affairs. They disturbed not merely the material 
 interests of the people, and the authority of the state over 
 its subjects, but also the equilibrum in faith and custom 
 which for many ages had contributed in an exalted degree 
 to the internal peace of the empire. 
 
 Where good intent and evil works are blended the mixed 
 account commonly shows a balance-sheet in favor of the 
 Prince of Darkness, especially if the agencies of the one 
 depend upon the energy shown in the other. It has been 
 the fault and misfortune of the British missionary that 
 everywhere he has been the precursor or practically the 
 associate of the British soldier and the British factor ; too 
 often have orisons in Anglo-Saxon speech been preceded 
 by the rattle of Anglo-Saxon drums, advancing in the in 
 terests of " British trade." Hence it is that I have here 
 to relate though holding as I do most deep and reverent 
 regard for those who in any part of the world spread the 
 glad tidings of the Redeemer how it was that the Tae- 
 ping Revolt, one of the most remarkable in the history of 
 the world, was an immediate result of the invasion from 
 the west. For any consideration of the influence of the 
 Caucasian upon the Chinese would be futile without a 
 reference to this, a rebellion which involved tens of millions 
 of people in its progress and devastated China for twenty 
 years. In view of its character and results one can readily 
 understand why the government of China has sometimes 
 looked askance at the well-meant efforts of the evangelist 
 as hardly less dangerous than the aggressiveness of the 
 trafficker and the man-of-war. The causes of that rebellion 
 and the means by which it was suppressed, together cost 
 millions of lives, prejudiced the Chinese people and the 
 Chinese government against the creeds of Europe, and re 
 tarded the successful introduction of Christianity into China 
 perhaps for many ages. There is a genesis of evil which 
 seems to contaminate even things good in themselves when 
 associated with it in its successive and evolving conditions; 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION, #3 
 
 and it is instructive to note how the well-meant efforts of 
 ardent and honest men may result in all that they abhor 
 when such efforts are mingled with, and dependent upon, 
 a political policy in itself iniquitous. The British mission 
 ary worked, not under the precepts of the Prince of Peace, 
 but under the protecting inspiration of British guns, and 
 his labors, perverted and misunderstood, carried with them 
 an anathema maranatha to hundreds of thousands of the 
 people of China. The manner of it was this : 
 
 About fifty years ago the Scriptures were translated into 
 the Chinese language by one Morrison, whose work, though 
 laboriously and conscientiously performed, was so erroneous 
 and incomplete that it was soon laid aside. But in the 
 interval a copy came into the hands of a comparatively 
 illiterate but ambitious native convert, Leang-Afah, who 
 framed from its texts, and from his own clouded ideas of 
 their meaning, a series of tracts which he distributed in the 
 streets of Canton. At that time in one of the interior vil 
 lages of China dwelt a youth, Hung-Siu-Tsuen, whom 
 poverty hindered from achieving success in the annual 
 literary examinations, and year after year he failed to 
 secure the coveted degree. In one of his visits to Canton 
 he secured the tracts of Leang-Afah, carelessly read them, 
 laid them aside when he reached home, and for the time 
 forgot them. He became partially insane ; he wandered 
 crazily about the village ; at length in a fever that confined 
 him to his couch his disordered imagination called up 
 visions before him ! In his convalescence he re-read the 
 tracts of Leang-Afah and convinced himself that in them 
 he found a confirmation of his dreams. He went to another 
 province and made proselytes. They gathered peacefully 
 in their little convocations until their numbers increased 
 and they then became iconoclasts, not content with break 
 ing their own idols but also incontinently destroying those 
 in the temples of other people. As the movement enlarged 
 the half-insane youth grew to the full stature of a leader of 
 
84 THE CHINESE, 
 
 men. He studied the ancient military systems and organ 
 ized his forces according to the rules laid down by the 
 early generals of the empire, or as the historians have it, he 
 " followed closely the Sze-ma military system inaugurated 
 by the dynasty of Chow." The rebellion began in the 
 year 1850, and the whole work of organizing the armies 
 down to the minutest detail had been completed within the 
 preceding twelve months no inconsiderable evidence of 
 the executive and organizing ability of the Chinese. 
 
 Thus prepared, this warlike apostle raised the war-cry of 
 the expulsion of the Tartars and made himself the champion 
 of the Chinese against the Mongol dynasty. He appoint 
 ed viceroys to rule in different parts of the country ; de 
 lirious with the apparent fulfilment of his early visions, he 
 called himself the elder brother of Jesus Christ, and made 
 the volume of Leang-Afah the bible of the new crusade. 
 He stormed cities and routed armies and put thousands of 
 captives to death. Until the capture of Nankin one-fourth 
 of his forces were women, who fought like Amazons in the 
 fervor of religious faith, and who, after the reorganization 
 of the rebel armies, delved as laborers in fosse and 
 ditch. 
 
 Two centuries of substantial peace had made war unfa 
 miliar to the masses of China; and had caused the military 
 organization of the empire to measurably decay. In this 
 juncture the government accepted the aid of foreign offi 
 cers, and one Ward, an American who had been a filibuster 
 in Nicaragua, became prominent in the imperial forces. 
 Following their characteristic policy, the western powers fo 
 mented the rebellion, and Ward became a special object of 
 aversion to the Europeans, who offered a reward for his 
 capture dead or alive. The emperor, finding himself 
 hard pressed, chose the least of two evils. He offered con 
 cessions to the English and French if they would reverse 
 their policy toward the rebels and assist in repulsing the 
 Tae-pings. The offer was, as a matter of course, accepted 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 85 
 
 " in the interests of foreign trade with China ; and the 
 public opinion of the west, which had hailed the rebellion as 
 the advent of a Christian future for China, veered to the 
 opposite extreme, and, with equal recklessness, called for its 
 suppression as due to the-cause of civilization. Ward was 
 given an English commission, and then, to quote from an 
 English authority, " came scenes of bloodshed that appalled 
 the civilized world." Ward was killed by a Tae-ping bullet, 
 in 1862, long before the end of the war in which he played 
 so eminent a part ; the outlawed New York rough was dei 
 fied by order of the emperor and has a place among the 
 conventional gods of China. The rebellion the colossal 
 movement which sprang from an English germ was crushed 
 at last by the military skill of an errant English adventurer, 
 known ever after to fame as Chinese Gordon, who was ap 
 plauded for it by English-speaking peoples everywhere. 
 But for the English there would have been no rebellion ; 
 but for the English it would not have been suppressed ; be 
 tween the seed and the threshing was the slaughter of 
 many myriads of Chinese, and all, if the plain truth be told, 
 sacrificed to that spirit of forcible intermeddling and grasp 
 ing greed which the English have shown under every cli 
 mate and in every land. 
 
 It is not without reason that I have dwelt upon this, the 
 greatest of the many rebellions which China has known 
 during her many centuries. Of the moral and ethical prin 
 ciples involved I have already spoken. And it is well to note 
 that under the apparently calm and placid character of this 
 great people may lie the force and the fierceness of volcanic 
 fires. 
 
 The British manufacturer, merchant, and missionary cried 
 out for the forcible opening of the ports of China ; the 
 American said, Amen. The guns of British war-vessels 
 broke down the barriers, and cannon on American decks 
 made puny echo of the sound. The things that I have 
 mentioned came of it, and others still. 
 
86 THE CHINESE. 
 
 In the early part of the year 1847 a European ship trad 
 ing with Lima lay at Canton. Her master, recalling the 
 broad savannas of South America as he gazed on the living, 
 moving masses that thronged the wharves, remarked that 
 he wished he had a thousand of them in Peru. The pass 
 ing thought took shape in practical resolve, and in a few 
 days three hundred coolies, lured by false promises that he 
 would take them to Java, were stowed aboard the vessel. 
 After more than three months sailing, each day of which 
 saw one or more dead Chinamen cast into the sea, he land 
 ed one hundred and seventy of them at a Peruvian port. 
 Widely diffused knowledge of the profits of the new slave 
 trade followed fast. Cuba arid Surinam and Australia 
 rivalled Peru in cupidity for the cheap laborers, and for 
 nearly a generation the horrors of the barracoons of Daho 
 mey were rivalled by those of the coolie trade. The story of 
 the three hundred men kidnapped from Canton spread 
 through the country, along the sea-coast and the river 
 banks, and when no more could be secured by persuasion, 
 an organized system of capture was instituted. Gangs of 
 midnight prowlers invaded the villages, and their male and 
 female prisoners were sold wholesale to traders at the 
 ports ; armed lorchas crept along the coasts and up and 
 down the rivers, and the laborers in the fields, the children 
 in the schools, the women about their family avocations, 
 were caught and swept by thousands into the stifling holds 
 of vessels flying the flags of the Christian nations. " The 
 province of Quang-Tung" says one writer, "was filled with 
 orphan children, and the mourning white was seen in nearly 
 every household." In the ports of Macao, Hong-Kong, 
 Swatow, Canton, Amoy, Whampoa, Cumsing-woon, and 
 others, were ships waiting as receiving vessels for the gath 
 ered slaves. In some portions of the seaboard country 
 local civil wars sprang up in consequence of the demand, 
 and rival clans took arms, each in turn selling its captives 
 to the harbor traders. The magnitude of the traffic may be 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 87 
 
 seen from the fact that ninety thousand and seven hundred 
 were sold at Macao for export to Cuba alone, in the two 
 years of 1864 and 1865. And the market price of each of 
 these was ten dollars at wholesale. 
 
 The coolies hauled from the barracoons were compelled 
 to go through the farce of signing a contract to labor for 
 twenty years. On their arrival at the place of destination 
 these contracts, each designating a number of surviving 
 Chinamen, were put up at auction and sold to the highest 
 bidder, who forthwith became the possessor of the coolies 
 named therein, for a portion of the stated period. The 
 profits were enormous, for the right to eight years of a ser 
 vice under such a contract often sold for from three hundred 
 and fifty to six hundred dollars at the place where the 
 coolies were landed. It was not until this infamy had en 
 dured for fifteen years that our own government interfered 
 by statute to prevent our citizens from engaging in the 
 nefarious work. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 WANTON AGGRESSIONS OF FOREIGNERS UPON THE GOVERN 
 MENT AND PEOPLE OF CHINA. OUR NATIONAL SHARE IN 
 THE INIQUITY. 
 
 IT appears, therefore, that the coming of Occidental 
 enterprise to the ports of China has hardly been an un 
 mixed blessing to her people ; that even the well-meant 
 and laudable devotion of the missionary has inured to her 
 harm, and that in political peace, and industrial prosperity, 
 and social morality, she has received injuries many and 
 bitter and enduring consequent upon the advent of the 
 Caucasian within her gates. There is even ample room 
 for the hypothesis that China would have been better off- 
 more tranquil, more prosperous, more happy even if we 
 may use the term, if she had been able to enforce her na- 
 
88 T2IK CHINESE, 
 
 tional policy and to keep the foreigner from her territory. 
 Let us see whether there is anything in the present rela 
 tions with her of the western powers by which the strong 
 probabilities of this hypothesis may be lessened. 
 
 The war of 1847 gave^ Hong-Kong to the British and 
 made Canton an open port. During the succeeding fifteen 
 years the number of the latter was increased to fourteen, 
 along a coast line of eight hundred miles. The growth of 
 oppression in other respects kept pace with that in the for 
 cible opening of Chinese harbors to foreign trade one of 
 these lay in the doctrine of exterritoriality, which exempts 
 foreigners from the operation of Chinese laws, and which 
 has been, and still is, insisted upon and enforced by all the 
 foreign powers. Only a few years ago, our representative 
 at Pekin formally reasserted " the intention of the Govern 
 ment of the United States to claim for all its citizens entire 
 exemption from the operation of Chinese law," and this 
 in criminal matters is still asserted. No Chinese can 
 arraign any foreigner in a Chinese court, for any offence or 
 any crime. It is not known that any foreigner has ever 
 yet been executed for the murder of a Chinaman, except, 
 possibly, at Hong-Kong and Macao. But I doubt if even 
 in these cities the murder of a Chinese has ever received 
 its just deserts. In 1884 a British subject wantonly killed 
 an inoffensive Chinaman at Canton. He was tried by the 
 British court ; the offence was toned down to manslaughter 
 and the criminal sentenced to seven years imprisonment ; 
 and this appears to be a fair sample of what occurs in like 
 cases when the homicide is punished at all. The practical 
 effect of such a system is to render the foreigners reckless 
 and irresponsible in the extreme, and to engender the bit 
 terest hatred on the part of the Chinese against the inter 
 lopers who outrage Chinese rights on Chinese territory, 
 and under the very shadow of their flag. 
 
 It is part of the system of the memFers of the Diplo 
 matic Corps in China to make common cause with each 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 89 
 
 other, in order that what is demanded by one may, if ob 
 tained, be shared by the others ; and the " favored nation " 
 clause forms part and parcel of every treaty between 
 China and other countries. Among the demands made by 
 France is that of " the right to place salaried consuls at any 
 point, either on the coast or in the interior, and that any 
 place where such a consul resides shall be open to foreign 
 trade." The same power also demands that the revenue 
 derived from the tonnage dues of the Chinese ports shall 
 be handed over to a " mixed commission, composed en 
 tirely of foreigners, to be expended in such a manner as 
 may seem proper "; the avowed idea being that the amount 
 should be devoted to the improvements of the harbors for 
 the accommodation of foreign vessels. In other words, it 
 is asked that China shall not only surrender a portion of 
 her legal revenues, but shall virtually hand over the admin 
 istration of her seaports to foreign powers. Our own coun 
 try claims that citizens of the United States, importing 
 merchandise into China, " should have the privilege of 
 transshipping such merchandise in their own vessels, or of 
 those belonging to the subjects of China, to any point on 
 the Yang-tse River and its tributaries, without limitation 
 or restraint," which amounts to a claim that the Chinese 
 Government shall give up the control of its inland com 
 merce. This demand, made many years ago, has been 
 persisted in by our representatives in China, with the more 
 explicit demand that foreign goods in native hands shall 
 not pay the lekin or internal customs duty which is levied 
 on the transit of goods from one part of the empire to 
 another. This is, in substance, not merely the assertion of 
 a right to prevent the Chinese Government from collecting 
 its usual taxes from its own people, it is a demand that 
 the political condition of the empire and of its internal rev 
 enue system shall be changed for the benefit of the foreign 
 ers ; for the lekin or local customs are for the benefit of 
 the provinces in which they are collected, and are devoted 
 
90 THE CHINESE, 
 
 to the support of the local military and police, and to other 
 local requirements, whereas the foreign customs belong to 
 the general government ; in other words, to the administra 
 tion of the empire at large. This claim, no doubt origin 
 ally made at the instigation of English interests, has since 
 been taken up by Great Britain direct, and has been the 
 source of still unended assumption on the part of the for 
 eigner and of only partially successful evasion on the part of 
 China. 
 
 In 1 88 1 the Chinese Government was gravely instructed 
 by the foreign legations at Pekin that foreigners have the 
 right to engage in the coastwise trade the same as the Chi 
 nese themselves ; and that foreigners have the right to 
 establish manufactories in the open ports and sell the pro 
 ducts in the markets of China. The propriety, on inter 
 national principles and national usage, of the first of these 
 demands may be inferred from the fact that not one of the 
 nations that demand this alleged right in China permits 
 anything of the kind on its own coasts. In our own coun 
 try no vessel can engage in the coasting trade unless owned 
 wholly by American citizens, and the right is forfeited if the 
 owner, though he be a native-born citizen, resides perma 
 nently out of the country, or if he be a naturalized citizen and 
 resides more than one year in the country of his origin or 
 more than two years in any other foreign country. Unless 
 it be on the ground that China has no rights which the 
 foreigner is morally bound to respect, it is difficult to enun 
 ciate any possible theory on which the foreign contention 
 can depend. But the hardihood of Caucasian demands 
 does not stop with this. It is claimed that foreign goods, 
 introduced without payment of duty, should be shipped in 
 the coastwise trade without payment of the coastwise duty 
 while every native merchant engaged in the traffic is com 
 pelled to pay ; and this in face of the truism of interna 
 tional law that a claim on the part of a foreigner to share in 
 coastwise trade is forbidden by the comity of nations. 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 9 1 
 
 XVII. 
 
 DANGER TO CHINA FROM INDUSTRIAL METHODS OF 
 THE WEST. 
 
 THE impudence of the claim that foreigners shall share 
 with the Chinese their own seaboard traffic is exceeded, if 
 that be possible, by another which, if allowed, would be pro 
 ductive of far more evil results. This is the claim, aggres 
 sively insisted upon, that foreigners may establish manu 
 factories that, by the use of machinery, would flood the 
 markets in competition with the hand-made products of the 
 Chinese artisan. This demand is utterly indefensible in 
 view of the industrial condition of the country. Nothing 
 is more feared by Chinese statesman than the introduction 
 of European industrial methods and mechanism ; its direct 
 results would be a social and industrial revolution productive 
 of universal and irreparable harm. 
 
 The industrial methods of the western nations originated 
 in comparatively scant populations, and the needs and re 
 quirements of their peoples have kept pace in development 
 with the means of supplying them. With the Chinese it is 
 far different. The introduction of improved methods of 
 manufacture would be with them, not a normal evolution 
 from their own conditions of existence, but an alien ele 
 ment noxious to their national and racial health and 
 growth. The crowded population renders the severest 
 daily labor the bitter price of the scantiest daily bread, and 
 the slightest diminution in the demand for labor would 
 drive hundreds of thousands to starvation and other hun 
 dreds of thousands to revolt. The constantly enlarging 
 field of American and European enterprise has constantly 
 absorbed the otherwise surplus labor resultant from the 
 inventions of modern times. But nothing of the kind is 
 possible in China. Her own regions and her own indus 
 tries are no longer able to absorb the overflow of labor 
 
9 2 THE CHINESE, 
 
 from methods and processes many of them the most 
 simple, laborious, and primitive that can be imagined. 
 Labor-saving machinery could not increase the sum total 
 of her productiveness, for hand labor has made every 
 arable acre yield to the utmost ; and has wrought, to the 
 last limit of supply, the products of the earth into merchant 
 able shape. There is so much land to be tilled, so much of 
 material to be wrought : so much and no more, for the 
 productive capacity of the country has reached its limit in 
 both. There are more than enough of skilled and ready 
 hands for both. What would it benefit China if, by means 
 of machinery, all the work of the empire were done by 
 one-fourth of the population. The remainder would be 
 idle, homeless, and starving. This is manifest to the legis 
 lators of China. Their practical wisdom on this head is 
 beyond dispute. But the foreigner hammers at the gates, 
 glad only if he can fill his coffers, regardless of the rights 
 and interests of the children of the soil. 
 
 In view of these demands it is not strange to find it offi 
 cially stated that the foreign residents of China regard 
 force " as the only sure and speedy agent for opening up 
 China"; that the merchants " look upon the use of force as 
 necessary to open up new resources and avenues of indus 
 try "; and that the missionaries favor it, because it will ren 
 der their task " less difficult," and also for the reason " that 
 the use of arms to compel submission is only adding an 
 auxiliary force to reason, to accomplish the great work of 
 the Master." 
 
 When we find merchant and missionary using the argu 
 ments of the buccaneer in matters of general import, we are 
 justified in further examination of the equities of specific 
 claims. The character of many of the demands made 
 against the Chinese Government is illustrated by facts 
 which, once recited, require no comment to make their 
 meaning plain. 
 
 The man whose hand penned the sentence I have quoted 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 93 
 
 above, represented the United States in China for years. 
 The naivete of some of his averments on record in the State 
 Department is only equalled by his acquiescence in the 
 iniquitous character of the facts set forth. " China," he 
 says, " is placed very much at the mercy of the treaty 
 powers in matters of finance connected with its internal and 
 external trade ; their stronger power comes in to judge 
 whether such a course or such a change is proper or not, and 
 she must act accordingly." And again, " There is no limit, 
 it may almost be said, to the degree which the treaty powers 
 may interfere in the domestic affairs of China, for one 
 thing involves another, and every advance compels a change 
 in a new direction " ; and once more, " The carrying out of 
 these treaties is likely to affect the whole fabric of Chinese 
 society," and he adds : " I believe this tutelage, with all its 
 responsibilities, is the best one now available to elevate the 
 Chinese to their proper place among the nations of the 
 earth." One more quotation from this sapient authority, 
 who had seen, by the score, Chinese who had died from 
 starvation during the siege of Canton. He says that he 
 wishes to bear his "testimony to the efficiency and general 
 justice of the British Government and its officials in China." 
 Of this man it is to be said that he came by his ideas by a 
 natural process, inasmuch as, years before he entered the 
 diplomatic service of this country, he was Chinese inter 
 preter to the British consulate at Canton. Through him 
 and others who have followed in his footsteps our policy in 
 China has borne the same relation to that of Great Britain 
 that the jackal, barking with approving delight, bears to 
 the larger animal that rends and devours the prey. The al 
 leged diplomat whose words I have cited even went to the 
 length of demanding that a gold mine discovered in Shan- 
 Tung should be forthwith opened under a joint super 
 vision of the foreigners and the Chinese authorities. He 
 based his demand upon the somewhat comprehensive 
 ground that all foreign interests urged it in one way or 
 
94 THE CHINESE, 
 
 another, and that the enterprise, as he termed it, could not 
 be prevented. But perhaps the most instructive incident in 
 our direct relations with China are those comprised in our 
 successful demand that China should pay the damages 
 caused to Americans by the British during the siege of 
 Canton and the incidents at Whampoa in 1856 and 1857 ; 
 the injuries having arisen as an incident to the military 
 operations. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 AMERICAN CLAIMS AGAINST CHINA. 
 
 As concerns the claims referred to in the preceding para 
 graph, it is to be said at the start that they had no legal 
 foundation. Similar claims had been made only a few years 
 before against the American Government by a Central 
 American State for losses occasioned by the bombardment 
 of Greytown by an American man-of-war, and had been 
 repudiated by our State Department, and no jurist could 
 conscientiously hold them as valid in law ; nevertheless our 
 government urged them upon the Chinese, and, by what 
 amounted virtually to a threat of war, secured their pay 
 ment. The claims came before a commission organized by 
 our government, and which sat at Macao in the year 1860. 
 Each individual case was adjudicated with the result that, 
 in the aggregate, the claims allowed were nearly half a 
 million dollars less than the amount demanded and received 
 from China. The total of the claims made before the com 
 mission was one million one hundred and eighty-five thou 
 sand eight hundred and twenty-one dollars. The amount 
 audited was two hundred and eighty-five thousand two 
 hundred and ninety-six dollars and thirty-five cents ; more 
 than nine hundred thousand five hundred dollars being dis 
 allowed as fraudulent. The proportion of the actual to the 
 fraudulent claims may be reasonably taken as indicating 
 the average honesty of those in whose behalf our govern- 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 95 
 
 ment interposed. Interest was allowed on these claims at 
 the rate of twelve per cent , which made the matter a profit 
 able speculation for those who actually suffered loss. Even 
 some of the claims allowed were without a shadow of jus 
 tice, let alone of law, against the Government of China. 
 For example, one claim for upwards of seventy-five thou 
 sand dollars of which less than thirty thousand were 
 allowed was for recoupment for a piracy for which clearly 
 the Chinese Government was not responsible. Another 
 demand, based on similar grounds, for nearly eleven thou 
 sand dollars was allowed to the extent of four thousand and 
 ninety dollars. Among these claims was one for false im 
 prisonment and corporal injury inflicted by Chinese officers 
 at Canton in 1841. This was for fifty thousand dollars, of 
 which ten thousand was allowed, amounting with interest to 
 twenty-one thousand dollars. Quite possibly this claimant 
 was entitled, on moral grounds, to all that he received, but 
 the special significance of the matter lies in this, that when, 
 a few years ago, a Chinaman was murdered by an employee 
 of the British Government, our then minister to China 
 joined with those of the various European powers to resist 
 the demand for a money indemnity and to assert that in no 
 way could the principle be conceded. 
 
 It is gratifying to reflect that a quarter of a century after 
 the exaction of the indemnity from China the difference 
 between the losses actually sustained and the amount re 
 ceived has been returned. But nothing can change the 
 fact that, under the rulings of our own State Department 
 and the decisions of our own judicial tribunals, there was 
 not the slightest foundation in law even for the claims that 
 were paid, with a possible exception of two or three which 
 were not strictly within the general category. Out of the 
 total of six hundred and forty-four thousand dollars, in 
 cluding interest, awarded to the claimants, at least six hun 
 dred thousand dollars appears to have had no warrant in 
 international comity or law. 
 
9 6 THE CHINESE, 
 
 If viewed from a moral or ethical standpoint, the true 
 character of the claims for indemnity for these losses was 
 in fact simply an assertion that the Chinese Government 
 should afford to the property of foreigners a protection not 
 given to its own citizens. It is further to be remembered 
 that our own government was in virtual sympathy with the 
 British assault, and only two years later, one of our naval 
 officers, although we were at peace with China, joined the 
 British in their attack on the fortifications at the mouth of 
 the Peiho. In like manner, seventeen years ago, when we 
 were under treaty obligations to maintain peace with China, 
 an American fleet composed of two ships of war and four 
 armed steam-launches was sent by the commander on the 
 China station to prepare a chart of the channel between the 
 main land and the island of Hanghoi ; which was very 
 much the same as if a foreign power, against our protest, 
 should send an armed squadron to take soundings in the 
 East River. As was expected, and prepared for, the 
 Chinese opposed the invasion, and as a result had their 
 batteries silenced by American guns. This, a few days 
 later, was followed up on our part by an attack in which 
 five forts were completely destroyed and two hundred and 
 fifty of the Chinese were slaughtered. How much danger 
 was experienced by our forces in this exploit, may be inferred 
 from our loss of three killed and ten wounded. It was, how 
 ever, sufficient to cause our envoy to explain to our govern 
 ment that the " gallantry and heroism " of our marines 
 were "conspicuous," and reflected "honor and renown" 
 upon our " navy and government." The same spirit, that 
 of the presumably strong against the presumably weak, has 
 been displayed in nearly all the relations of the foreign 
 powers with the people of China. And in their aggressions 
 we have had a most unwarrantable and unprofitable share. 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 97 
 
 XIX. 
 
 UNJUSTIFIABLE INTERFERENCE OF FOREIGNERS WITH LOCAL 
 AND DOMESTIC AFFAIRS IN CHINA. 
 
 WE have already seen how venerable and how nearly ap 
 proaching the nature of a religion is the reverence of the 
 Chinese for their social customs. Yet the disregard by 
 foreigners of all that the Chinese hold sacred is deliberately 
 made a constant source of irritation. In the words of one 
 of our own officials, " among the Chinese the unsullied repu 
 tation and modest demeanor of females is very highly 
 esteemed ; and the rules for separating the sexes are very 
 strict, both in regard to their personal intercourse, and the 
 seclusion of their apartments." Yet the Chinese female 
 converts are led to disregard this public opinion, and by 
 open defiance of the usages common among the respectable 
 classes of their own people, give offence to their relatives 
 and neighbors. In some cases the marriage contract has 
 been interfered with by the foreigners ; and it was to such a 
 cause that the death of one of the missionaries in 1869 was 
 due. It is to be noted in this connection that while the 
 assassins of the missionary were executed, one of them be 
 headed and the other strangled, certain converts who en 
 gaged in offensive operations against the Chinese Govern 
 ment have never been punished ; and that in another in 
 stance a native convert who headed a mob that killed two 
 hundred natives was, through the influence of the mission 
 aries, enabled to escape beyond sea, and was never traced. 
 Many of the assaults on foreigners which have awakened 
 indignation in Europe and in this country, were kindled 
 originally by the deliberate violation of Chinese law, or of 
 usages which have the force of law. The widespread and 
 deadly attack on the missionaries in 1805 was the result, on 
 the part of the latter, of an illicit attempt to send to Europe 
 maps and plans of the country, in direct contravention of 
 
9 THE CHINESE, 
 
 the laws of the empire, and the foreigners were treated pre 
 cisely as natives would have been for the same offence. It 
 has been no uncommon thing for the foreign missionaries 
 to assume governmental pretensions, and thus strike directly 
 at the homeauthority of the local officials. The assassina 
 tion of the Governor of Macao in 1849 was the result of 
 cutting roads through the graves of the Chinese buried 
 outside of the city, and the riot in the French Concession, 
 in 1875, arose from the same cause. When we recall the 
 veneration of the Chinese for their ancestors, it is not 
 surprising that public feeling took the form of violent 
 resistance to the desecration of the graves. It is not 
 difficult to imagine that something similiar might have 
 occurred even in an American city, had an identical cause 
 existed. 
 
 Everywhere in China the foreigner has sought to enforce 
 his will by the exercise of arbitrary power ; the guns of war- 
 vessels and the sabres of marines are his only arguments. 
 And inasmuch as the Chinese, though physically brave, are 
 badly armed and worse disciplined, it was only to be ex 
 pected that all the resources of Asiatic diplomacy would be 
 brought to bear with all of native craft in defence of native 
 rights. Nor shall we fail to find that, after all, the sub 
 tlety and far-sightedness of the Asiatic have more than 
 equalled the force of the invaders. The claim that foreigners 
 should trade without let or hindrance in any part of the 
 empire, and that the payment of internal taxes should be 
 remitted in their favor, has been in the main successfully 
 evaded or resisted. During some years Great Britain, who 
 controls seven-eighths of the trade with China, virtually 
 ceased to insist upon it. But the matter has again arisen, 
 and, as usual, our own government has lent the moral sup 
 port of its representative in China to the aggression on 
 Chinese rights. The indirect efforts to secure the proposed 
 dominance of foreign influence in the interior of China by 
 the introduction of railroads, telegraphs, and steam naviga- 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION, 99 
 
 tion under foreign management have been brought to a 
 more definitely dismal end. 
 
 Meanwhile Chinese merchants entering the paths of com 
 petition which were opened to them perforce, have in a 
 great measure crowded European traders from numerous 
 ports more or less remote from Chinese coasts. This is 
 true of the trade with Saigon, in Cochin China; with Bang 
 kok in Siam ; with Singapore in India ; with Batavia 
 in Java ; and with Manilla in the Philippine Islands. 
 Some time since, the British India Steam Navigation Com 
 pany had a strong line of vessels on the route between Cal 
 cutta and Singapore, touching at intermediate points. A 
 Chinese company started a line between Rangoon and Sing 
 apore, and in a short time the British line, except for a 
 government subsidy, would have been compelled to stop 
 the carrying business having been reduced to the lowest 
 ebb. 
 
 Fourteen years ago a foreign company, without a conces 
 sion from the Chinese authorities, laid a short railway to 
 connect Shanghai with the river entrance to the harbor. 
 It was conceded that the foreigners who undertook the 
 enterprise had no right to do so ; and the American minis 
 ter expressed the opinion that " the body of ministers at 
 Pekin ought, in advance, to hold language regarding the 
 project of a sort calculated to keep matters in their present 
 satisfactory condition"; which being interpreted means 
 that certain foreigners having stolen a right of way for a 
 purpose not recognized by the government, the latter was 
 to be bullied by foreign pressure into compliance. An 
 American citizen was placed in charge of the grading, and 
 the American representative declared that he was ready to 
 defend the projectors in building the railway. The only 
 stirring incident in the construction of the road, however, 
 was a fight between the American citizen aforesaid and an old 
 woman whose land was endangered by his refusal to place 
 a culvert where the grading crossed a ditch. Although the 
 
100 THE CHINESE, 
 
 projectors had no right to construct the railway, it was pur 
 chased by the Chinese Government at a fair price, which was 
 determined by arbitration. It soon became a matter of 
 newspaper comment in this country that the rails were 
 taken up, and had been exported to the United States as 
 old iron. 
 
 The history of the attempted telegraph line is sub 
 stantially identical with that of the railroad. In October, 
 1875, a Danish company, without any legal authority, 
 began the construction of a telegraph line from Foo-Choo, 
 the centre of the tea industry, to the port of Amoy, and 
 continued the construction, although the officials had posi 
 tively refused to sign a contract. In this, as with the rail 
 road, the American representative \vas not slow to intimate 
 that the diplomatic body should insist upon the permanent 
 enjoyment of the rights appropriated without the shadow 
 of law. Twenty miles of the line were destroyed by local 
 officials, whereupon a claim for indemnity was set up by 
 the company. As the latter had a quasi agreement with 
 a body known as " the Board of Foreign Trade " of the 
 Province, the matter was finally settled by the Chinese 
 Government purchasing the whole concern for the sum of 
 one hundred and twenty-four thousand five hundred 
 Mexican dollars, which ended the controversy, and with it 
 the telegraph line. 
 
 During fifteen years the American Steam Navigation 
 Company owned a fleet of twenty steamships, two or three 
 of which were of American and the others of English 
 build, and which traded between Shanghai and the Yang-tse 
 ports and Tientsin. In 1875, a Chinese corporation, the 
 Chinese Merchandise Company, had vessels on the same 
 water routes. In that year the Chinese Government agreed 
 with the native company for certain freights at rates more 
 than twice as high as those obtainable by either company 
 in the open market, and which, of course, amounted simply 
 to a subsidy to the Chinese company. In less than two 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. IOI 
 
 years the American enterprise was bought out by the 
 Chinese, and American competition with native shipping 
 was ended on the rivers of China. The philanthropic idea 
 of supplying China with a currency by the coinage of the 
 trade dollar illustrates our ignorance of Chinese methods 
 and Chinese wants. In the north of China, not five hun 
 dred of the new coins were found two years after their 
 introduction ; while in the south they utterly failed to 
 replace the Mexican dollar, which is a favorite form of 
 silver. 
 
 So much for our diplomacy with China in matters of 
 comparatively minor importance ; for those referred to are 
 dwarfed by comparison with the Burlingame Treaty, in 
 which the far-reaching Chinamen found in an American 
 politician a convenient implement with which to manipulate 
 the policy of an aggressive but short-sighted nation. That 
 treaty conferred on each of the parties thereto all the 
 rights granted by the other to the most favored nation. 
 The United States has granted to the most favored nations 
 the right, on the part of their citizens, of passing without 
 restraint to all portions of our country, of transacting busi 
 ness to the same extent and in the same manner as our 
 own citizens, and of freely exercising their religion without 
 let or hindrance. China has granted to her favored 
 nations the right of their citizens to travel to and reside in 
 certain open ports, and nowhere else. To quote the lan 
 guage of our consul at Ningpo, " it is a settled question so 
 far as the Government of the United States is concerned, 
 that missionaries have no right to reside elsewhere than at 
 the open ports," and that such right does not extend to 
 other citizens. This interpretation of the treaty has been 
 concurred in by our State Department, and also by the 
 British Government, whose instructions to her envoy have 
 been of the same tenor. As concerns the missionaries, 
 however, the Chinese Government, tolerant in all matters 
 of religion where official routine or established practice is 
 
102 THE CHINESE, 
 
 not disturbed, has of late years freed from taxation the 
 Christian places of worship, and there seems to be little, 
 within the lines just indicated, except the prejudices of the 
 people to operate against such success of missions in 
 China as is consistent with the stolid inertia of the race. 
 
 XX. 
 
 CHINESE MILITARY STRENGTH. OUR FOREIGN POLICY WITH 
 REGARD TO CHINA. 
 
 I HAVE spoken of the past of China, of the type and 
 character of her people, of her present condition, and of 
 her relations with the nations of the west. We now ap 
 proach the bearings of all these upon the welfare of our 
 own country. Prelimary to this the query naturally arises, 
 what of the future of China ? In what way and in what 
 direction will her energies expand ; or is she destined to 
 take but the place of a hewer of wood and drawer of water 
 to other and stronger nations of the earth ? 
 
 The latter proposition is almost too absurd for a moment s 
 consideration. The population of China in A.D. 1753 was 
 102,300,000 ; seven years later it was 143,125,000 ; five years 
 later yet, 198,214,000 ; seven years after this, viz., in 1792, in 
 round numbers, 333,000,000, and in 1812, the latest census, 
 361,221,000. The increase between 1753 and 1792 repre 
 sents the normal increase under the best conditions ; for this 
 period of about forty years was the most peaceful and pros 
 perous that China had known for several centuries. In that 
 time her far-sighted policy in excluding the restless and ad 
 venturous foreigner bore its most abundant fruit, and except 
 that the military spirit of the people was lulled to sleep by the 
 peace of these and many preceding years, her progress was 
 definite and great. The rapid and marked diminution of the 
 ratio of growth of the population from 1792 to 1812 is admit 
 ted by English writers, and proven by other evidence, to be 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 103 
 
 due to the introduction and consumption of opium. In the 
 absence of positive data, the annual increase since the 
 date last mentioned may be approximately calculated at one 
 per cent, per annum, which is but one-fifth of the normal 
 ratio of a laboring population not subjected to any spe 
 cially deteriorating influence and adequately supplied with 
 food. Small as this ratio is, a simple arithmetical calculation 
 shows that the Chinese number, at the present time, in the 
 neighborhood of seven hundred and fifty millions, or from 
 two-fifths to one-half of the entire population of the globe. 
 Their mental attributes and physical strength and endur 
 ance have been already considered herein ; their military 
 capacity and courage constitute an additional factor in the 
 question. 
 
 Western ideas of the warlike prowess of the Chinese are 
 obtained principally from the coastwise wars with the Brit 
 ish and the French, and appear to have been derived from 
 an imperfect conception of the premises. As before re 
 marked, China had possessed, during seven generations, a 
 substantial peace throughout her empire when the attack on 
 Canton took place in 1847. The inland troops were armed 
 for the most part with bows and arrows, the muskets were 
 matchlocks of antique pattern. Whoever has loitered on the 
 esplanade of the Tower of London will have noted, among 
 the trophies of Anglo-Saxon conquests, cannon taken 
 from the walls of Canton and representing their armament. 
 They bear the marks and the dates of German foun 
 dries of two hundred and fifty years ago. With soldiers 
 called suddenly from the peaceful rice-fields, a military or 
 ganization grown weak and careless by long disuse, and 
 armed with weapons that were as playthings compared to 
 the fire-arms of the invaders, the wonder is, not that they 
 were defeated, but that they were able to resist at all. 
 And a like remark applies to the wars of 1857 and 1862. 
 But any conclusions drawn from this condition of affairs 
 with regard to the future are likely to be fallacious to a 
 
104 THE CHINESE, 
 
 degree. " Individual bravery was often exhibited," wrote 
 the commander of the British ship-of-war Bonetta, " but 
 in no instance did the Chinese fight well in a body." This 
 applied to the conflicts of 1847. The American, Ward, in 
 the Tae-ping war organized a legion of five hundred 
 Chinese to whom he taught the discipline and tactics of 
 Europe, and they proved themselves almost invincible in 
 all the varied contingencies of battle. With the drill and 
 discipline, the arms of precision, and the improved equip 
 ments of Europe, the Chinese will be by far the strongest 
 military nation in the world. 
 
 Add to this the advent, sooner or later, of a railway 
 system designed upon strategic grounds, and a few decades 
 may witness a total reversal of the position of China with 
 reference to the countries of the west. 
 
 According to information furnished our State Department 
 in 1885, China is taking thorough and effective measures 
 for naval and military reorganization; and it is significant of 
 the Chinese knowledge of European affairs that she has 
 turned to Germany as affording the most valuable example 
 and means of instruction. " German army and navy offi 
 cers are being nearly everywhere employed ; the arsenals 
 and powder mills are being equipped according to German 
 plans, and ships and troops are under German instructors." 
 The same despatch sets forth that " the Chinese know full 
 well the importance, for military purposes, of railroads and 
 telegraph lines ; and there is no doubt that every effort 
 will be made to have such railroad lines made as will lead to 
 concentrating and provisioning her troops." The American 
 legation in the same year is authority for the statement that 
 the improved fire-arms placed in the hands of the Chinese 
 troops in Tonquin in their warfare with the French, " in 
 creased their courage ten-fold, "the French, as is well known, 
 having been frequently defeated by them. Precise data 
 concerning the recent military development of China is 
 difficult of access, but evidence is not wanting that her 
 
AND THE CHIXESE QUESTION, 105 
 
 preparations for possible hostilities are many and great. 
 An English authority in 1880 averred that within ten years 
 of that time China would be no longer dependent upon for 
 eigners for munitions of war ; and that her ship-yards and 
 arsenals would equal those of Great Britain. It is of course 
 impossible to say to what extent this prediction has thus 
 far been verified, but there is no reason to doubt that its 
 fulfillment has been closely approximated. During the 
 year 1881 China added to her navy eleven steel vessels, of 
 which it was said that " no unarmored vessel afloat equals 
 them in power, nor any armored vessel in speed ; in pene 
 tration and range their guns are only exceeded by one 
 English and one Italian vessel." Following a policy traced 
 on lines like this, not many years will be required to enable 
 China to hold her own against the navies of the West, and 
 seizing, as she will, the opportunities afforded by some 
 period of internecine strife in Europe, to strike blows 
 heavy and hard. 
 
 Perhaps one of the most notable documents ever written 
 by a Chinese Government official was a memorial addressed 
 to the emperor by Tso Tung Tang, who for twenty-five 
 years had been viceroy of Nankin. It recommends as an 
 initial step the building of a railway to connect the strategic 
 points of the north and south ; and this, if carried into 
 effect, would enable troops and war material to be sent 
 from the southern sea-coast to the Russian frontier in fifty 
 hours. It also recommends a system of coast defences for 
 the entire seaboard of ten thousand <fc, or four thousand 
 miles ; a symmetrical administrative system for the land and 
 naval forces, and the translation into the Chinese language 
 of works which afford an insight into foreign military affairs. 
 The level contour of the whole country is favorable to rail 
 way construction in almost every direction, and a railway 
 system converging to the routes along which commercial 
 travel has passed since remote ages will constitute a colossal 
 menace to India, and it is not impossible that, in some not 
 
106 THE CHINESE, 
 
 remote future (for a generation is but a day in the history of 
 races) the opium scourge from Bengal may be repaid through 
 armaments patterned upon the work of British armories. 
 Given a military system of railways and telegraphs, armies 
 provided and trained with the improved fire-arms of to-day, 
 fortresses armed with the heavy steel ordnance of Europe, 
 and ironclads such as she even now possesses, China will 
 no longer be the plaything of the west no longer a nation 
 to be defrauded or plundered. It will need but an alliance 
 between the czar and the emperor to divide British India 
 between the Chinese and the Slav. With a policy which 
 shall exclude the Chinese from our territory while our pop 
 ulation grows to fulness and strength, and with the wide 
 Pacific between, our people may watch from afar the conflict 
 which must arise when the millions of China, swarming like 
 bees from the hive, but furnished with the means of aggres 
 sion drawn from the west, shall overflow her borders, not 
 as now to seek peaceful subsistence from labor, but with 
 all the avid anger of conquest. 
 
 I have considered the past and the present of China, 
 the character, strength and tendencies of her people, her 
 place in the economy of the civilized world ; and am now to 
 consider her relations with our own people. This part 
 of the matter in hand has two branches our relations as a 
 nation with her, and the relations of her people, as immi 
 grants, to our own. Of the former I have already spoken 
 in some detail. Our foreign policy, if it deserves the name 
 with regard to China, has been one of blind servility to 
 European ideas and European interests, with no advan 
 tage to our country or to our people. To consider 
 this minutely would involve a digression into inter 
 national politics of greater length, and possibly of greater 
 acridity, than I have space or time to here enter upon. 
 But no conscientious student of our international relations 
 with China can doubt for a moment that the time has come 
 when we should break loose from foreign affiliations in 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 107 
 
 our concerns with that country, and to treat with her upon the 
 basis of mutual justice without deference to European 
 interests or European ideas ; and that we should cease to lend 
 aid and comfort to nations that, for their own profit and to 
 her detriment, iniquitously meddle with her affairs. We 
 have played the part of jackal and fag to British interests 
 along the coasts and on the mainland of China far too long 
 Every American interest that deserves protection will be 
 better guarded if segregated from those of nations whose 
 policy has devastated the provinces of China, and whose 
 cannon have desolated her cities. Even our missionaries, 
 whose psalms rise musical and unmolested within hearing of 
 the imperial palace of Pekin, will fare better and meet with 
 far more excellent success if it be understood that their work 
 forms no part of the aggressive methods of the west. 
 Necessary as it is for our own protection that the people of 
 China be eliminated from our country, we, in common 
 equity, can have no share or lot in aggressions upon the 
 country which, from the dawn of time, has belonged to them. 
 I come now to that phase of the subject which relates to 
 the bearing of Chinese immigration upon the interests, 
 present and future, of our own country and our own peo 
 ple, and to the consideration of which the preceding pages 
 are but the prelude. If it be remarked that the prelude 
 is longer than the other, it is to be repeated, what I have 
 already in substance said, that to fully comprehend the 
 full meaning of the term " Chinese immigration," it is es 
 sential to first understand the race and the nation to whom 
 these Chinese belong. 
 
 XXL 
 
 INCEPTION AND PROGRESS OF CHINESE IMMIGRATION TO 
 THE PACIFIC CO\ST. 
 
 As there has been occasion herein to mention, from the 
 forcibly-opened ports of China slavers bore coolies to Peru, 
 
ic8 THE CHINESE, 
 
 In the year 1850 a score of these Chinese escaped from 
 bondage and, on one pretext or another, obtained passage 
 on a vessel bound for California in the early gold-dust days. 
 They saw the wealth and freedom of the country, its high 
 productiveness, the high wages paid to labor. But not all 
 of these could keep them long, and in the course of two or 
 three years they had found their way home, and soon the 
 returning wanderers spread over the whole country by and 
 beyond Canton the tale of the new land with which their 
 exile had made them familiar. At first a few in number, 
 like straggling ants, they came, then more and more, by 
 thousands and tens of thousands, until they constitute at 
 the present time more than one-half of the adult male popu 
 lation of the Pacific coast of the United States. 
 
 When British cannon first opened Chinese ports, Cali 
 fornia was known to us mainly as a land fruitful in prod 
 ucts and winsome in climate : a broad territory, coveted by 
 Great Britain and by our own country, and held with an 
 unsteady hand by Mexico. Ten years later it belonged to 
 the United States, and its gold mines made it the El Dorado 
 of the restless of all nations. With the others came the 
 Chinese. As individuals they came and returned to their 
 own country, a constant ebb and flow. As a people they 
 came to stay. Their number has constantly increased in 
 spite of all obstacles, until, in commerce and industries, their 
 influence is dominant through all the Pacific coast, and 
 their advance scouts have extended to the Atlantic sea 
 board. It is in California, however, that the problems 
 springing from their presence have most forcibly arisen, 
 and it is from California that facts conclusive in the solution 
 of these problems must be derived. 
 
 California has a population, Chinese included, of about 
 seven hundred and fifty thousand, or somewhat less than 
 four individuals to the square mile. The land, at the date 
 of its annexation, was held in large grants, some from the 
 Mexican, others primarily from the Spanish Government, 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 109 
 
 and all, so far as they were bond fide, protected by the 
 treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo. Although these lands have 
 in a measure passed to new owners, they have seldom been 
 divided into smaller holdings, and are now possessed by a 
 comparatively small percentage of the entire population of 
 the State. The influx of Chinese labor, almost simultaneous 
 with the new settlement of the country, provided a means 
 by which these lands could be worked at little cost, and 
 obviated the necessity, which otherwise would have existed, 
 of dividing the immense ranches into farms. Chinese 
 immigration, therefore, buttressed the almost feudal control 
 of the land. In their turn the great land-owners lent the 
 power of their wealth, their political influence, and their 
 business talent in favor of the system of cheap labor by 
 which their own power was maintained. From this it has 
 followed that the social economy of Californian agriculture 
 has throughout been different from that of any other 
 country professedly governed by republican institutions or 
 assuming to be controlled by republican traditions. 
 
 The great crops which form the staple productions of the 
 soil are such as require no tillage between seedtime and 
 harvest, which thus become the only active seasons of the 
 year. East of the Sierras the conditions of farming are 
 such that there is opportunity for continuous labor from 
 early spring to later autumn, and even in some degree 
 throughout the winter months ; and the farm laborer has 
 opportunity for constant occupation. Forming, as he does, 
 a part of a homogeneous community, he has, if a man of 
 family, a fixed abode, however rude, and has within his 
 reach many, at least, of the ordinary comforts of life. If sin 
 gle, he commonly resides in the family of his employer. 
 Under such circumstances the existence of the farm hand 
 is rendered tolerable, neither undignified nor unworthy ; 
 and there is nothing in his condition which need impair his 
 self-respect or deny to his industry or skill their legitimate 
 reward of pecuniary or social success. But nothing of this 
 
no THE CHINESE, 
 
 exists in California farming. The laborer is hired during 
 a few weeks of the heavy spring work and of the harvest. 
 He receives his wages and his rations, and is expected to 
 lodge himself. Wrapped in his blanket, he sleeps in an 
 outhouse or on the threshed straw under the rainless sky. 
 When the season of driving work is over he goes away, 
 whither no one knows, and no one cares. Thus periods of 
 long idleness intervene between seasons of severe labor. 
 Such a system is possible only in a country composed of 
 estates of immense proportions, tilled by labor of the 
 cheapest and most servile kind. 
 
 The discovery of gold, the reported fertility of the soil, 
 and the beauty of the climate led, at the outset, to a large 
 immigration from the Eastern States ; to the organization 
 of a commonwealth based on their political traditions and 
 social usages. These traditions and usages were and still 
 are directly counter to those which, in all ages, have result 
 ed from the control of the land by the few, and to those 
 represented by the cheap labor of the Chinese. The civil 
 ization represented by the masses of the white settlers on 
 the Pacific coast had, as an inherent necessity, a remunera 
 tion of labor adequate to the comfortable maintenance of 
 families, their education, their refinement in manners, mind 
 and morals, which can only obtain where the physical be 
 ing is sustained by sufficient nutrition, and the intellect and 
 emotional nature suffered to expand by a fair degree of 
 leisure. The civilization represented by the large land 
 owners was that springing from the use of labor secured at 
 the lowest possible remuneration, regardless of its effects 
 on the laboring classes. This labor was found in the Chi 
 nese immigrants who, without families, and used, in their 
 own country, to the smallest wages, could be obtained in 
 unlimited number at rates lower than those necessary for 
 the bare sustenance of white workingmen. The conflict 
 between these two forms of civilization began early. It has 
 extended to every branch of industry, and the results thus 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. Ill 
 
 far have been detrimental in the extreme to that which we 
 are accustomed to consider as the highest form of Cauca 
 sian society. ""The Chinese have invaded every department 
 of industry, and Chinese executive ability has marshalled 
 that labor into the most effective opposition to the indus 
 trial classes of the whites. Everywhere, except among the 
 wealthy, the white man has gone to the wall in the compe 
 tition with the Asiatic. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 INJURIOUS EFFECTS OF CHINESE IMMIGRATION IN CALI 
 FORNIA. 
 
 THE extent to which the presence of the Chinese has 
 been inimical to our people is most conveniently illustrated 
 by reference to the various branches of industry on the Pa 
 cific coast ; for the manufacturing interests that, with a 
 normal development of society, would have been built up 
 by white labor, have virtually passed into the hands of the 
 Chinese. The result is, not only that laboring men, as such, 
 are thrown out of employment, or reduced to wages insuffi- 
 cient for comfortable maintenance, but all those occupa 
 tions which, even in the most crowded Caucasian communi 
 ties, afford a frugal sustenance to women and children, are 
 monopolized by the Chinese. For example, in some por 
 tions of the Eastern States, as also in England, the season 
 of picking hops is one as festive in character as the vintage 
 of France or Italy, because it affords unusually high wages 
 during three or four weeks to women and children whose 
 labor at other seasons has little money value. Wherever, 
 east of the Rocky Mountains, hops are grown, the hop- 
 picking season is looked forward to by thousands of young 
 girls and by needy families as offering a means of ready 
 money, the use of which is oftenaextended throughout the 
 remainder of the year. In California the hop-picking is 
 
J I 2 THE CHINESE. 
 
 done by Chinese to the exclusion of all others. So, also, in 
 many portions of the Eastern States, the season of berry- 
 picking affords an opportunity for the earning of money, 
 which, to the poor, softens the hardships of other and more 
 scanty seasons. In California, berry-picking, which, at one 
 time, was availed of by women and children, has been en 
 tirely absorbed by Chinese. The weaving, which formerly 
 was done almost entirely by women, is now done by Chi 
 nese. In the making of underclothing, Chinese do the 
 work which in this country and Europe is performed by 
 seamstresses. The laundry work, the dress-making, and 
 the millinery work have been passed to the Chinese. The 
 manufacture of shoes for women and children is entirely in 
 their hands. The gathering of fruit, the digging of pota 
 toes, the care of gardens, is for the most part done by them. 
 The handling of the immense crops of the coast calls for 
 the use of many tens of thousands of grain-bags, which are 
 all sewed by Chinese. In the large dairies, some of them 
 having from a thousand to thirteen hundred cows, the milk 
 ing and other dairy work is performed by Chinese. The 
 seating of cane chairs, which forms the last resource for 
 poor women in eastern cities, is in California given over to 
 Chinamen. 
 
 When white labor is thus crowded away from the minor and 
 poorer industries, it follows, as a matter of course, that other 
 and more remunerative occupations are filled in the same 
 way. The Chinese are employed in the woollen mills, in 
 the tanneries, in fisheries, in the canning of fruits, etc., 
 in the varnishing of furniture and the like, in the building 
 of embankments for the redemption of overflowed lands ; 
 in railway work, the making of road-cuttings, and the dig 
 ging of tunnels. There is scarcely a manufacture in which 
 they do not constitute the whole or the great majority of 
 the operatives. In one establishment in San Francisco (the 
 Mission Woollen Mills), five hundred and fifty Chinese have 
 been employed at one time. In a neighboring spring-mat- 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. "3 
 
 tress factory, not a single white man found work ; and, near 
 by, the only oakum factory in the city was also Chinese 
 throughout. In placer-mining there were four thousand in 
 one neighborhood, near^OnrvjUe ; and in many localities 
 they have entirely exhausted mines which, although inca 
 pable of profit with the wasteful methods in vogue twenty 
 years ago, would have proved by this time sources of rev 
 enue to the whites. There are in San Francisco fifteen 
 thousand boys and girls, between the ages of fourteen and 
 twenty, who, in eastern communities, would find active em 
 ployment ; but they cannot compete with the Chinese, and 
 are for the most part idle. In this last-mentioned fact lies 
 the origin of the " hoodlum " and the moral genesis of his 
 ways. Youth who, under normal conditions of industry, 
 would have occupation at wages in some measure commen 
 surate with the requirements of maintenance, find their 
 places filled by Chinese, whose habits of life are such that 
 the smallest remuneration yields what in their eyes is abun 
 dance. 
 
 cry -T 4^0 rTvA- ^-ct/-? 
 
 Competition with Chinese labor is simply competition with 
 
 the conditions under which the Chinese laborer chooses to 
 exist. But the Caucasian can neither eat the food, nor 
 breathe the air, nor sleep in the dens that are opulence and 
 comfort to the Chinese coolie. For unnumbered genera 
 tions the latter has existed under the same conditions that 
 he makes for himself in the new world, and his nature has 
 become dulled to the influence of noxious odors, of foul 
 surroundings, of crowded rooms, and of a noisome atmos 
 phere. What the Board of Health of a Caucasian city re 
 gards with disgust and abhorrence as a probable source of 
 pestilence, the Chinese regard without concern. It has 
 often been remarked by those familiar with the people of 
 China, that diseases which are fatal to the European are 
 comparatively harmless to the Chinese. 
 
 The Chinaman, it is claimed, and apparently with truth, 
 will learn any given mechanical operation in one-third of 
 
H4 THE CHINESE, 
 
 the time required by a white workman. He has no family ; 
 he lives in the most frugal manner ; he lodges upon a 
 wooden bench ; he has been used at home to wages that 
 would hardly more than sustain life. His sole ambition is 
 to accumulate from two hundred to four hundred dollars, 
 which is to him a fortune, and which enables him to return 
 as a rich man to his own country. He is obedient and 
 servile. By means of all this he is enabled to live as no 
 white man could live, even if the white man were not 
 burdened with the support of wife and children. The re 
 sult has been to prevent the emigration of a strong and 
 healthy laboring class of kindred and easily affiliated races 
 from the Eastern States and from Europe. Thus there 
 has been almost wholly wanting in California the element 
 that contributed so largely to build up the prosperity of 
 the whole country east of the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 The evil of this has been twofold. Not only has the sum 
 total of a large Caucasian immigration been lost, but there 
 has been none of the natural and legitimate increase of pop 
 ulation that would have resulted therefrom. In the Eastern 
 States the Swedish, Irish, or German maiden finds ready 
 employment in domestic service ; in course of time she 
 marries and children are born, and families surrounded by 
 the safeguards of Christian communities grow up to careers 
 of usefulness and often of honor. In the second or third 
 generation the descendants of the European immigrant 
 are so completely merged with our people that no differ 
 ence is perceptible. In California anything of the kind is 
 impossible. To a certain extent it existed before Chinese 
 cheap labor had become so overpowering as it now is ; but 
 it has diminished in the same ratio that the latter grew to 
 be the dominant feature of the Californian industrial system. 
 California has thus been shut off from the legitimate ele 
 ments of growth which would have made her, in all the 
 essentials of material and moral prosperity, tenfold stronger 
 than she is to-day. Chinese labor has operated not only to 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. n5 
 
 prevent, but to destroy, the normal development of the State, 
 and to thrown upon the people unwonted burdens. In 
 every community there are many who, through adversity, 
 are throw suddenly upon their own resources children, 
 and tender women who must seek a sustenance in humble 
 employments. Where access to these is closed, as it is by 
 Chinese labor, the alternative is fearful and plain. The 
 woman who, in California, without friends or money seeks to 
 earn a livelihood by any of the occupations commonly open 
 to her class in even the most crowded cities of Europe or 
 of the Eastern States, is met at every turn by Chinese who 
 will work for less than is necessary to support life and 
 health in a person of Caucasian descent and training. There 
 is for her the simple alternative of shame or starvation. 
 The man who is dependent upon his handiwork for daily 
 bread finds his children dwarfed for need of mere physi 
 cal nutrition, because his income, beaten down by Chinese 
 competition, is inadequate to their support ; and beggary 
 and crime are the natural results. 
 
 The same cause has produced another evil 01 no slight 
 social magnitude. Where young men find the prospect of 
 supporting families to be insecure, they do not marry. 
 From such a condition of society the political economist 
 deduces with certainty that the normal increase of the pop 
 ulation will be slow ; the student of moral science deduces 
 with equal positiveness that the standard of public and pri 
 vate morals will be debased. 
 
 It is an axiom, that where servile labor is brought in 
 contact with that of a higher social character, the latter is 
 brought down to the level of the former. It was an argu 
 ment used with effect against the institution of negro slavery 
 that it was not the colored man alone, but the free white 
 laborer also, who bore the stigma associated with manual 
 toil. The same rule of association holds true as between 
 the Chinese and the white workingrnan in California. In 
 the city of San Francisco, sixty thousand of the Chinese 
 
Ii6 THE CHINESE, 
 
 are crowded into six or seven blocks of buildings. A single 
 story measuring twelve feet from floor to ceiling is some 
 times divided by two intermediate floors, making three 
 stories in one, all occupied by Chinese. The streets in that 
 portion of the city are connected from one side to the other 
 by subterranean passages, so that the occupants of the 
 houses pass underground from building to building. Some 
 times the upper stories of the structures are built outward 
 over the street until, at some distance from the ground, 
 they approach within two feet of each other. The district 
 embraces among its denizens some four or five thousand 
 Chinese women, of whom not more than one in twenty is 
 other than the vilest of the vile. When the chief laboring 
 class steams and festers in such dens as these, labor itself 
 must stand low in public respect. And with such associa 
 tions and such competition, the wonder is, not that the 
 white population is turbulent, but that it is not a hundred 
 times more revolutionary in its ideas and lawless in their 
 expression. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 TRUE STATUS OF CHINESE LABOR IN THIS COUNTRY. 
 
 I AM aware that it is sometimes claimed that Chinese 
 labor is not servile, but free. In a subject so important, 
 we need hardly tolerate a quibble on words or a balancing 
 of technical phrases. A people is servile when it becomes 
 an inert mass, directed solely by the will of others, and 
 repelled by fear from exercising the ordinary prerogatives 
 of freemen. That this is the case with the Chinese in 
 California is apparent when we consider, never so briefly, 
 the circumstances under which they are brought into the 
 country, and the tenure by which their stay is determined. 
 The real masters of the Chinese in California are those of 
 their own countrymen who compose the Six Companies, the 
 Sam Yup, Kong Chow, Wing Yung, Hop Wo, Young Wo, 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 117 
 
 and Yang Wo. These enforce their authority partly as 
 creditors of the laborers, and partly by combinations with 
 the steamship companies. A contractor desiring any given 
 number of Chinese makes an agreement with one or the 
 other of the companies, which undertakes to furnish the 
 desired number, to be selected in China. A Chinaman 
 wishing to emigrate from his own country to California 
 will, in most cases, borrow money for his expenses, paying 
 interest at from four to eight per cent, a month ; giving a 
 mortgage on his wife and children for security, and until 
 this money is repaid he is bound to the company, and goes 
 hither and thither at its beck and call. In addition to the 
 cost of his voyage, he is required to pay seventy-five dollars 
 to the company as its commission. In return for this 
 commission, the company exercises a general supervision 
 and care over each individual, not only rinding him employ 
 ment, but caring for him in sickness and misfortune. 
 
 When the company is fully repaid, the immigrant is pre 
 sumably free, but is not so in fact. Every Chinaman hopes 
 to return sooner or later to his own country, or at least to 
 have his remains laid beside those of his ancestors ; but 
 the Six Companies have made arrangements with the 
 steamship companies by which no Chinaman, alive or dead, 
 can be transshipped without their consent. More than this, 
 the great majority, being directly indebted to the com 
 panies, work for the interests, real or imagined, of their 
 creditors, and a Chinaman fares hard indeed at the hands 
 of his own people, if he is found to be recalcitrant. What 
 ever name, therefore, may be given to the relation of the 
 Chinese to their employers, they are neither more nor less 
 than servile to the last degree. 
 
 Another result that has been observed to flow from this 
 is the constantly increasing arrogance on the part of em 
 ployers, a fault cultivated and encouraged by the patient 
 and absolute servility of the Chinese laborer. 
 
 It is no wonder, therefore, that with wages depressed 
 
Il THE CHINESE, 
 
 below the point of comfortable living, and with labor 
 debased to the social depths of an Asiatic community, 
 California has not increased in white population in anything 
 like the ratio of other States less favored in climate and 
 natural productions, and has materially diminished in that 
 distributive wealth which is the only solid foundation for 
 the material prosperity of a commonwealth. I know that 
 it is claimed that the aggregrate wealth of the State has been 
 increased by Chinese labor, but the evidence does not bear 
 out the assertion. On the contrary, it is not difficult to 
 prove that the State is actually poorer to-day than she 
 would have been had the Chinese never passed the 
 Golden Gate. More than this, it is easy to show that 
 the wealth of the State, even apart from that included 
 in the land, has been principally accumulated in the 
 hands of a few, while the mass of the people has been 
 impoverished. 
 
 Nor is this all: the low rates of wages required by the 
 Chinese, combined by their docility under authority, render 
 them facile instruments of indirect coercion in differences 
 between labor and capital. Thus introduced as an abnor 
 mal element into a problem sufficiently difficult of solution 
 without it, Chinese cheap labor too often renders impos 
 sible the normal and proper adjustment of such difficulties; 
 and the evil effects are felt, not merely in special industries 
 but to a great extent throughout the body politic. Fre 
 quently, indeed, it has led to results which, however 
 regrettable in themselves as separately considered, are but 
 the tokens of a righteous indignation over a condition of 
 affairs which a sound and well-regulated public policy 
 would not permit to exist. For ten years past not less than 
 one thousand Chinese have been employed in the coal 
 mines of the Union Pacific Railroad, and the employment 
 that would have sustained a thousand Caucasian families 
 has been kept beyond their reach. Prior to the occurrences 
 at Rock Springs, Colorado, in 1885, hundreds of white men 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 119 
 
 sought in vain for work, while Chinamen were imported by 
 the carload. 
 
 We may go further, and assert with perfect truth that 
 even the cities of the Atlantic seaboard are poorer by 
 many millions than they would have been had California 
 been dependent upon white labor alone. That State has 
 lost for the past quarter of a century the increase of white 
 population that would have inured to her had she presented 
 the attraction of high wages to the thrifty mechanics, farmers 
 and laboring men of the Eastern States. And during the 
 same period she has lost the refinements in tillage and the 
 enterprise in commercial undertakings that she would have 
 experienced had her immense ranches been divided into 
 smaller farms, as they would have been had not the Chinese 
 furnished vassals for their wholesale cultivation. 
 
 If agriculture has lost from cheap labor, commerce has 
 not gained. It has been asserted that our trade with China 
 has been promoted by the presence of the Chinese. But if 
 we analyze this we shall find it as delusive as the others. 
 Out of perhaps twenty millions of dollars of imports, 
 thirteen millions are in tea and silk which would be im 
 ported to the same degree if there were no Chinese on the 
 coast ; and the same remark applies to most of the other 
 imports, a very large proportion of which is consumed by 
 the Chinese themselves, as, for example, two million dollars 
 of rice, three hundred thousand of fire-crackers, and one 
 million dollars, more or less, of opium. Of the balance, 
 some three or four millions of dollars, it is difficult to see in 
 what respect it owes its existence to Chinese immigration. 
 It consists of such items as oil of aniseseed, cassia-buds, 
 china ware, camphor and cassia, all of which find a con 
 siderable, if not their greatest, market in the Eastern States, 
 and would be called for regardless of the character of the 
 population on the Pacific coast. On the other hand, our 
 exports amount to between ten and eleven millions, leaving 
 a balance of trade against us of apparently about nine and 
 
120 THE CHINESE, 
 
 a half millions, but which in reality is about seventeen 
 millions ; for more than seven-tenths of our so-called ex 
 ports to China consist of treasure which is listed with 
 the merchandise. This seventeen millions in coin and its 
 equivalent passes to China, and thence, in payment for 
 opium, to t British, to form part of the fund with which 
 their power is maintained in the East. About one million 
 dollars of our exports consist of quicksilver, and another 
 million of sundries. The export of flour, about which so 
 much has been said, amounts to only thirteen or fourteen 
 thousand barrels per annum ; of coal, about fifteen thou 
 sand tons ; and of lumber, about two million feet, having a 
 value of some fifty thousand dollars. There is not enough 
 in this showing to indicate any great or permanent advan 
 tage to this country from the continuance of commerce 
 with China. 
 
 Indeed, the impossibility, in the very nature of things, of 
 any profitable market for American products in China is 
 manifest. We cannot sell flour to a population that prefers 
 rice to wheat and which raises rice in kind and quantity 
 unexcelled anywhere in the world. We cannot sell im 
 proved machinery to a country whose people and govern 
 ment foresee that its introduction would destroy established 
 industrial usages and throw tens of millions of already 
 half-starving laborers wholly out of employment. We can 
 not sell leather to a population that makes its foot-gear 
 with cloth uppers and wooden soles. We cannot export 
 sugar to distant countries while we import it for ourselves, 
 nor can we sell the products of the dairy, or of the 
 shambles, to a people to whom the price of four ounces of 
 either is more than the value of a whole day s work from 
 dawn to sunset. It has been said that China affords a 
 market for our cotton goods. The averment is a fair illus 
 tration of the utter rot that has been inculcated with 
 reference to our commercial relations with that country. 
 Jf China could purchase to any material extent the " brown 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 1 21 
 
 sheetings " and other cotton fabrics of other countries, the 
 cheaper looms of Great Britain would supply them. But as 
 a matter of fact these have been unable to compete with the 
 cheap labor and the rude hand-looms in the cottages of the 
 Chinese operatives. In the words of a British consul at 
 Shanghai: " Roughly speaking, the working classes all over 
 China are still clothed entirely with native fabrics manufac 
 tured from native grown cotton .... The great obstacle 
 to China s becoming a consumer of English fabrics to the 
 extent that the enormous size of the country and its swarm 
 ing population would lead one to anticipate is .... the 
 fact that she herself can produce an article of more dura 
 ble quality, and better suited to the wants of the people, at 
 an equal or lower cost .... So long as the native looms 
 continue to produce cloth at the same cost as at present, 
 our manufacturers cannot seriously enter into competition 
 with it for the supply of the wants of the million." Another 
 consular report sets forth, of the cotton manufacture in 
 Tsze Chuen, " As the people count nothing for their time 
 or labor, everything which the cotton cloth realizes over the 
 cost of the raw material is reckoned profit." No greater 
 fallacy was ever whispered into the ear of a credulous pub 
 lic than the idea that China may afford, to any material 
 degree, a market for the productions of American labor or 
 skill. 
 
 But the story is not yet fully told. There are in San 
 Francisco fifteen or twenty Chinese firms through whom 
 the most of the trifling commerce which we have with 
 China is transacted, and its profit goes not to our people, 
 but to the Chinese, whose allegiance is to their own 
 country, and whose wealth is part of the wealth of China. 
 The riches that have been accumulated through Chinese 
 labor have been amassed by the few, and have contributed 
 nothing to the prosperity of the masses. It is not 
 twenty years since the Pacific Railway was built with 
 subsidies from the Federal and the State governments, 
 
122 THE CHINESE, 
 
 and even of counties along the line. The cost of building 
 the road^was based upon estimates of the ruling rates of 
 white labor. Upon these estimates the appropriations and 
 subscriptions were made. When the work was undertaken, 
 instead of employing the workingmen of the country, the 
 projectors, through the Six Companies, obtained ten thou 
 sand coolies direct from China, and with these the road was 
 built. But the profits went, not to the community, but to 
 the few bold business men, whose wealth dazzles the eye 
 and inflames the imagination. And this wealth, obtained 
 in this manner, and concentrated in a mere fraction of the 
 population, has been prejudical to the best interests of the 
 State, for it has been used from the beginning to perpet 
 uate the abnormal conditions through which it was first 
 obtained. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 CHINESE CHEAP LABOR ON THE PACIFIC COAST AFFECTS 
 INDUSTRIES EVEN TO THE ATLANTIC SEABOARD. 
 
 THE results of the cheap labor of the Pacific coast have 
 not been limited to that region, but have come in direct 
 competition with the labor of the eastern portion of our 
 country. For the laboring man, who is accustomed to the 
 standard of life in the East, cannot work and keep his 
 strength on the low wages of the Chinese. And whenever 
 the products of his labor have come in competition with 
 those of Chinese labor, they have been lowered in price, 
 and, as an inevitable result, his wages have been reduced 
 in proportion. Fifteen years ago, California sent forty 
 millions of dollars annually to the Eastern States in pay 
 ment for manufactured products ; to-day the California 
 market is practically closed to Eastern manufactures, 
 because Chinese labor produces them at lower prices 
 than is possible on the Atlantic coast. In propor- 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 123 
 
 tion as the demand for the results of labor in the East 
 diminishes, just in the same degree must the wages of the 
 laborer in the East be reduced ; and unless this tendency 
 is stopped by legislation, both as concerns the East and 
 the West, it must continue with constantly increasing force 
 until white labor is driven to degradation or revolution. 
 
 But the tendency referred to has gone even further than 
 I have indicated. We have seen that the hop-yards of 
 California, some of them forty and fifty acres in extent, 
 are picked by Chinese whose wages are so low as to afford a 
 virtual bounty upon the product as against that of east 
 ern hop-yards. In other words, the agriculturist on the 
 farms of New York, whether he works for wage, or tills 
 with his own hands lands which he owns in fee simple, 
 must, under the merciless operation of supply and demand, 
 labor in direct competition with Chinese whose wages are 
 but a fraction of what the American requires for the merest 
 livelihood. Under our treaty with Hawaii, her sugars have 
 been admitted free of duty, and American producers have 
 had to contend against the cheap labor of the Chinese 
 coolies who already exceed the total native adult popula 
 tion of the Islands. 
 
 It is known that, since years ago, the tobacco of Connecti 
 cut has been shipped to California, there made into cigars 
 by Chinese operatives, and then returned to the eastern 
 markets ; so that the cigarmakers of New York, Boston 
 and Philadelphia are brought into the same direct competi 
 tion with Chinese labor as those of the Pacific coast. As 
 concerns many branches of manufacture, this would occur 
 even if Chinese immigration was restrained west of the 
 Rocky Mountains. But, as we all know, the Chinese have 
 penetrated to every large city in the country. They swarm 
 in Brooklyn, and have their own " Chinese quarter " locally 
 known as " Chinatown." In New York City there are, in 
 round numbers, about fifteen thousand of them who, like 
 their brethren in California, take the work ordinarily done 
 
124 THE CHINESE, 
 
 by women and children. Here as there they are without 
 families, and here as there they live in the same cheap 
 squalor and comfortable debasement. It is keeping within 
 bounds to say that for each Chinaman who follows the oc 
 cupation of " washee-washee " in this country, a family of 
 a washer-woman with four children loses its means of sub 
 sistence and sinks to deeper depths of poverty. 
 
 It may be asked why, with these facts staring the investiga 
 tor in the face, so strong a public opinion as has heretofore 
 been manifest should have been produced or maintained in 
 favor of Chinese immigration. The answer is easily found. 
 California is in a great measure ruled by railroads whose 
 builders made fortunes through Chinese labor. The Pacific 
 Mail Steamship Company has its vessels manned with Chi 
 nese sailors, and makes its profits from the transport of 
 Chinese coolies, and, as we have seen, it is in close affiliation 
 with the Chinese companies through whom the immense 
 flood of Asiatic laborers has flowed into the country. The 
 American consular charges in China have been from one 
 to two dollars per head for every Chinaman shipped ; and 
 all the official weight of the American representatives at 
 Hong-Kong has been thrown in favor of the trade. And 
 every large manufacturer and great land-owner who has 
 found the profits of the ranch or the manufactory enhanced 
 through the reduction of wages to the lowest point, has 
 joined in laudation of cheap labor. To so great an extent 
 has the fabrication of a public opinion in favor of the Chinese 
 been carried, that after the death of Senator Morton it was 
 widely reported, and almost as widely believed, that he had 
 left in his own handwriting a report in laudation of Chinese 
 labor and advocating its continuance ; whereas Senator 
 Morton joined with the other members of the committee in 
 declaring that " the influx of the Chinese is a standing men 
 ace to republican institutions upon the Pacific and the exist 
 ence there of Christian civilization," and regarding the pres 
 ent industrial condition of California arising from Chinese 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 125 
 
 labor, used the following language : " The Chinese have 
 advantages which will put them far in advance in the race 
 for possession. They can subsist where the American would 
 starve. They can work for wages which will not fur 
 nish the barest necessities of life to an American." This 
 committee, of which the senator was one, and in whose re 
 port he joined, spoke of the Chinese as making their way 
 " by revolting characteristics and by dispensing with what 
 would be mere necessities in modern civilizations." Yet in 
 spite of this emphatic language the pro-Chinese advocates 
 have succeeded in spreading the current belief that the dis 
 tinguished senator came to the same conclusion as them 
 selves. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 CHINESE IMMIGRATION IS BUT IN ITS INFANCY UNLESS 
 PROMPTLY STOPPED BY LEGISLATION VIGOROUSLY CAR 
 RIED INTO EFFECT. 
 
 IT has been supposed by many that Chinese immigration 
 has reached its limit. But this is at variance with what is 
 plainly indicated by demonstrated facts. Although many 
 Chinese return, each autumn, to their own country, a still 
 larger number make their advent in the spring ; the annual 
 surplus of immigrants over emigrants being from eighteen 
 thousand to twenty thousand, which insures a constant in 
 crease of the Chinese population. I am aware that it is 
 claimed that the Restriction Act of 1881 has materially 
 diminished this annual ratio of Chinese immigration. But 
 in the face of such assertions is the undeniable fact that the 
 provisions of the law have been evaded wholesale and suc 
 cessfully. It does not admit of contradiction that the 
 strongest opposition to the Chinese shown by the people of 
 the Pacific Coast has been manifested since the passage of 
 this act, and this furnishes strong persuasive evidence that 
 
126 THE CHINESE, 
 
 the act itself is inefficient and incomplete. Moreover, the 
 evasion and, in many cases, the practical nullity of the law, 
 is a matter of notoriety. As already stated, the Chinese 
 constitute one-sixth of the people of the State ; their 
 number above one hundred and sixty thousand. This 
 figure is an average of various estimates, and is undoubtedly 
 below the actual number, inasmuch as the Chinese are most 
 ingenious in evading any accurate enumeration. In 1886, 
 it was stated by Lee Kin Wah, the president of the Six 
 Companies, that outside of San Francisco there were one 
 hundred thousand Chinese in the State of California. If 
 this be true, and there is no reason to doubt it, the total 
 number on the Pacific Coast cannot be less than two hun 
 dred thousand, for even in 1876 the city of San Francisco 
 harbored sixty thousand, and the number assuredly has not 
 diminished. 
 
 We may here pause for a curious calculation. There are 
 only between five and six thousand Chinese females in the 
 State ; and the Chinamen are, therefore, almost without 
 exception men without families. Each one of them is 
 inspected, before leaving China, with a care equal to the 
 inspection of volunteers for active service in time of war. 
 Without this they cannot be shipped. They are therefore 
 healthy, active and enduring as much so, probably, as the 
 average military force of any country. As concerns the 
 white community, the number of men fit to bear arms may 
 be estimated by the same rule that obtains in European 
 countries, which is one in five of the total population- 
 Therefore, of the six hundred thousand whites, there may 
 be counted one hundred and twenty thousand men capable 
 of actual service. From this it follows that, in the number 
 of men fit to bear arms in California to-day, China is at least 
 thirty per cent, stronger than the United States. We may 
 readily infer whether this proportion is likely to increase, 
 when we consider the low cost at which Chinese immigrants 
 can be brought to the Pacific coast. The charge per head 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 127 
 
 for bringing coolies on a steamship is variously stated ; 
 sometimes as high as fifty-five dollars by the advocates of 
 Chinese immigration, sometimes as low as ten dollars by 
 its opponents. The truth appears to be that the actual 
 rate of the steamship company is about thirty dollars from 
 Hong-Kong to San Francisco, and about ten dollars on the 
 return. I find in a sworn statement made by an expert in 
 the business, that in sailing vessels the Chinese can be 
 brought to California for fifteen dollars each. 
 
 In times of steamship rivalry the rates have been reduced 
 as low as twelve dollars per head. The emoluments of the 
 business of importing Chinese may be estimated from the 
 fact, sworn to before a Congressional committee, that from 
 two trips per year a steamship makes about ninety-six 
 thousand dollars gross profit. Even the dead Chinaman 
 pays a handsome return ; his last wish is to be buried in the 
 consecrated ground where his ancestors repose, and five 
 dollars is the price for conveying his bones homeward to 
 the flowery land. The cupidity of transportation lines of 
 course meets half-way the wishes of the would-be emi 
 grant, and employs well-understood means to stimulate 
 his desire to better his fortunes in the New World. Un 
 der such conditions there can be no check to the immi 
 gration except through stringent legislation vigorously 
 enforced. 
 
 Inducements such as have been herein just referred to, 
 in the face of a careless public opinion, have borne their 
 natural fruits. The treaty relating to the importation of 
 Chinese, and the legislation had in pursuance thereof, has 
 been, in a great measure, a dead letter, and instead of stop 
 ping the evil has permitted it to increase sub rosa, by lulling 
 anti-Chinese sentiment into a false security. The collusion 
 of officials has aided the evasion of the law ; thousands have 
 crept into the country under color of false certificates, and 
 other thousands have passed unhindered across the border 
 from the British dominions, a British trans-Pacific steam- 
 
128 THE CHINESE, 
 
 ship company doing for the port of Victoria what the 
 Pacific Mail does for San Francisco. 
 
 From November 17, 1880, to August 5, 1882, "the ar 
 rivals of Chinese by steamer alone at San Francisco reached 
 forty-five thousand six hundred and sixty-five "; a fair 
 index of the manner in which the Chinese have been 
 crowded into the country. In the words of a leading New 
 York city journal, " the immigration has scarcely diminished 
 at all since the policy of restriction was put in force." It 
 is impossible to state, even approximately, the number of 
 Chinese in the United States, or their annual increase here : 
 and the figures I have given on this head, though taken 
 from the best available data, are more than likely to 
 represent but a fraction of the whole. Another promi 
 nent New York newspaper avers that at the present 
 time the Chinese enter the country sometimes at the rate of 
 a thousand per day. It is as impossible to deny as it is to 
 verify these sayings, for at the best only an estimate can be 
 made. The same duplicity that favors the immigration 
 contrary to law covers from sight the sources from which an 
 exact statement of its extent could be drawn. The 
 price of an illegal return certificate has been twenty dollars 
 for a man, and one hundred for a female vide New York 
 papers of April, 1888 -and there is no reason to suppose that 
 more than a mere fraction of the frauds committed have 
 been discovered. The extent to which the Chinese have 
 increased of late years in even small and comparatively out 
 of the way places is illustrated by the population of Vic 
 toria, which, with eight thousand whites of all ages and sexes, 
 has three thousand Chinamen. Practically the whole value 
 of the restrictive treaty with China has been to avoid 
 undue irritation to the self-respect of her government, a 
 result right and proper in itself, and tending to the elimi 
 nation of a source of possible, though minor, annoyance in 
 carrying into effect a policy of repressing Chinese immigra 
 tion. In like manner the practical value of all anti-Chinese 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 129 
 
 legislation heretofore enacted has been incidental rather 
 than positive or direct. It has tended in the right direc 
 tion, is evidence of an appreciation by the public of the ne 
 cessities of the times, and serves as a precedent for further 
 and, it is to be hoped, more effective laws, but it has fallen 
 far short of what was expected and desired. Chinese im 
 migration has continued and increased, and the promised 
 relief has been little more than an illusion. And this in 
 crease in Chinese immigrants has been, and is, common to 
 every region accessible to it, and raises from them all the 
 same protest. Within a few weeks of this present writing 
 shiploads of Chinese have been warned from the ports of 
 Australia, and the same problem is met in the same spirit 
 in Australasia as on the Pacific coast of our own country. 
 
 The recent experience of Hawaii is of interest in this 
 connection. In 1878 the Chinese population of the Islands 
 was five thousand nine hundred and sixteen. In five years 
 it rose to sixteen thousand. In February, 1884, it was 
 seventeen thousand nine hundred and thirty-seven, of whom 
 only eight hundred and seventy-one were females. In 
 March of that year a law was made that, aside from persons 
 specially admitted by passports in designated cases, no 
 foreign vessel should land more than twenty-five Chinese 
 at any port of the Islands, and in February, 1886, this priv 
 ilege was cancelled and the government definitely adopted 
 the policy of putting an end to further Chinese immigra 
 tion altogether. Of the Chinese already in Hawaii, about 
 twenty per cent. " are engaged on the plantations "; the re 
 mainder are " occupied as rice-planters, gardeners, shop 
 keepers, fishermen, tailors, boot and shoe makers, domes 
 tics, peddlers, etc., and in various other pursuits." The 
 American minister at Honolulu, writing in 1883, informed 
 our State Department that " a further considerable in 
 crease in the number of Chinese laborers would assuredly 
 hasten the destruction of the native people, and sooner or 
 later render it difficult for the Hawaiian Government to 
 
I3 6 THE CHINESE, 
 
 protect the great foreign interests commercially controlling 
 the islands." 
 
 We have already seen the conditions under which the 
 Chinaman exists at home the pressure of poverty and pri 
 vation which urges him to emigrate. We have also seen 
 how he carries with him the sordid habits to which he has 
 been trained from infancy. In California he can obtain all 
 that his habits of life require for ten cents per day. What 
 ever he earns above this is profit clear, to be saved, and 
 eventually to be taken to China when he returns. Living 
 at this rate, competition in the labor of Caucasians can 
 not affect him to any measurable degree, for the rivalry 
 that would bring the white laborer to starvation still leaves 
 the Chinaman a margin which, compared with what he could 
 make at home is wealth. With this condition of affairs well 
 known in China, as it most assuredly is, and with a merely 
 perfunctory operation of the law relating to exclusion, it 
 would, indeed, be little short of a miracle if the Chinese 
 ceased to swarm into a country where the waste thrown 
 into the garbage-basket is often better than the fare that 
 gives them sustenance at home. 
 
 Thus far I have considered Chinese immigration princi 
 pally with reference to its results on the Pacific coast, and 
 but incidentally as concerns other portions of the country. 
 The subject is, however, of more comprehensive import and 
 to be received in a broader light. The influx of the Chinese 
 is not confined to the region west of the Rocky Mountains. 
 It has extended to all portions of the country, and if not 
 subdued will sooner or later come into direct competition 
 with every class of labor in every State and Territory. Thus 
 various elements not hereinbefore considered are essen 
 tial to the proper examination of the subject. It becomes 
 necessary to consider the existing condition of the pro 
 ducing classes in our own country, the extent to which that 
 condition may be aggravated by the inflow of cheap labor 
 of races kindred to our own, and the effect of Chinese labor 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 13* 
 
 upon a large percentage of our population, enfranchised 
 by the late war, and whose welfare cannot be ignored 
 without danger. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 OUR PRODUCING CLASSES CAN BEAR NO GREATER COMPE 
 TITION FROM CHEAP LABOR THAN THAT FROM CAUCA 
 SIAN SOURCES. THE CHINAMAN VCt SUS THE ITALIAN 
 AND THE HUN. 
 
 As concerns the remuneration of labor, our country is no 
 longer the paradise it was in former years. Agriculture in 
 the Eastern and Middle States is far from being a prosper 
 ous industry, and affords but modest recompense to the 
 laborer. The sharp competition of life in large cities has 
 introduced conditions of existence which were unknown 
 thirty years ago, and which are as serious in import as they 
 are novel to our communities. The struggle for life has 
 introduced female effort into the labor field to an extent 
 undreamed of until within the last decade ; and the discon 
 tent of the working classes is not only evidenced by colos 
 sal trade and labor organizations, but is justified by the dis 
 parity between earnings and the cost of the necessaries of 
 life. These latter, with the Caucasian workingman, com 
 prise not merely the means of physical existence, but also 
 many other things which the requirements of civilization 
 demand. Even if there were no other factor in the calcu 
 lation, this alone would prove that the introduction of Chi 
 nese labor must inevitably lead to mischief. Discontented, 
 and in many cases justly so, with existing conditions, the 
 Caucasian laborer cannot be expected to bear with equa 
 nimity competition with the new element of labor which can 
 support itself and accumulate property at rates of wages in 
 adequate to maintain the Caucasian and his family in physi 
 cal health or to sustain even the strength that is required 
 
132 THE CHINESE, 
 
 for the performance of labor. To this must be added the 
 second element above referred to, which has assumed the 
 most notable proportions within the past few years, viz., the 
 introduction of an entirely new class of immigrants, com 
 prising the Italian and the Hun. 
 
 At this point the query may be made and superficial 
 though the question be, it is entitled to a fair answer, why 
 do not the same objections apply to the Hungarian and the 
 Italian as to the Chinese ? 
 
 Whatever the temporary effect of the new class of Euro 
 pean immigration referred to, and that it must have an 
 appreciable effect is manifest when we consider that an 
 hundred thousand Italians have been landed in New 
 York in a single year, there is behind it no overwhelming 
 population such as urges the Chinese to pass beyond the 
 bounds of their own country. The entire population of 
 Italy is less than one-twentieth of that of China, and the 
 density of its population is but a fraction of that of the lat 
 ter country. A similar remark applies to Hungary. The 
 excess of population therefore of both of these countries is 
 comparatively light, and the emigration of any considerable 
 percentage, by diminishing the laboring population at home, 
 will tend to disturb existing conditions and thereby produce 
 a reaction tending to retain the producing classes in their 
 own country. This is especially true of Italy, whose policy 
 leans to the concentration of her surplus population in de 
 pendent African provinces, which may add in many ways 
 to her national strength. The matter is one to be weighed 
 in a practical sense. With the Italian and Hungarian ele 
 ment, as with the Irish, German, and Scandinavian, the sup 
 ply is not likely to be so great that it cannot be absorbed 
 into the masses of our own people, as has been the case with 
 every other class of immigration from Europe. The reser 
 voir, in the nature of things, must soon become exhausted 
 to the limit at which the would-be immigrant will be required 
 at home ; whereas, with the Chinese, the limitless source of 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. *33 
 
 supply is overflowing from the operation of causes which 
 the laws of nature itself must render permanent. The one 
 is like the spring freshet of some of our mountain streams, 
 destined in due course to diminish to slender and gentle 
 flow ; the other is like the swell of the Yellow River, which, 
 whether its waters rise or fall, keeps ever upon its surging 
 and sullen course. The immediate effect, however, of Italian 
 and Hungarian immigration is to tend to increase compe 
 tition in labor, and to this extent to intensify the struggle 
 for existence to which I have already alluded, and in the 
 same ratio the new source of Caucasian labor supply affords 
 a further reason why the introduction of the Chinese should 
 be inhibited. The allegation which for years formed the 
 stock argument of pro-Chinese advocates, that the cheap 
 labor of the Chinese was a necessity in our industries, has 
 no longer even the scant shadow of a shade of plausibility. 
 All, and more than all, the demands for cheap labor from 
 any industry is met, and more than met, from races cog 
 nate to, and easily assimilable with, our own. 
 
 At this point, no doubt, the controversialist may ask, why 
 has not the Chinese the same right in this country as the 
 native of Hungary, of Sicily, or of Naples ? This query, 
 though superficial as the other, is entitled, like the other, 
 to a fair hearing and a fair answer. 
 
 The term " The tribes and kindreds of the earth " is one 
 not without meaning. The Italian and, though in a less 
 degree, the Hun is a part of the family of nations, which, 
 under the aegis of Christianity, developed civilization, as we 
 understand the term. The former is kindred to us through 
 his Aryan lineage, and is linked to us by his share in the 
 development of the enlightenment from which we profit : 
 his language is one of a cluster that sprang from a common 
 source in one branch of the Indo-Germanic. Both worship 
 the Jehovah to whom our temples are raised, and their 
 thoughts, however crude or narrow, run parallel with those 
 inherent in the intellectual progress of our own people. 
 
CHINESE, 
 
 It is the manner in which Italian and Hungarian im 
 migration has been conducted, and not the Italian or Hun 
 garian per se, which is objectionable. No immigrant how 
 ever kindred his race or great its attributes in a civilization 
 correspondent to our own who comes, contract ridden, a 
 mere tool in the hands of capital in its strifes with labor, 
 can be a valuable addition to our population. The con 
 tract system, which regards neither the welfare of the im 
 migrant nor the well-being of the land to which he comes, 
 is one utterly to be condemned : non constat, however, that 
 normal immigration from Europe, corresponding to that 
 which from one or another European country has gone on 
 from the foundation of our government, is to be discouraged. 
 We are not to forget that the European, whatever his 
 country, assimilates readily with our population, and the 
 characteristics most dominant in his people are capable of 
 enriching, in the mingling of kindred races incident to the 
 growth of ouj* population, the character of our own. For 
 it is by the admixture of races of European origin that a 
 distinctly American type of humanity is to be produced, 
 moulded, and shaped, within near generations, under the 
 novel conditions and broad opportunities of a new world. 
 A depressed and half-forsaken kinsman the Italian or the 
 Hun maybe, of the stronger and thriftier that have peopled 
 our country, but he is kinsman nevertheless, and may justly 
 be allowed a place at the new hearthstone of the Caucasian 
 race. It was an Italian who discovered this country and 
 opened the knowledge thereof to our ancestors, and it is 
 yet within the memory of men still in middle life that the 
 sympathies of our people went forth to the Hungarians in 
 their struggle for a national existence. The selection, 
 if the term may so be used, of the incoming peoples w r ho 
 will aid in the settlement of our country, and ultimately, by 
 their fusion, assist in producing its distinctive population, 
 must be from the dwellers of Europe ; from the sources 
 from which our civilization, our religious beliefs, our social 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 135 
 
 system, and our political institutions have been to a greater 
 or less extent derived. And from the Norwegian, who 
 still preserves in his land of lake and mountain the 
 simplicity and freedom of an early democracy, to the 
 Slavonian who, on the eastern plains of Europe, has 
 guarded the frontiers of Christendom for a thousand years, 
 and southward to the Mediterranean, all may be fitly con 
 ceded the privilege of sharing the New World subject only 
 to our laws, the binding force of our political traditions, 
 and the spirit of our free institutions. All are pliant and 
 easily moulded to new conditions, and for the most part 
 melt readily into our population, so that in two or three 
 generations their special character disappears. But with 
 the Chinese no such rule or principle applies. Distinct, 
 separate, segregated, in all things alien to us as would be 
 the inhabitants of another world, they possess none of the 
 characteristics which render possible the assimilation of 
 immigration from Europe none of the implied rights, 
 which arise from kinship in historical development, in blood 
 or faith. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 THE CHINAMAN versus THE EMANCIPATED NEGRO OF 
 THE SOUTH. 
 
 THE further phase of the matter under consideration, 
 viz., the bearing of Chinese cheap labor upon the welfare 
 of the emancipated negro, is one that has not received the 
 attention that its importance requires. It is fortunate that 
 the industrial condition of the Southern States has not 
 thus far been such as to invite to any great degree the 
 Chinese to active competition with the laboring population. 
 The Chinese east of the Rocky Mountains have, for the most 
 part, confined themselves to the large cities, although one of 
 the first suggestions made by advocates of Chinese cheap 
 
I3 6 THE CHINESE, 
 
 labor was that it could be employed to advantage in the 
 cultivation of the staple crops of the South. The negro 
 population at the conclusion of the war aggregated about 
 three and one-half millions ; at a moderate estimate it is 
 now at least twice as great. Before the war its normal 
 increase w r as five per cent, per annum, as stated by Calhoun 
 in a Congressional debate, and the ratio certainly cannot 
 have been less under the favorable conditions of freedom. 
 The negro, although his wants are few, has been unused to 
 privation. He has grown up and now exists under condi 
 tions which would be changed for the worse by any competi 
 tion in the labor market which would materially reduce what 
 he now receives. For the kind of labor to which he has been 
 trained, and for which, perhaps, for many years to come, will 
 be that to which only he can train his hand, is that to which 
 the Chinaman would most readily gravitate. Whatever may 
 have been the differences of opinion between parties in past 
 times differences that, for all practical purposes, were 
 settled a quarter of a century ago concerning the status of 
 the negro, this much is manifest and undeniable : that the 
 welfare of the white, as well as the negro, would be most 
 seriously impaired by a competition that would virtually 
 oust the negro from his vocation and render it necessary 
 for him to plunder or to starve. This is no exaggerated 
 phrase. With ancestors born under the bounteous skies of 
 the tropics, and inheriting from them the necessities of a 
 large and strong physique, used to the abundance of the 
 sub-tropical regions in which, as the result of Caucasian 
 cupidity, he has been bred, the negro can no more subsist 
 on what would content the Chinaman than the buffalo 
 could exist on wayside thistles. Drive the negro from the 
 cane and cotton field by the competition of a class of 
 laborers who will work for less than will afford him decent 
 subsistence, and, with no gift of prophecy, the result can 
 be inferred. 
 
 Yet there is no reason to suppose that the South can 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 137 
 
 long be exempt if Chinese immigration continues, as it 
 has done in defiance of such efforts as have been made to 
 prevent it. The Chinese in California kept at first to the 
 cities, but soon spread over the whole State, and indeed 
 over the whole Pacific slope, and the inland regions of 
 Nevada and Colorado. Silent and persistent as the white 
 ants that destroy the strongest timbers while the house 
 holder sleeps, they go further and further ; and where they 
 have once settled there they remain. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 PERSISTENT AND INCREASING INFLOW OF CHINESE TO ALL 
 AVAILABLE REGIONS. 
 
 THE insidious increase of the Chinese population in 
 despite of all antagonism has, indeed, been paralleled when 
 ever the race has once obtained a foothold, and pecu 
 liarly pertinent to this phase of the question is the fact 
 that the Chinese have never retraced their way from any 
 region where they have once established themselves. Once, 
 it is true, centuries ago, China withdrew from conquests 
 that extended almost to the Caspian Sea, and this was 
 done voluntarily in order to avoid possibilities of close re 
 lations with the nations of the west ; but aside from this 
 the dragon flag has never been more than temporarily 
 lowered from any country where it has once been planted. 
 Time has been within the past few hundred years when 
 China possessed nothing but her own area, the Central 
 Kingdom. To-day she has obtained, either by peaceful 
 acquisition or by conquest, the control of the countries of 
 Mongolia, of Mantchuria, of Eastern Turkestan, and of 
 Thibet ; and her population is swarming into Siam, and 
 some portions of India, while Java has more than one hun 
 dred thousand. Even the wilds of Borneo are not exempt, 
 and the complete control of Formosa is but a question of 
 
I3 8 THE CHINESE, 
 
 time. More than this, in the Philippine Islands, the first for 
 eign land to feel the noxious effects of Chinese immigration, 
 neither statecraft nor slaughter has been sufficient to up 
 root the peaceful invaders. Nearly three hundred years 
 ago, at a period when the Spanish residents of the Philip 
 pines were only about eight hundred, the Chinese numbered 
 nearly twenty thousand. A well-founded fear on the part 
 of the handful of Europeans led to a contest in which the 
 Spaniards, provided with fire-arms, succeeded in slaughter 
 ing nearly the whole number of the badly-armed celestials. 
 Yet within thirty years thereafter, the Chinese population 
 had increased, through new immigrations, to thirty-three 
 thousand. These were in time detected in fomenting re 
 bellion, and the work of the previous generation was 
 repeated. Fully two-thirds of the Chinese were destroyed. 
 After this, legislation limited the Chinese in the islands to 
 six thousand ; and in i7io they were all expelled, and trade 
 with China was prohibited. But, with all this, it has been 
 impossible to keep them away, there being at the present 
 time about ninety thousand Chinese in Manilla. 
 
 The meaning of these incidents in the history of Chinese 
 emigration is emphasized by the admitted fact that the 
 outflow has occurred in defiance of the authorities of China, 
 and not by their favor. With a wise forecast, the policy of 
 the Government, since the rise of the western powers, has 
 been to keep the empire intact, and to prevent, so far as 
 possible, the involution of its people with those of other 
 countries. As we shall see further on, this policy, sound 
 and considerate in itself, has been broken down only by the 
 persistent efforts of the foreign powers, to whom our own 
 country has acted as deputy-assistant in no very dignified 
 manner or degree. The enforcement of Chinese law has 
 been sufficient to restrain the inhabitants of the interior 
 from seeking a foreign outlet, but this has been ineffectual 
 as concerns the outer provinces. The Chinese population 
 on our Pacific coast is, as we have seen, from one hundred 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION, 139 
 
 and fifty thousand to two hundred thousand, yet all of these 
 have been derived from an area of but fifteen thousand 
 square miles, embraced within the province of Quang-tung, 
 this area having a population of five millions. An immi 
 gration, in the same ratio of population, from the entire 
 Central Kingdom, would launch upon the Pacific coast a 
 population of some fifteen millions. But so great and so 
 dense is the population of China, that the loss of these mill 
 ions of her inhabitants would make no perceptible change 
 in her resources, or in her industrial, social or political con 
 dition. To offset the temptation to immigrate there is 
 nothing but the natural, but, under such circumstances, 
 easily-overcome conservatism which makes part of the 
 character of the people, and the dislike of the Chinese 
 Government to the infraction of a traditional, though now 
 much-weakened policy. 
 
 For it is to the conservative policy of the Chinese Govern 
 ment, and to this alone, that the western coast of America 
 thus far owes even its comparative immunity from the 
 overwhelming influence of Asiatic immigration. I use the 
 term " comparative immunity " advisedly. If China en 
 couraged the overflow of her people to the same extent that 
 she has discouraged it, the Chinese question would have 
 been already settled beyond recall. Reverence for the 
 wisdom of their ancestors in binding each citizen to his 
 native land by indissoluble ties, has until lately led China 
 to maintain a policy, the results of which have been even 
 more favorable to our safety than conducive to her own. 
 As we have seen, China, for many hundred years, dis 
 couraged the immigration of her people. We have seen, 
 also, that the barriers she builded to shield her empire were 
 broken down by force and fraud in which, in the later days 
 at least, we had our share. We have seen, too, that the 
 Chinese intellect, the Chinese character, is strong, vigorous, 
 patient, and far-sighted ; and that as diplomats the states 
 men of China have held their own with those of every other 
 
140 THE CHINESE, 
 
 nation in the world. This people, thus constituted, have 
 now reached a point where the policy of four thousand 
 years, if not manifestly reversed, is shaken, and China, in 
 stead of standing upon the defensive, is upon the verge of, 
 if she has not already adopted, an aggressive policy. 
 
 The signs of aggression are neither few nor obscure. As 
 already remarked, on her own coasts and in neighboring 
 regions she has supplanted the enterprise of Europeans and 
 Americans. This process is now being extended to our 
 own country, and, if continued, will soon constitute, upon 
 the Pacific coast, a power too strong to be overcome by 
 policy or war. One hundred and forty thousand of Chinese, 
 it was stated on apparently good authority, had already 
 found a place in Cuba eight years ago. The same year 
 witnessed the inauguration, with the steamer Hochung, of 
 direct trade in Chinese steam-vessels between Hong-Kong 
 and San Francisco. The opportunities afforded by a favor 
 able public opinion and thoughtless governmental action, 
 both in this country and in Europe, have enabled China to 
 avail herself of the latest and most improved resources, 
 whether for peaceful or warlike purposes. Hundreds of 
 the best of her young men have been educated in Caucasian 
 schools ; the scientific works of Europe and America have 
 been translated into her language for the use of her officials. 
 Armories have been established on Chinese soil for the 
 manufacture of improved fire-arms for Chinese troops. 
 China has defeated the Russians in Kashgar with muskets 
 from the arsenals of Europe, and has mounted Krupp guns 
 on the earthworks that guard the inlets to the great rivers. 
 And within the past few years she has equipped a navy 
 which, with the single exception of that of Great Britain, 
 carries heavier and more effective ordnance than that of 
 any other nation in the world. And it is this nation pos 
 sessed at the present time of a population of upwards of 
 seven hundred millions, increasing at the rate of one per 
 cent, per annum, or one hundred and forty millions in 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. H* 
 
 twenty years it is this nation, hemmed in on all sides, 
 save that of the sea, and with a soil that has already 
 reached the limit of productiveness for its people, with whose 
 myriad swarms our own country is brought face to face. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 CHINESE IMMIGRATION SHOULD BE STOPPED AND THE CHI 
 NESE ELEMENT ELIMINATED FROM OUR POPULATION. 
 
 A PEOPLE of a type the least complex, and consequently 
 the most persistent, on the face of the globe ; having the 
 characteristics, indurated through the generations of five 
 thousand years, to which, in detail, reference has herein 
 been made ; possessed of the continually accumulating 
 power of a population equal at the least to two-fifths of the 
 total of the human race, increasing constantly and over 
 flowing its own regions in all directions, urged forward by 
 famine at home and lured by the promise of plenty away; 
 governed morally, socially, and politically by traditions 
 immutable almost as the law that governs the ebb and 
 flow of the tide, and in each and all at variance in kind 
 and purpose from that which the Caucasian holds highest 
 and best, such are the Chinese such is the race that, silent 
 and sinuous as the waters that crept through the reeds of 
 Kaifung ere they deluged the three thousand villages of 
 Ho-Nan, is seeking our shores. 
 
 Is it not time to protect ourselves against the influx of such 
 a people, the commercial enterprise of such a country, the 
 possible aggressions of such a power ? But in what way shall 
 the inflow be stopped and its reflux be secured ? Considered 
 with reference to the formalities and technicalities of diplo 
 macy, the subject is perhaps not free from complexity. Ex 
 amined with reference to expediency, to the broad equities 
 which, with nations as with individuals, should be of control 
 ling authority, the case grows comparatively clear. Sweep- 
 
MS THE CHINESE, 
 
 ing aside all sentimentality and all technicalities woven by 
 diplomacy, or rather by the lack of it, the most direct method 
 is the best. The amour propre of China may be conciliated 
 by treaties, and her friendly offices secured by a just and hon 
 orable abstention from interference with her internal affairs. 
 But, as we shall see, her best wishes and possible volition 
 are but partial factors in the question. Either with or 
 without her assistance Chinese immigration should be 
 stopped by all the power of the government, and the elimi 
 nation of the Chinese from our borders should be secured 
 with the least possible delay. And preliminary to these, 
 such legislation should be had as will either de facto or de 
 jure abrogate our existing treaty relations with China, so 
 far as they permit Chinese immigration or provide for the 
 retention of the Chinese already here. 
 
 Notwithstanding all argument to the contrary this would 
 involve no breach of international comity, and no exercise of 
 authority not lawful under the code of nations. Nor need 
 the remedy involve oppression to those whose exclusion 
 is essential to our national welfare. Laws the most severe 
 and rigorous in their object may be so framed as to prevent 
 evasion and yet temper their operation to a minimum of 
 hardship. The Chinaman is alien in all things to our people 
 and our institutions. The wealth that he gathers for how 
 ever moderate according to our standard, it is wealth to 
 him is garnered to be carried to China, not destined to add 
 to the accumulations of the land in which he temporarily 
 sojourns. And if he be sent back before his harvest is 
 completed he may still congratulate himself that he is richer 
 than if he had not visited this country at all. So much for 
 the effect on the individual. From the standpoint of 
 international polity, China can have no cause of complaint 
 if we, under an hundred-fold the provocation, follow the 
 example which, age after age, she set to the world. If 
 China was justified, as she most assuredly was, in excluding 
 foreigners lest her internal peace and prosperity should be 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 1 43 
 
 impaired by their craft or their energy, we are more than 
 justified in excluding her people from our borders now 
 that they, by their presence, do us harm greater than any 
 she had reason to fear for herself. Of all the nations of the 
 earth China is the last that can reasonably object to a 
 policy which would exclude her people from Caucasian 
 countries a policy which would tend to the same end as 
 her traditional one of keeping her people at home ; and 
 which would imitate her example in eliminating an objec 
 tionable element from a population characterized by the 
 necessities, and imbued with the ideas, of an entirely differ 
 ent civilization. 
 
 Theoretically, during the past eight years, the aspect of 
 the Chinese question has changed for the better. Prac 
 tically and in fact it has changed for the worse. On the 
 one hand the Government of China has formally acquiesced 
 in the principle of exclusion, and a possibly irritating in 
 gredient has been thus eliminated ; the necessity of exclu 
 sion has become so apparent that Federal laws have been 
 passed with the object of carrying that principle into effect, 
 and the question of Chinese immigration, instead of being 
 considered, as in many portions of the country it was but a 
 few years since, as a matter of merely local import to Cali 
 fornia, is rapidly becoming familiar as a living question, 
 important to all portions of the country and to every ele 
 ment of the State. On the other hand the treaties with 
 China have been so framed that, while keeping to the letter, 
 they elude the spirit of our requirements. The laws have 
 been evaded from the beginning, and judical interpretation 
 and executive performance have in many cases fallen far 
 short of fulfilling expectations founded on the acts of the 
 legislature. 
 
 The first act passed by Congress adverse to the influx of 
 the Chinese was in 1879, and was the slow result of a report 
 made several years before of a Congressional committee that 
 had visited the Pacific coast to investigate the effect of 
 
144 THE CHINESE, 
 
 Chinese cheap labor upon its industrial population. That 
 report had deprecated, in the most vigorous language, the 
 introduction and presence of the Chinese. It set forth 
 that Chinese immigration had " discouraged and retarded 
 white immigration to the Pacific States"; that the Chinese 
 " have no knowledge of or appreciation for our institutions "; 
 that they " have a quasi government among themselves in 
 dependent of our laws"; that the "apparent prosperity 
 derived from the presence of the Chinese is deceptive and 
 unwholesome, ruinous to our laboring classes, promotive of 
 caste and dangerous to our institutions "; and that " their 
 vices are corrupting to the morals of the city, especially of 
 the young." That report further set forth that the Chinese 
 immigrants " can subsist where the American would starve ; 
 they can work for wages which will not furnish the barest 
 necessities of life to an American." It set forth that they 
 made their way " by revolting characteristics and by dis 
 pensing with what had become necessities in modern civil 
 ization," and that as they " have no families to support or 
 educate they are able to compete with white labor in all 
 departments and exclude it from employment "; and that in 
 that year, 1876, the Chinese were increasing "more rapidly 
 than the other adult population of the State." The facts 
 thus disclosed were beyond cavil, and the conclusions to 
 be drawn therefrom were indisputable. In the face of these, 
 however, Rutherford B. Hayes, then President of the United 
 States, vetoed the bill, and Chinese immigration went on 
 without even the semblance of hindrance during two years 
 thereafter, or until the Act of 1881 ; the latter consequent 
 upon an ameliorating convention with China. As concerns 
 this convention, no objection can be reasonably made, for 
 the wiser method in diplomacy, as in all else, is that which 
 smoothes asperities and respects the point-of-honor inher 
 ent in the rights of governments as of men. Beyond this, 
 however, the treaty itself was of little or no value in retard 
 ing the influx of the Chinese. The act itself, while tending 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 
 
 to formulate public opinion, has been, as I have said, and as 
 will be considered further on, in great measure frustrated. 
 It was and is in fact an opiate rather than a remedy. It 
 has lulled public opinion to sleepy carelessness, while the 
 disorder has gone on all the more dangerously and insidi 
 ously because of the belief that a check had been applied. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 OUR TREATY RELATIONS WITH CHINA, THEIR LEGAL BEAR 
 ING AND EFFECT. RIGHT AND NECESSITY OF ABROGAT 
 ING OUR CONVENTIONS WITH THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 A REGARD for treaty obligations was stated by Mr. 
 Hayes as the reason for his veto of the bill. His language 
 pronounced the treaty with China to have the force of a 
 provision of the Constitution. Although the subsequent 
 convention with that country and the progress of public 
 opinion has measurably eliminated this idea from discussion, 
 it is one likely to recur at any time when new legislation 
 may be required. For this reason the alleged grounds for 
 the veto of the bill referred to may be here considered in 
 some detail as not only proper but necessary to a full con 
 sideration of the legal principles involved. The same para 
 graph of the Constitution which provides that treaties made 
 in accordance therewith shall be the supreme law of the land, 
 also declares that statutes made in accordance therewith 
 shall be the supreme law of the land. A law of Congress, 
 therefore, stands upon the same level and has the same 
 force as a treaty with a foreign power. From this it fol 
 lows that the latest manifestation of the legislative or 
 treaty-making power, as the case may be, must prevail over 
 any previous action of converse tenor, and a Federal stat 
 ute contrary to a provision of a treaty necessarily repeals 
 the treaty itself. This is sound law as well as common 
 sense. In order to secure a change in the Constitution, 
 
146 THE CHINESE, 
 
 the favorable action of Congress and the consent of three- 
 fourths of the legislatures of the States is required. When 
 such care was exercised to prevent the hasty change of any 
 of the provisions of the organic law, it cannot have been 
 the intent of its framers that a treaty, entered into by a 
 single plenipotentiary and ratified by the President and 
 Senate, should have a power binding as that of the Consti 
 tution itself, and be capable of disturbing our industrial, 
 social, and political equilibrium. To say that the Senate 
 and an envoy appointed by the President possess a power 
 greater than that of both houses of Congress and the 
 President together, is to reverse the principles and tradi 
 tions that have controlled the government and expressed 
 the will of the people from the beginning. That vigorous 
 action is necessary in our own defence is, I think, clear to any 
 one who will carefully investigate the facts and draw con 
 clusions from them with the same direct logic as is applied 
 to the ordinary concerns of life. And there is no ground 
 for doubt that this action, to be effective, should not be 
 delayed. 
 
 Our treaty with China, in all that permits the presence 
 of the Chinese within our borders, should be rescinded ; if 
 with the consent of China so much the better ; for such a 
 consent on her part could well-be met on ours by withdrawal 
 from the entangling alliances with foreign diplomacy at 
 Pekin which have made us so often the mere implements 
 of injustice and oppression in the furtherance of European 
 designs. But in the absence of cooperation from China, 
 the way to the same result lies open, clear and manifest, 
 upon the general principle that the exercise of inherent con 
 stitutional power through legislation alone may legally 
 transcend any implied or direct provisions of the treaty. 
 With nations as with men, self-preservation is the first law 
 of nature, and the primary duty of the sovereign power of 
 the state is the protection of its own people. 
 
 But this phase of the matter may not be dismissed with a 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 147 
 
 paragraph, and its close and minute examination should 
 not be forborne. The national conscience and the national 
 dignity demand that, in an international controversy, our 
 people should show as clear, a cause as would, in the case 
 of an individual, call for a favorable verdict in a court of 
 equity. What, then, are the legal and equitable conditions 
 involved in the remedy of the present and the prevention 
 of the impending evil ? What are the methods, under the 
 forms of law and according to precedents established as 
 just between nations, by which the policy of the govern 
 ment may be reversed and the immunity of our people from 
 Asiatic invasion be secured ? To answer this query, re 
 quires an investigation of the nature of treaties, and their 
 scope and limitations as concerns their binding force ; of 
 the course pursued by other nations in similar but less 
 momentous exigencies ; of the precepts of our own political 
 jurisprudence ; and of our treaty relations with China 
 since and including the first convention entered into, forty- 
 four years ago. In other words, we are now led to a con 
 sideration of the law of nations so far as it relates to the 
 matter before us. 
 
 A treaty is not, as pro-Chinese advocates apparently be 
 lieve, a contract changeless as the laws of the Medes and 
 Persians, and binding for all time, no matter what ruin it 
 may entail. It is an agreement entered into by two powers 
 for their mutual advantage ; and, like a contract between 
 man and man, depends for its permanence and validity upon 
 equity and good conscience. Although some treaties for 
 example, those relating to boundaries are in a manner 
 permanent, as they revive after war unless modified by 
 subsequent conventions, yet most, in the very nature of 
 things, are transitory. The conditions under which they 
 are made change or disappear, and what at first was equita 
 ble, or believed to be so, is proven by the lapse of time to 
 be productive of harm. Thus it is that while some treaties 
 have been in a degree enduring, and have established 
 
148 THE CHINESE, 
 
 certain principles of public comity, by far the greater 
 number have been modified from time to time, to bring 
 their provisions into closer concord with newly-developed 
 ideas of national safety or international justice. 
 
 This fact lies at the very foundation of the law of 
 nations ; without it, future generations might be chained 
 and mortgaged by their predecessors, and have no recourse. 
 Without it, a people might be ruined by the mistakes of 
 a vain diplomatist, the treason of a crafty ruler, or the 
 thoughtless outburst of a popular enthusiasm. It is not 
 to be permitted that the liberties, the prosperity, the evolu 
 tion, and development of nations should be arrested by 
 the iron weight of unchanging and unchangeable treaties 
 which, under verbal forms, might place the industries and 
 the social and political interests of a country in jeopardy, 
 as those of this country are jeopardized by China at the 
 present time. Hence, a treaty which tends to the irreme 
 diable injury of one of the contracting parties is absolutely 
 void ; it has no place in the law of nations. This is and 
 has been held by jurists since the code of nations was first 
 formulated, as the highest expression of human law. In 
 the words of Vattel, whose works, during a hundred and 
 thirty years, have been the guide of statesmen and diplo 
 matists : " A treaty pernicious to the state is null, and not 
 at all obligatory, as no conductor of a nation has the power 
 to enter into engagements to do such things as are capable 
 of destroying the state for whose sake the government is 
 intrusted to him." 
 
 And, further, not only may no treaty-making power 
 alienate the welfare of its people, but it is contrary to the 
 order of nature and the well-being of humanity, that a 
 nation should be held to conditions that tend to its over 
 throw. Says the same writer : " The nation itself being 
 necessarily obliged to perform everything required for its 
 preservation and safety, cannot enter into engagements 
 contrary to its indispensable obligation." In like manner 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 149 
 
 Wheaton, the American publicist, whose treatise has been 
 an authority for more than fifty years, and which, it may be 
 remarked, was translated into the Chinese language sixteen 
 years ago for the use of the Chancellerie, expressly holds 
 that " a total change of circumstances " renders a treaty 
 " no longer obligatory." And the venerable Dr. Woolsey, 
 whose volume is the text-book of American colleges, uses 
 on this head language stronger even than that of Vattel. 
 " A treaty," he says, " in which the treaty-making power 
 flagitiously sacrifices the interests of the nation which it 
 represents, has no binding force. In this case the 
 treacherous act of the government cannot be justly re 
 garded as the act of the nation, and the forms ought to 
 give way to the reality of things." 
 
 Let us consider the Burlingame treaty upon the prin-. 
 ciples elaborated by these masters of juridical learning, 
 and by the truths that spring from natural law as well as 
 from legal lore. That treaty in its direct outcome has con 
 vulsed the industries, disturbed the political condition, and 
 destroyed the social balance of one of the best portions of 
 our country. It has arrayed section against section, and 
 class against class. It tends to depress the laborer to vas 
 salage, and to elevate the great landholder to almost feudal 
 power, and threatens at no distant day to deliver one of 
 our fairest regions to the sway of the Mongolian, and to 
 bring to the eastern portion of our country the same em 
 bittered relations between capital and labor, employer and 
 employed, that have agitated the people of California and 
 barred the way of progress of their State. Even if that 
 treaty is otherwise binding, which it is not, and even if there 
 were no other objections to its validity, and there are many, 
 its pernicious results and its inherent folly should insure its 
 immediate and absolute abrogation. Its annihilation falls 
 clearly within the provision of the law of nations, and 
 would be more than justified by the primary law of self- 
 preservation, 
 
150 THE CHINESE, 
 
 Nor will we find precedents far or few. History is full 
 of them. Less in magnitude, it may be, but in ethics and 
 principle the same. Three hundred and eighty-two years 
 ago the States General of France compelled their king to 
 cancel a treaty " because that treaty was pernicious to the 
 kingdom." Less than four decades ago the same country, 
 under the Lamartine administration, after the flight of 
 Louis Philippe, made solemn declaration that "the treaties 
 of 1815 exist no longer in the eyes of the French Repub 
 lic." In 1850 Great Britain invoked war, the destroyer of 
 treaties, and blockaded the ports of Greece because, as was 
 alleged, the courts of that country "were in such a state 
 that justice could not be had " by one Pacifico, a British 
 subject whose dwelling had been sacked to the extent of 
 seven hundred and fifty dollars by an Athenian mob. And 
 this was done notwithstanding the rule of international law 
 under which Pacifico should have exhausted his remedy in 
 the Greek tribunals before appealing to the political branch 
 of his own government. The action of the United States 
 regarding the French treaties is hereinafter adverted to. 
 The course of Russia in annulling a restriction on her free 
 dom of action in Eastern Europe, laid upon her by treaty 
 stipulations with the western powers, is too recent to require 
 more than a passing mention. 
 
 As concerns the treatment of this question from a legal 
 standpoint by our own Government, we have to bear in 
 mind that it is presented in two aspects. First, the legal 
 right of Congress to repeal a treaty. Second, the moral 
 justification for such repeal. The former was indicated by 
 judicial dicta nearly a century ago. In the case of Ware v. 
 Hylton, before the Supreme Court of the United States, in 
 the year 1796, it was asserted by Justice Iredell that if 
 Congress should declare a treaty void, he should deem it 
 his duty to so consider it " and then forbear any share in 
 executing it as a judge." The question became, however, 
 the subject of more careful and determinate consideration 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 151 
 
 about thirty years ago, and the principles involved have 
 been elaborated by a series of juridical opinions and judicial 
 decisions extending nearly to the present date. It was 
 carefully entered into in 1851 by the then Attorney-General 
 with reference to the power of the Secretary of the Treasury 
 in the matter of certain Florida claims preferred under the 
 ninth article of the treaty between the United States and 
 Spain. 
 
 Regarding this it was fully conceded that an act of Con 
 gress, subsequent to the treaty, conflicted with the latter. 
 The opinion is careful and exhaustive, and its conclusions 
 were expressed in no uncertain terms. It set forth that 
 the only provision of the Constitution relating to the sub 
 ject, that is " This Constitution and the laws of the United 
 States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all 
 treaties made, or which shall be made under the authority 
 of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land." 
 After quoting this, the sole authority under which the Gov 
 ernment may conclude a treaty, the opinion continues : 
 " An act of Congress, then, is as much a supreme law of the 
 land as a treaty. They are placed on the same footing, 
 and no preference or superiority is given to the one over 
 the other. The last expression then of the law-giving 
 power must prevail, and just for the same reason, and on 
 the same principle that a subsequent act must prevail and 
 have effect though inconsistent with a prior treaty." 
 
 Further on in the same opinion the same jurist condenses 
 the controlling principles of constitutional and international 
 law bearing upon the question under consideration, in lan 
 guage so clear as to be worthy of extended quotation. He 
 says : " The supreme political and legislative power of this 
 country is placed in the hands of the Government of the 
 United States under the Constitution, and its acts are un 
 controllable except only by that Constitution ; and that 
 Constitution does not say that Congress shall pass no law 
 inconsistent with a treaty, and it would have been a strange 
 
IS 2 THE CHINESE, 
 
 anomaly if it had imposed any such prohibition. There 
 may be cases of treaties so injurious, or which may become 
 so by change of circumstances, that it may be the right and 
 duty of the government to renounce or disregard them. 
 Every government must judge and determine for itself 
 the proper occasion for the exercise of such a power ; and 
 such a power, I suppose, is impliedly reserved by every 
 party to a treaty, and I hope and believe belongs inalien 
 ably to the Government of the United States. It is true 
 that such a power may be abused so may the treaty-making 
 power, and all other powers but for our security against 
 such abuse we may and must rely on the integrity, wisdom, 
 and good faith of our government." From this opinion of 
 the law officer of the government, designed to aid the latter 
 in its relations with foreign powers, we may turn to the de 
 cisions of our courts in which the same problem has been 
 presented to their jurisdiction in matters of domestic con 
 cern. 
 
 In 1855 the question of the power of Congress to repeal 
 a treaty came before the United States Circuit Court for 
 the first circuit, in Taylor v. Morton, before Judge B. R. 
 Curtis, whose profound learning in the higher branches of 
 the law has long been the subject of legal encomium. 
 The action related to the collection of duties on the im 
 portation of Russian hemp, levied under an act of Congress 
 admitted to be in direct collision with the treaty concluded 
 with Russia in 1832. The question, so far as it relates to 
 the issue under consideration, was stated by the Court in 
 the following words : " That an act of Congress should 
 levy a duty upon imports which any existing commercial 
 treaty declares shall not be levied, so that the treaty is in 
 conflict with the act itself, shall the former or the latter 
 give the rule of decision in the judicial tribunals of the 
 United States in a case to which one rule or the other must 
 be applied ? " Through a chain of reasoning cogent and 
 convincing, but too closely woven throughout to admit of 
 
AA r D THE CHINESE QUESTION. 153 
 
 brief extract, the Court arrived at the conclusion that Con 
 gress has the power of repealing treaties. This decision 
 was reached not only from the terms of the Constitution 
 itself, but upon the further ground that any other interpre 
 tation would render the Government of the United States 
 unable to change or abrogate a treaty without the consent 
 of a foreign government. Said the learned and able judge : 
 " That the Constitution was designed to place our country 
 in this helpless condition is a supposition wholly inadmis 
 sible." Upon a still broader basis of reasoning he en 
 forced a primal principle of international law by declaring 
 that the power to refuse to execute a treaty " is a pre 
 rogative of which no nation can be deprived without deeply 
 affecting its independence," and expressed his clear and 
 profound conviction of this in the following words: " That 
 the people of the United States have deprived their gov 
 ernment of this power in any case I do not believe. That 
 it must reside somewhere and be applicable to all cases I 
 am convinced. I feel no doubt it belongs to Congress." 
 The Court found, moreover, a leading precedent dating back 
 as far as the year 1798, when Congress declared the treaties 
 with France no longer obligatory on the United States. 
 
 The same principle was affirmed by Judge Woodruff, in 
 Ropes v. Clinch, in the Circuit Court of the United States 
 for the Southern District of New York, in April, 1871. 
 Although the parties were different, the subject-matter was 
 substantially the same as that in Taylor v. Morton, the suit 
 having been brought against the Collector of the Port of 
 New York, to recover duties paid under a law in conflict 
 with our treaty of 1832 before referred to ; the duties 
 having been paid under protest. The sixth article of the 
 treaty declared in substance that no article, " the produce 
 or manufacture of Russia," should pay a higher duty than 
 a " like article produced or manufactured in any other 
 foreign country," whereas the act of Congress levied forty 
 
154 THE CHINESE, 
 
 dollars per ton on the hemp of Russia, and but twenty- 
 five dollars per ton on the hemp of India and Manilla. 
 
 Here was a direct conflict between the express terms of 
 a treaty and the specific language of an act of Congress of 
 later date. The language of the act was held by the Court 
 to be unequivocal, incapable of any interpretation that 
 would not place it in direct conflict with the treaty. The 
 Court said : " I understand it to be conceded, and if it be 
 not, I should be constrained to hold that the legislative de 
 partment in this government may pass any law it pleases 
 (if it is otherwise constitutional), notwithstanding it con 
 flicts, and notwithstanding whatever degree greater or less 
 it conflicts, with the existing treaty with a foreign nation." 
 
 In the same paragraph the Court declared that the 
 legislative department has power to " give to those laws 
 efficiency and force." The question had, however, come 
 before the Supreme Court of the United States, in the pre 
 vious year, in the Cherokee Tobacco Case, in which the 
 merits were as follows : 
 
 By the tenth article of a treaty entered into with the 
 tribe in 1866, it was agreed that " every Cherokee Indian 
 and freed person residing in the Cherokee nation shall have 
 the right to sell any products of his farm, including his or 
 her live-stock, or any merchandise or manufactured pro 
 ducts, and ship and drive the same to market without re 
 straint ; paying any tax thereon which is now or may be 
 levied by the United States on the quantity sold outside 
 of the Indian Territory." In 1868 Congress passed a law 
 for the collection of internal revenue, which imposed a tax 
 " on distilled spirits, fermented liquors, tobacco, snuff, and 
 cigars produced anywhere within the exterior boundaries 
 of the United States." It is therefore plain that while the 
 treaty guaranteed certain exemptions to the Cherokees, the 
 internal revenue law swept those exemptions away. In the 
 language of the decision of the Court, delivered by Mr. 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 155 
 
 Justice Swayne, " undoubtedly one or the other must yield; 
 the repugnance is clear, and they cannot stand together." 
 The determination of the matter was lucidly set forth in 
 the following terms : " The effects of treaties and acts of 
 Congress when in conflict is not settled by the Constitution. 
 But the question is not involved in any doubt as to its 
 proper solution ; a treaty may supersede a prior act of 
 Congress, and an act of Congress may supersede a prior 
 treaty. In the cases referred to (Foster et al. v. Neilson, and 
 Taylor v. Morton) these principles were applied to treaties 
 with foreign nations, treaties with Indian nations within 
 the jurisdiction of the United States, whatever consider 
 ations of humanity and good faith may be involved and 
 require their faithful observance, cannot be more obliga 
 tory ; and no higher sanctity and no greater inviolability or 
 immunity from legislative invasion can be claimed for them." 
 The text-writers, following the authorities, of course 
 enunciate the same principle. Story on the Constitution, 
 after an explanation of the force and obligations of treaties, 
 considered as laws, proceeds as follows : " This will not 
 prevent them from being cancelled or abrogated by the 
 nation upon grave and suitable occasions, for it will not be 
 disputed that they are subject to the legislative power, and 
 may be repealed, like other laws, at its pleasure." It is 
 thus manifest that the whole course of American juris 
 prudence, as conceived by jurists, and made authoritative 
 and binding by our highest courts, holds that a treaty may 
 be repealed by an act of Congress. The vested right of 
 the legislative branch of the government to take such 
 action as may seem requisite for the welfare of the people, 
 irrespective of contracts entered into with foreign nations 
 and here held to have the force of law, is therefore beyond 
 dispute. Such being the case, we are brought now to this 
 further consideration : What questions of public morality 
 are involved in the exercise of the legal attributes of 
 Congress in the premises ? 
 
156 THE CHINESE, 
 
 At this point we are to bear in mind another and a very 
 clear distinction which exists between a treaty considered. 
 ,as a law, and a treaty considered as a contract. As regards 
 the powers of the legislative branch of our government 
 the matter must be considered from the former aspect, for 
 this is enjoined by the express language of the Consti 
 tution. But as concerns the equities or moral obligations 
 of a treaty, as between nation and nation, it is to be looked 
 upon in a different light. The provision of the constitu 
 tion defines the status of a treaty within our own territory : 
 it does not establish its extra-territorial position. This last 
 depends upon the general principles of the law of nations, 
 and under this as defined by Chief Justice Marshall in 
 Foster 6 Elam v. Neilson, and by all the commentators 
 before and since "a treaty is in its nature a contract be 
 tween two nations." The legal power to rescind a con 
 tract being conceded, its sanctity and permanence should 
 depend upon its fairness. In other words, upon the 
 absence of those elements of deceit, error, or uncon 
 scionable hardship which would nullify an agreement be 
 tween individuals. For it can hardly be maintained that a 
 principle which would destroy a contract between man and 
 man should not be held to apply to one in which the wel 
 fare of sixty millions of people is involved. 
 
 Before proceeding to the broader consideration of this 
 phase of the matter, it may be well to remark that our courts 
 have carried this idea into effective decisions, as notably, 
 shown in the Cherokee Tobacco Case above referred to, which 
 was in part decided upon the fact that the treaty would 
 have protected illicit gain within the Cherokee territory and 
 interfered with the general welfare of the community. The 
 broad doctrine that an act of Congress may lawfully abro 
 gate the provisions of a treaty has been affirmed in later 
 decisions ; thus in the " Head-money " cases, in the United 
 States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York, 
 in September, 1883, the Court said: " The act of Congress, if 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. i7 
 
 .in conflict with the prior treaties, supersedes them." It is 
 also recognized in the broad statements of doctrine which I 
 have quoted from Vattel, Wheaton, and others, as to the 
 lack of inherent power in any country to lawfully injure 
 itself by the unwise use of the treaty-making power. As I 
 have already referred to the injury wrought to American 
 industries and institutions by the inflow of Chinese under 
 the provisions of the existing treaty, it is hardly necessary 
 to further insist that this alone should be held a sufficient 
 reason why the lawful authority of Congress should be ex 
 ercised with a view to its prevention. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 THE CHINESE, THE FAVORED NATION CLAUSE, AND THE 
 FEDERAL COURTS. 
 
 THE necessity for a repeal of the treaties with China so 
 far as they confer any right or privilege of residence in or 
 immigration to this country is further shown by the inter 
 pretations given it by our courts, and the results derivable 
 therefrom. The starting point of these was the favored 
 nation clause Article VI of the Burlingame treaty, 
 " which provides that citizens and subjects of the two na 
 tions shall respectively enjoy the same privileges, immunities 
 or exceptions in respect to travel or residence within the 
 country of the other as may there be enjoyed by the most 
 favored nation." This, it is to be noted, by no means con 
 fers the same rights on Americans in China as are conferred 
 by it upon Chinese in the United States. With our close 
 commercial relations with Europe and near kin to her peo 
 ples, the permission to travel or locate within our borders 
 is, almost as a matter of necessity, a principle of our 
 national policy. With China the conditions are, and for cen 
 turies have been, entirely the reverse. Alien to the Caucasian 
 and jealous of his approaches, China hinders his travel and 
 
158 THE CHINESE, 
 
 discourages his settlement in her regions; and the nation 
 most favored by China has no privileges commensurate 
 with those afforded to all foreigners in the United States. 
 The proviso of the treaty which looks so fair upon its face, 
 and which in treaties between Caucasian nations is based 
 upon justice and sound policy, became a wanton concession, 
 given utterly without consideration, when embodied in the 
 convention with China. 
 
 It is upon the favored nation clause of the treaty that, as 
 I have indicated, the lines of precedent in re the status of 
 the Chinese in this country have been constructed. The 
 constitution and laws of the Pacific States from the beginning 
 of their history as members of the Federal Union have been 
 framed and directed to reduce or prevent the evils resulting 
 from the presence of the Chinese, and to a substantially 
 equal degree their operation has been frustrated by the 
 .decisions of the Federal courts. 
 
 The constitution of Oregon was adopted in 1857, pre 
 paratory to admission to the Union. The State was ad 
 mitted in 1859 and the constitution went into effect in pur 
 suance thereof on February 14, 1859. That constitution, 
 section 8 of Article XVI., comprised the following : 
 
 " No Chinaman not a resident of this State at the time 
 of the adoption of this constitution shall ever hold any real 
 estate or mining claim, or work any mining claim thereon. 
 The legislative assembly shall provide by law in the most- 
 effective manner for carrying out the above provision." 
 
 At that time, thirty years ago, but few Chinese had ven 
 tured as far north as Oregon ; their number was few and 
 far between, but the menace of their presence was mani 
 fest from the results of their influx to California even 
 then. The constitutional provision was followed by appro 
 priate legislation, which authorized miners meetings to 
 make local regulations. In pursuance of this the miners of 
 a district situate in Jackson County established rules which, 
 among other things, declared that " no Mongolian or alien 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 159 
 
 who has not declared his intention to become a citizen of 
 the United States shall hold or work any claim," and also 
 provided that any claim be forfeited, if any Mongolian or 
 Chinaman were employed thereon beyond a certain limited 
 length of time. The Federal statute was to the effect that 
 the mining lands were open to occupation and purchase by 
 citizens of the United States and those who had declared 
 their intention to become citizens ; the statute thus by 
 implication excluded all who did not belong to one or the 
 other of these two classes. 
 
 In pursuance of the law, the complainant Chapman and 
 four others located claims together and fulfilled the condi 
 tions required. They then brought suit for trespass and for 
 relief against the defendant Toy Long and four others upon 
 the ground of title legally acquired by them, under the law of 
 the State, and the prohibition of alien miners by the Federal 
 statute. The Court, basing its opinion upon the act of 
 Congress, felt compelled to decide in favor of the complain 
 ants, but anent the law and constitution of the State its 
 opinion was so flavored with adverse suggestion that it 
 deserves attention here. After quoting the favored nation 
 clause the judge used the language following : 
 
 " The right to reside in the country with the same privi 
 leges as the subjects of Great Britain or France, implies 
 the right to follow any lawful calling or pursuit which is 
 open to the subjects of these powers. Therefore, the pro 
 visions in the mining regulation of Poorman Creek, which, 
 in effect, forbid Chinamen from working in a mining claim 
 for themselves or others, as well as the clause of the State 
 constitution, supra, to the same effect, seem to be in direct 
 conflict with this article of the treaty, and, if so, are there 
 fore void." 
 
 Let us analyze this dictum. Let us see what it means ; 
 read and re-read it. It amounts to no less than a judi 
 cial assertion that a treaty may nullify the organic law 
 of a sovereign State, and annihilate a proviso of the 
 
160 THE CHINESE, 
 
 charter under which the State was admitted into the 
 Union. 
 
 The next case bearing on the point under consideration 
 was In re Parrat, tried in the Circuit Court of the District of 
 California. The character of the opinion is best explained 
 in the language of the syllabus, which is in these words : "Any 
 provision of the constitution or laws of California in con 
 flict with the treaty are void." It further says of a treaty 
 that " the judges of any State, both State and national, are 
 bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any 
 State to the contrary notwithstanding." The suit grew out 
 of the provision in the constitution of California inhibiting 
 the employment of Chinese by corporations created under 
 and by virtue of the laws of the State. Sifted to its ultimate 
 meaning this decision leads to but one conclusion, that 
 under the treaty-making power as expounded by the United 
 States Circuit Court for the District of California, the Presi 
 dent and Senate can nullify the constitution and laws of 
 any State, and inhibit the free exercise of its legislative 
 powers in matters exclusively within its domestic concerns. 
 
 The same idea was further and more aggressively formu 
 lated in Baker v. The City of Portland, in 1879. The State of 
 Oregon, through its Legislature, in due form enacted that no 
 Chinese laborers should be employed on the improvements 
 and public works of the State. The Federal Court declared 
 that the act interfered with the treaty with China and was 
 therefore void ! in other words, held that the President, the 
 Senate, and a foreign nation together can restrain a State 
 from doing, in its sovereign capacity, and in its domestic 
 affairs, what any individual has the undisputed legal right 
 to do, viz., employ whom it pleases in the performance of 
 his own work. 
 
 Upon the averments of those opinions no boundary is 
 laid to the exercise of that power. They aver broadly that 
 " the treaty-making power has been surrendered by the 
 States to the National Government, and vested in the Presi- 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 161 
 
 dent and the Senate." Not a word to imply any constitu 
 tional limitation to its exercise. Nor upon the lines of 
 reasoning adopted by the Court does any limitation seem 
 possible. If the favored nation clause in a treaty with a 
 foreign power can, as asserted in Toy Long s case, abro 
 gate any prior existing constitution of a State, and if, as in 
 Parrat s, it can destroy the control of a State over corpora 
 tions of its own creation, and if, as in the City of Portland 
 case, the State itself is powerless to declare whom it will 
 or will not employ on its public works, neither logic nor 
 imagination can fix the limit to which it cannot go. 
 
 Another line of decisions implies that Congress, acting 
 adjunctive to the treaty-making power, may extend to the 
 alien Chinese a protection which the constitution renders 
 it impotent to extend to American citizens. The scope 
 of the fourteenth amendment has been, as is well known, 
 restricted to the action of the States in their sovereign 
 capacity, and protects the citizen, not against ag 
 gression from the people of the State, but only against 
 the effect of adverse legislation ; and it was for this reason 
 that in U. S. v. Harris, the Supreme Court held Section 
 5519 of the Revised Statutes to be unconstitutional. 
 This section, too long for quotation here, related to conspir 
 acies of two or more persons " for the purpose of depriving, 
 either directly or indirectly, any person or persons of the 
 equal protection of the laws, or equal privileges or immu 
 nities under the laws." One Baldwin was held in the Cir 
 cuit Court for the District of California on a charge of 
 conspiring with others to deprive certain Chinese " of the 
 equal protection of the laws guaranteed to them under our 
 treaty with China." The cause came on for hearing upon 
 habeas corpus proceedings, and notwithstanding that the 
 statute had been held void by the Supreme Court in a case 
 where its benefit was claimed by a citizen, the Court held 
 that it was valid with reference to an alien Chinaman. 
 This cause went up to the Supreme Court and this decision 
 
102 THE CHINESE, 
 
 was reversed. But the overruling decision went only to 
 the extent of holding that the section of the statute void 
 as to citizens could not be held valid as to an alien, and 
 was qualified by the words " that the United States have 
 power under the Constitution to provide for the punishment 
 of those who are guilty of depriving Chinese subjects of 
 any of the rights, privileges, immunities, or exemptions 
 guaranteed them by this treaty we do not doubt." 
 
 It is but fair to say, however, that this expression of 
 opinion was not necessary to the determination of the 
 question before the Court, and as obiter may be disregarded 
 in the determination of a case in future in which the point 
 may be directly involved. But it is clear that, if followed, 
 it will affirm the right of the Federal Government to do 
 for an alien Chinese what it is inhibited by the Constitution 
 from doing for one of our own citizens. Such is the result, 
 legally speaking, of our treaties with China upon the 
 jurisprudence and the rights of our people. When treaty 
 relations with a foreign power not only work injury to our 
 industries and to the welfare of our producing classes, but 
 place the alien in a position superior to the organic laws 
 of our States, and entitle him to a protection unknown 
 and forbidden to citizens of the United States, it is time 
 those relations came to an end. 
 
 In view of the broad and far-reaching import of the 
 decisions to which I have in brief above referred, it is 
 hardly worth the while to consider in detail those of minor 
 or merely local importance. Yet they may be briefly men 
 tioned as further illustrating the general trend and tendency 
 of Federal decisions on the Pacific coast with reference to 
 the Chinese. In the case of Lee Tong, the city of Portland, 
 Oregon, passed an ordinance in pursuance of an act of the 
 State Legislature authorizing it to suppress gambling. 
 The ordinance provided that any person carrying on or 
 engaging in any game of faro, monte, poker, or other 
 enumerated games, including fan-tan, should be punished 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 163 
 
 by fine or imprisonment or both. Upon a strictly technical 
 ruling the Court, on a writ of habeas corpus, discharged the 
 accused. In the case of Ah Jow, about two years since, 
 an ordinance of Modesto, California, made it a misde 
 meanor for any person to keep or maintain any place where 
 opium or its preparations was sold or given away, and also 
 classed as a misdemeanant any person resorting to, fre 
 quenting, or visiting such a place, except in the case of 
 druggists selling the drug for any ailment not caused by 
 the use of opium, the object being, of course, to close the 
 opium dens of the city. Upon a line of reasoning which 
 I have neither the space nor patience to consider, the Court 
 held that the imprisonment of the Chinese offender violated 
 " the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Consti 
 tution by restraining one of his liberty without due process 
 of law." In Ah Kon v. Nunan, an ordinance of the city and 
 county of San Francisco declared that " every male person 
 imprisoned in the county jail " should have his hair clipped 
 to a uniform length of one inch. The regulation made 
 no distinction between the Chinaman and the white, but the 
 Court assumed in substance to take judicial notice that the 
 act bore with especial severity upon the Chinese, and con 
 sequently declared it void. Another decision, of serious 
 import in the event of any considerable natural increase of 
 the Chinese in this country, is that in the case of Look 
 Tin Sing, decided less than four years ago, in which it was 
 held that the children of Chinese born in this country are 
 citizens de facto, and that it is beyond the power of Con 
 gress to exclude them from the country. It may be here 
 remarked that no legislature has ever extended the rights of 
 citizenship to the Chinese, and as citizenship can only be- 
 extended to an alien by a law enacted for that purpose, 
 the absence of such legislation is the ground upon which, 
 as in the case of Ah Yup, decided about ten years ago in 
 the Circuit Court for the District of California, alien 
 Chinese are held to be inhibited from naturalization. It 
 
1 64 THE CHINESE, 
 
 has further been held, this time by a Federal judge in 
 Massachusetts, that the act of Congress was dependent 
 upon the treaty, and that as the treaty was made with 
 China the act could not be applied to a Chinaman alleged 
 to have been born in Hong-Kong. Of course, within the 
 space afforded by these pages I have been able only to 
 outline the judicial opinions referred to ; the curious may 
 readily consult them in extenso in volumes of Federal 
 judicial opinions. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 HEED SHOULD BE GIVEN TO PUBLIC OPINION OF THE 
 PACIFIC COAST ADVERSE TO THE PRESENCE OF THE 
 CHINESE. 
 
 IT is not to be assumed that the people of the Pacific 
 coast are so unwise as to have appealed for thirty years 
 against Chinese immigration without good reason for so 
 doing. As we have seen, the constitutions of the States of 
 Oregon and California, and legislation made in pursuance 
 of those constitutions, have aimed directly at suppressing 
 the Chinese as a disturbing element in those great common 
 wealths : and we have also seen how, through judicial inter 
 pretation, those States have been bound hand and foot, 
 their constitutions in such regard held to be nugatory, and 
 their state and municipal legislation declared to be so much 
 waste paper. For more than a quarter of a century the 
 world has witnessed the strange spectacle of one portion of 
 a country held in virtual subjection to an alien and antago 
 nistic race through the agency of the judiciary and the 
 treaty-making power. The result of this has been the 
 creation of an intense feeling among its citizens which, 
 though it may be stifled and crushed so far as any overt 
 action is concerned, is none the less an evidence of the en 
 durance of a persistent wrong. That our treaties with 
 China and the various laws directed against Chinese immi- 
 
AND 7WE CHINESE QUESTION. 165 
 
 gration are to all practical intents and purposes a mere 
 sham and delusion so far as effectuating their object is 
 concerned, is illustrated by declarations like the following, 
 which I quote from the telegraphic news of the New York 
 Tribune, of July 8 of the current year : 
 
 " Six hundred and sixty-four Chinese arrived this week 
 on a steamer from Hong-Kong, of whom one-half have no 
 certificates, but depend upon the Federal courts to land 
 them on habeas corpus writs. This business of getting 
 into the country on a plea of prior residence is increasing. 
 Judges and court officers are willing to aid coolies, as each 
 writ means a fat fee for them." 
 
 The bitterness indicated by this paragraph is common 
 throughout the Pacific coast, and the fact that of more than 
 six hundred immigrants on a single vessel, one-half had 
 ventured to take the voyage to California without the certifi 
 cates required by law, demonstrates that there must have 
 been solid grounds for their confidence. For it is not con 
 ceivable that after the requirements of the law have been so 
 long and so thoroughly well known to the steamship officials 
 and to officials at the point of departure, more than three 
 hundred Chinese would-be immigrants would venture forth 
 except upon substantial assurance that the need of the cer 
 tificates would in some way be evaded. Of course, as con 
 cerns the concluding line of the quoted paragraph, it is to be 
 said that Federal judges under the law receive no fees what 
 soever, but are paid by stated salaries. But that such an 
 averment should be made at all illustrates the intensity of 
 the sentiment evoked among the population most directly 
 affected by the presence of the Chinese, and by the course 
 of judicial action thereon. 
 
 This bitterness, however, a month after the publication of 
 the paragraph I have cited, was indicated by more pointed 
 evidence of public opinion on the Pacific Coast. It may 
 be remarked here that in 1884 Judge Sawyer made a de 
 cision which recognized parole evidence in place of the 
 
1 66 THE CHINESE. 
 
 certificate contemplated by the statute in the case of re 
 turning Chinamen. The more forcible voicing of public 
 opinion to which I have just alluded is found in the 
 memorial introduced in the House of Representatives on 
 August 6 ult., which calls loudly for the impeachment of 
 the United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit, 
 and of the United States District Judge for the District of 
 Nevada. It charges that since the Act of 1884 nine thous 
 and Chinamen have been landed in San Francisco through 
 the process of habeas corpus; that each coolie so landed 
 brings a fee of twenty dollars ; that the Circuit Court "is 
 the conduit through which this Asiatic filth flows"; that 
 statute law has not "been able to to withstand the hostile 
 and destructive assault of the Federal judges" of the 
 Coast; and that their course has been "an abuse of judi 
 cial power unparalleled since the days of Jeffries"; fur 
 ther, that at least four thousand Chinamen, without the 
 certificates required by law, have been turned loose on 
 bail, and that any of these may obtain his discharge by a 
 false oath and the payment of the required fee. With 
 regard to the restriction laws, the memorialists say : 
 " In the attempt to carry out these laws the customs offi 
 cials have been thwarted at every step by the mandates of 
 the Federal courts. By the abuse of the right of habeas 
 corpus the administration of the act has been taken from 
 the hands of the Collector of Customs and usurped by the 
 courts. The examination of Chinese on board ship, by 
 the customs authorities, provided for in your act which 
 was the greatest safeguard against the landing of coolies 
 has been vetoed by the Federal courts, although it was 
 approved by the President. So determined have been the 
 judges to defeat the plan and only purpose of the law that 
 they have gone the length of threatening with imprison 
 ment the customs officials who have sought to perform the 
 sworn duty imposed upon them by the Congress of the 
 United States." 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 167 
 
 The fact that at the time of this present writing there are 
 some four thousand habeas corpus cases of incoming China 
 men, without proper vouchers, pending in the U. S. Cir 
 cuit Court for the District of California, is eloquent of the 
 extent to which the evasion or defiance of the spirit and in 
 tent of the law is carried on. Aside from the direct impor 
 tation of Chinese to San Francisco, and their spread west 
 ward through American country, their influx into the Brit 
 ish possessions is practically unlimited, and from these they 
 find easy access to the United States. During the past 
 and present year large numbers have made their way across 
 the continent by the Canadian Railway, and have then 
 entered this country upon certificates real or alleged. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 ANALYSIS OF THE BURLINGAME TREATY. 
 
 WE may now pass to another portion of the subject, that 
 relating to the origin and effects of the Burlingame treaty. 
 In doing this we necessarily revert to our early diplomatic 
 relations with China, the latter designated in the treaties as 
 the Ta-Tsing Empire. 
 
 In 1843, at an expense of forty thousand dollars, Caleb 
 Gushing was sent as Envoy Extraordinary, etc., " to estab 
 lish the future commercial relations between the United 
 States and the Chinese Empire on terms of national equal 
 reciprocity." A treaty was concluded in the following year 
 and ratified by the Senate early in 1845. Within seven 
 years from that date the influx of Chinese into California 
 had alarmed the inhabitants and led to protests which were 
 disregarded by public opinion east of the Rocky Moun 
 tains, and treated with contempt by the government. In 
 1858, an American commissioner was sent to cooperate 
 with the envoys of other foreign countries in the accom 
 plishment of the objects sought by the selfish and 
 
1 68 THE CHINESE, 
 
 aggressive diplomacy of Europe. This was but a contin 
 uation of our national subserviency to the interests of 
 Great Britain, France, and other European countries who 
 were seeking to establish themselves in Chinese waters 
 for the purpose of controlling Chinese trade. This 
 resulted in a second or additional convention, ostensibly 
 for the regulation of commerce. Although these two 
 treaties in many respects bore in favor of the Chinese and 
 against the Americans, their defects were rather negative 
 than positive. There was nothing in them that divested 
 the United States of the right to control immigration to 
 its own territories, or to restrict or regulate the privileges 
 of such Chinese as might come to our shores. 
 
 It was left for an American citizen to resign the proud 
 position of an American plenipotentiary, and to accept in its 
 place the paying patronage of the Chinese Emperor ; and 
 through this to fasten upon his country obligations that in 
 every line were a betrayal of her interests and a thrust at her 
 permanent prosperity. In 1861 Anson Burlingame was sent 
 to China as the Envoy of the United States. In 1867 he 
 left the service of his own country, and returned as the head 
 of a Chinese commission ; his associates being two native 
 Mongol statesmen, whose inferior station and astute humil 
 ity provided a delicate foil to the ostentatious vanity and 
 empty assumption of the tinsel ambassador. While the 
 nominal chief of this Chinese embassy was overflowing with, 
 and overflowed by, turgid streams of sentiment, his asso 
 ciates, the sedate Celestials, were quietly engaged in framing 
 a treaty which, in sum and substance, was a series of abject 
 concessions to China. In no wise was it an advantage to 
 the United States. We cannot reasonably objurgate the 
 Chinese envoys for doing their utmost for their own peo 
 ple, and we may even admire their sagacity in making use 
 of an American implement in compassing their designs. 
 It was their duty to secure the greatest possible benefit to 
 their own government and to its subjects, and they would 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 169 
 
 have less deserved our esteem as patriotic men and skilful 
 statesmen had their efforts been less than they were. But 
 it is hardly possible to speak with respect of the mock man 
 darin, their associate and instrument, or of his aiders and 
 abettors here. Every paragraph of what is known as the 
 Burlingame treaty is either a useless or mischievous conces 
 sion, or a formal recital of some mere platitude. 
 
 Section i binds the United States not to attack <l the citi 
 zens or subjects of any foreign power, or their property, 
 with which they may be at war," on any of the tracts of lands 
 or water of the empire, which China had conceded to the 
 citizens of foreign powers, and the same section also pro 
 vides in substance that the Chinese authorities shall not be 
 divested of jurisdiction over the persons and properties of 
 citizens of the United States, in any tract of land conceded 
 to the latter, except in the special treaty ports. Article II. 
 provides that " any privilege or immunity in respect of trade 
 or navigation within the Chinese dominions which may not 
 have been stipulated for by treaty, shall be subject to the 
 discretion of the Chinese Government, and may be regulated 
 by it accordingly." Section 3 enacts that consuls ap 
 pointed by the Emperor of China shall enjoy the same privi 
 leges and immunities in the ports of the United States as 
 those enjoyed by the consuls of Great Britain and Russia. 
 Section 4 concedes to the Chinese the previously disputed 
 point, that places of sepulture must be held free from dis 
 turbance or profanation, and also provides for liberty of 
 conscience in either country. This latter article, taken in 
 connection with the rest of the treaty, means that an 
 American may enjoy liberty of conscience in the treaty 
 ports of China and the Chinese shall enjoy the same liberty 
 throughout the whole extent of the United States ; but as 
 this is guaranteed in any case by our Constitution, and as 
 the liberty existed in the treaty ports without the aforesaid 
 article, the latter is simply an empty paragraph. Article 
 V., in express terms, " cordially recognizes the inherent and 
 
17 THE CHINESE. 
 
 inalienable right of man to change his home and allegiance, 
 and also the mutual advantage of the free migration and 
 emigration of their citizens and subjects respectively from 
 the one country to the other for purposes of curiosity, of 
 trade, or as permanent residents." The advantage of which 
 provision, in the nature of things, inures solely to the 
 Chinese, for the reason that where one American emigrates 
 to China, five hundred Chinese immigrate to the United 
 States. 
 
 The same article contains a proviso that certain laws shall 
 be passed concerning the forced emigration of coolies, and 
 of this I shall have occasion to speak hereafter. Article VI 
 is that under which Chinese immigration was protected 
 until that article was modified by subsequent conven 
 tions, and from its importance I quote it at length. 
 It is as follows : " Citizens of the United States visiting or 
 residing in China shall enjoy the same privileges, immunities, 
 or exemptions in respect to travel or residence as may there 
 be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored 
 nation; and reciprocally, Chinese subjects visiting or residing 
 in the United States shall enjoy the same privileges, immu- 
 nities, and exemptions in respect to travel or residence as 
 may there be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most 
 favored nation. But nothing herein contained shall be held 
 to confer naturalization upon the citizens of the United 
 States in China, nor upon the citizens of China in the United 
 States." The effect of this is plain when we reflect that 
 China grants to the most favored nation simply the right to 
 reside and trade in certain specified localities, seven in 
 number, while the United States grants to its most favored 
 nation the right of access for travel, trade, or permanent 
 residence in any part of our country without restriction. 
 Article VII. provides for reciprocity in the matter of schools; 
 American citizens to be at liberty to enjoy the privileges of 
 the public educational institutions under the control of the 
 government of China, and Chinese citizens to be at liberty 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 171 
 
 to enjoy the like privileges in the United States. By this 
 article also, " citizens of the United States may freely 
 establish and maintain schools within the Empire of China 
 at those places where foreigners are by treaty permitted to 
 reside." In return for this it is provided that " Chinese 
 subjects may enjoy the same privileges and immunities in 
 the United States." In other words, in the seventh article 
 as in the sixth, the dozen treaty ports, more or less, of 
 China, are set off against the whole extent of the United 
 States. 
 
 As Article VI. was a triumph in behalf of the Chinese 
 people as relates to this country, so Article VIII. was a 
 triumph for them at home. This article was a clear and 
 formal waiver on our part of the claims which our envoys, 
 both before and since, have made to interfere in the internal 
 affairs of the empire. For although this was right and 
 proper in itself, it was none the less an evidence of weakness, 
 as contradicting our own pretensions, and of undue 
 solicitude for the welfare of.China while neglecting our own. 
 In the exact words of the treaty, " the United States do 
 hereby freely disclaim and disavow any intention or right 
 to intervene in the domestic administration of China in 
 regard to the construction of railroads, telegraphs, or other 
 material internal improvements." To render this still more 
 potent and definite, His Majesty the Emperor of China 
 " reserves to himself the right to decide the time and 
 manner and circumstances of introducing such improve 
 ments within his dominions," but the genuflections of our 
 government went still lower, for, to again quote from the 
 treaty, it was " agreed by the contracting parties that if at 
 any time hereafter His Imperial Majesty shall determine to 
 construct or cause to be constructed works of the character 
 mentioned, within the empire, and shall make application 
 to the United States, or any other western power, for 
 facilities to carry out that policy, the United States will in 
 that case designate and authorize suitable engineers to be 
 
172 THE CHINESE, 
 
 employed by the Chinese Government, and will recommend 
 to other nations an equal compliance with such application." 
 By this we are bound to supply on demand teachers in 
 engineering to the Chinese Government, and are also 
 obligated to become their humble advocates in urging their 
 requests upon the cabinets of Europe. 
 
 In these seven articles is comprised the whole of the 
 Burlingame treaty. It is composed of these seven articles 
 and no more. Not one of these articles has ever brought, 
 or is capable of ever bringing, any advantage to this 
 country in return for the concessions to China. Yet it was 
 this treaty which was ratified by our government and hailed 
 by a large portion of our people with an affluence of delight 
 as inaugurating a new era of peace and good-will to men. 
 Never was human folly more thoroughly exemplified, and 
 never has it been punished more speedily or with greater 
 bitterness. It is twenty years since the ratification of the 
 Burlingame treaty, and to-day on our Pacific coast the 
 Mongol is stronger than we, and in the eastern portion of 
 our country his advent adds a new element to the intricate 
 problems of our restless society and lays a new burden on 
 the already overweighted shoulders of the producing 
 classes. That an international contract, in which the advan 
 tages are all on one side and all the disadvantages on the 
 other in which no equivalent is rendered for benefits 
 offered or inconveniences endured can be morally or equi 
 tably binding, is a proposition absurd upon its face. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 CHINA HAS HERSELF FAILED TO FULFIL ITS CONDITIONS, 
 AND THE TREATY, ON ACCEPTED PRINCIPLES, IS VOID 
 ABLE THEREBY. 
 
 THERE is, moreover, another solution of the question of 
 right, which should satisfy even those who, deeming equity 
 insufficient and expediency a thing of evil growth, contend 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. i?3 
 
 for legal forms as the embodiment of justice. It is an 
 axiom of all law that where a contract is broken by one of 
 the parties thereto it cannot be held to be obligatory on 
 the other. Grotius authoritatively declares that " every 
 article of a treaty carries with it a condition, by the non- 
 performance of which the treaty is wholly cancelled," and 
 Vattel enforces the same idea in the following words. " The 
 party who is offended or injured in those particulars which 
 constitute the basis of the treaty is at liberty to choose the 
 alternative of either compelling a faithless ally to fulfil his 
 engagements or of declaring the treaty dissolved by his 
 violation of it." The principle indeed cannot be contro 
 verted, for were it otherwise one party flagrantly violating 
 an international compact could still compel another to fulfil 
 pledges given in consideration of the very pledges flagi 
 tiously broken. 
 
 This is precisely the condition of affairs with reference 
 to the Burlingame treaty. Under the fifth article the con 
 tracting powers agreed to pass laws making it a penal 
 offence for a " citizen of the United States to take Chinese 
 subjects either to the United States or to any other foreign 
 country, or for a Chinese subject or citizen of the United 
 States to take citizens of the United States to China or to 
 any other foreign country, without their free and voluntary 
 consent respectively." The United States has kept its 
 part of this compact by sections 2158 to 2164 inclusive of 
 the Revised Statutes, the provisions of which are positive 
 in their terms and almost extreme in their penalties. China, 
 however, has utterly neglected to make such a law or to 
 take any effective steps to prevent emigration, under 
 duress, of her subjects. 
 
 It has been already shown that in California the China 
 men are held under the despotic control of the Six Com 
 panies, and it is beyond dispute that the companies obtain 
 their immigrants through a process of sale which amounts 
 to nothing more or less than an infraction of the treaty. 
 
i?4 THE CHINESE, 
 
 With characteristic cunning and far-sightedness the Chinese 
 place the barracoons of coolies within the territories allotted 
 to foreigners. They were at one time located in Hong- 
 Kong, which is under British control ; but when the out 
 rage became too manifest they were removed to the Portu 
 guese territory of Macao. To prove in any individual 
 instance that a Chinaman passed from the Chinese popula 
 tion of Canton to the Chinese population of Hong-Kong or 
 Macao, is, of course, practically impossible, although the 
 fact that such is the case with the thousands thus trans 
 ferred is demonstrated by the very existence of the barra 
 coons. Further, although the passage of Chinese subjects 
 to territories controlled by Europeans is a matter with 
 which the United States can have no legal concern, and in 
 which by international law it is prevented from interfering, 
 the obligation assumed by China is not qualified by any 
 exception, and so far as her own action is concerned is as 
 obligatory as if Hong-Kong and Macao did not exist. The 
 fact that the Chinese Government has not thought proper 
 to contribute even the empty form of an edict to the observ 
 ance of the treaty is a practical repudiation of its pro 
 visions. Renounced by China that treaty is not binding 
 upon the United States. Thus the strictest interpretation 
 of law, as does all else, makes manifest the right of our 
 government to avoid in its turn the disregarded compact. 
 The duty, also, is clear, for except through Congressional 
 action there is no remedy. The Burlingame treaty, in fact 
 and substance, is an estoppel upon the full and free 
 administration of our municipal affairs. It is true that 
 China has rendered the treaty void ; true that its existence 
 is a continual injury to this country. But without a 
 declaration on the part of the political branch of the 
 government, the States in their sovereign capacity find 
 themselves powerless ; and the Federal courts, in consider 
 ing the treaty as a law, take no cognizance of the truth 
 however manifest. Thus the action of State governments 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 175" 
 
 has been repeatedly made impotent and useless by Federal 
 decisions founded upon a treaty nullified by non-perform 
 ance on the part of the very power in behalf of whose 
 subjects it has been invoked. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 INCEPTION OF THE BURLINGAME TREATY J ITS RATIFICA 
 TION AND ATTENDANT CIRCUMSTANCES. 
 
 THAT the Burlingame Treaty was " conceived in sin and 
 brought forth in iniquity " is apparent when we consider 
 the manner, and the attendant circumstances, of its pro 
 duction. Concerning these, while much data is available, 
 much also is hidden in an obscurity which may never be 
 dispelled. At the time that the proceedings were the sub 
 ject of the most grandiloquent phrases their details were 
 kept in the background, and the superabundance of gush 
 hid the sordid mechanism of cupidity and intrigue behind 
 it. There is sufficient, however, in affairs of record to 
 clearly illuminate the subject though it be in part only by 
 necessary implication. 
 
 So far as concerns the published record it opens with 
 Burlingame s written resignation of his office as envoy, etc., 
 of the United States near the Emperor of China. It is 
 couched in the bombastic terms of a dime novel, is dated 
 Pekin, November 21, 1867, is addressed to the Secretary of 
 State, at Washington, and is as follows : 
 
 " SIR : In the interest of my country and civilization, 
 I do hereby resign my commission as Envoy Extraordinary 
 and Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States to 
 China." 
 
 On the day that was written, with, so far as appears, no ac 
 ceptance of his resignation, he turned over the archives of 
 the legation to a subordinate, and also, on the same day, an 
 nounced his resignation to Prince Kung, the acting head of 
 
17 6 THE CHINESE, 
 
 the Chinese Government. Three weeks and two days later he 
 addressed a letter from Shanghai to the Secretary of State, 
 which opened with these words : " You will have learned 
 from my telegram from Pekin of my appointment by the 
 Chinese Government as envoy to the treaty powers and of 
 my acceptance of the same," and then proceeds to say that 
 the suggestion of such appointment was first made at a fare 
 well dinner given in pursuance of his retirement from the 
 position of American Minister, and that he " repulsed the 
 suggestion playfully." Afterwards, he says, the suggestion 
 was seriously made through the suggestion of the Secretary 
 of the British legation, and thereafter the " position was 
 formally tendered," and he determined " in the interests of 
 civilization and his country " he repeats the phrase to 
 accept. He further says that " Two Chinese gentlemen," 
 whom he names, " of the highest rank were selected from 
 the foreign office to conduct the Chinese correspondence, 
 and as learners "(?) gives the names of two secretaries, and 
 says that his suite " will number about thirty persons." 
 The letter concludes with the words, " Permit me to re 
 quest the government most earnestly not to name my suc 
 cessor until I can give it information which may be useful 
 in making a selection." We have in this letter the as 
 sertion, evidently made for the public ear, that nothing of 
 the kind had been thought of until after Burlingame s 
 resignation on November 21, together with an astounding 
 statement that the Chinese Government had reached the 
 resolution of taking the new departure implied in sending 
 an ambassador to the treaty powers, had selected the am 
 bassador, had obtained his sanction and acceptance of the 
 position, had appointed his associates, chosen the first and 
 second secretaries and settled the number of his attend 
 ants, all within the space of twenty-three days after the 
 date of his resignation, and all this in a government and 
 with a court which in all its official actions proceeds with 
 the extreme of deliberation and caution. 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. i?7 
 
 That the averments of that letter were essentially untrue 
 goes without saying. Only an infantile innocence of the 
 ways of diplomacy could afford a credulous moment for 
 belief in its statements. But the suggestive portion of the 
 document is found in its final paragraph, already quoted. 
 We have the spectacle not only of an American Minister 
 resigning his place as such to immediately accept a like 
 but more highly priced position under a foreign govern 
 ment, not only an American returning to his own country 
 as the paid servant of another, but we behold him asking 
 the government of the United States to permi* him to ad 
 vise it as to its selection of an envoy to fill the place he de 
 serted. The hardihood of this could have been prompted 
 by nothing less than the influence of agencies of which no 
 sign appears in the published record. It is not conceivable 
 that all the communications from Btirlingame, and from the 
 American legation after he left it, should have remained 
 unanswered. In the whole of the one hundred and twelve 
 pages of "diplomatic correspondence" devoted to this 
 and other affairs with China in that year, there is no word 
 or line from the State Department to Burlingame, or to the 
 American legation in China, relating to the resignation of 
 Burlingame, or to the inception and culmination of the pro 
 ceedings through which he became ambassador for China. 
 Whatever the agency of the Department of State may have 
 been, the evidence thereof is suppressed. Doubtless it may 
 be found in the archives ; but these are secret, inaccessi 
 ble, and practically past finding out. 
 
 If the silence of the volumes on foreign affairs imports 
 the methods of the dark lantern, the antecedents of the per 
 son who served in the double capacity of Chinese envoy 
 and of adviser to the American State Department, of 
 his Caucasian associates, and of the functionaries who 
 were placed in charge of American interests in China, are 
 also noteworthy in this connection. The first secretary of the 
 Chinese embassy, with Burlingame at its head, was the 
 
I? 8 1 fJE CHINESE, 
 
 11 Chinese secretary of the British legation," and the second 
 was a French gentleman who had been somewhat familiar 
 with Chinese affairs. It was through these and two Chinese 
 officials " to conduct the Chinese correspondence " that 
 Mr. Burlingame was expected in his capacity of a Chinese 
 ambassador to advise the Government of the United States 
 for its own welfare. Meanwhile the American legation at 
 Pekin was left in charge of a person who had graduated 
 into diplomatic life from the position of Chinese interpreter 
 to the British consulate, and who, year in and year out, was 
 the advocate of Chinese immigration to the United States, 
 and of foreign aggression upon China. 
 
 In the same year, a " Commissioner of agriculture from 
 the United States to China" was appointed, and it appears 
 that he was permitted to join private adventure with offi 
 cial duty. A company had obtained a charter from the 
 Mexican Government to colonize lands in Lower California, 
 and the agricultural commissioner to China accepted an 
 agency to obtain ten thousand Chinamen to locate in that 
 region ; of this scheme Mr. Burlingame expressed his "cor 
 dial approbation." Such were the circumstances under 
 which the Burlingame policy was initiated, and such were 
 the men through whom the potent influences within the State 
 Department gave a new impetus to Chinese immigra 
 tion to the Pacific coast, in utter defiance of the fact that 
 even then the whole policy of the Pacific States, in their 
 constitutions, laws and general expression of public opinion, 
 had declared such immigration to be not merely a nuisance 
 but a scourge. 
 
 Under such circumstances and with the assurance of such 
 agents the new treaty was a foregone conclusion from the 
 moment that Burlingame was appointed a Chinese envoy. 
 That the objects and methods of his mission were well un 
 derstood before he left China there can be no doubt. There 
 is no reason to suppose that he meditated any treachery to 
 his Chinese employer or to the special financial interests, 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 179 
 
 if such there were, whose benefit was contemplated by the 
 proposed action. But the care with which two Chinese 
 officials of high rank were associated with him, and the fact 
 that, although he was the nominal head of the embassy, 
 there is nothing to make it appear that he could act without 
 their consent, show that he was held well under control by 
 the authorities at Pekin. With the assurance of a treaty, 
 such as a few months later was entered into, the induce 
 ments to Chinese immigration to the Pacific coast were 
 greatly increased ; and in one of the letters from the Secre 
 tary of State to the American legation in China it is set 
 forth that the ratification of the treaty would insure greater 
 protection to the Chinese in this country, that Chinese 
 consuls could be placed at our ports, and the Chinese Gov 
 ernment be enabled to more fully bring the attention of our 
 Department of State to any alleged aggressio.ns upon 
 Chinese immigrants. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 THE TREATY GAVE A FORCED STIMULUS TO CHINESE IM 
 MIGRATION J THE BENEFICIARIES THEREOF. 
 
 IT is not to be supposed that the proceedings inherent in 
 the production of the treaty were a matter of spontaneous 
 generation, or that it sprang up like a mushroom by the 
 wild bounty of nature. But the interests, whatever they 
 were, which were held in view throughout the whole affair, 
 and the forces which engineered it throughout, can only be 
 inferred by the process colloquially known as " putting this 
 and that together." Two great corporations appear to have 
 been the most immediate and the chief beneficiaries of the 
 results that followed the project for, and the ratification of, 
 that treaty of 1868. The one constructed its railroad 
 with Chinese labor, the other controlled the passenger traf 
 fic between Hong- Kong and San Francisco and transported 
 the Chinese by tens of thousands to the Pacific coast. As 
 
l8o THE CHINESE, 
 
 concerns the building of the Pacific roads, it has been 
 asserted that the work could not have been completed 
 without the Chinese. Such an averment is utterly with 
 out foundation in fact, as will appear upon slight reflection. 
 
 The road was constructed for the most part by ten thou 
 sand Chinese, imported en bloc. 
 
 The work would assuredly have been, at the least, 
 quite as well performed by the same number of Caucasian 
 laborers. During the war which had ended some four 
 years previously, manual labor in the Northern and Western 
 States had been superseded by machinery to such an extent 
 that the conditions of every industry, and especially of 
 agriculture, were radically changed and ameliorated. For 
 example, where in the year 1860 there had been one mow 
 ing machine at work in the meadows of the North or one 
 harvester in its grain fields, there were, in 1865, at least a 
 hundred. And in the latter year a million of able-bodied 
 men had returned from the battle-field to the vocations of 
 peaceful life. The cost of transcontinental lines had been 
 properly estimated upon the basis of then current wages in 
 this country, and in face of this it is mere hardihood to 
 assert that ten thousand men at the wages commonly paid 
 at that time throughout the country could not have been 
 obtained to complete the Pacific roads; for ten thousand 
 men would have been about two per cent, of the number 
 released from the requirements of war, and added to the 
 resources of the industries of peace. That it would have 
 diminished the millions that passed into the possession of 
 those interested in the construction of the road may be 
 admitted, but it could not have diminished even those prof 
 its to an extent below a fair remuneration for the business 
 ability, the courage, and the risk that undoubtedly were 
 exhibited in the undertaking. Had the evil of the impor 
 tation of Chinese labor ceased with the aggrandizement 
 of these, the matter would have been of relatively infini 
 tesimal moment. But the evils, as -we have seen, broad- 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 181 
 
 ened and deepened throughout the Pacific region and have 
 increased in rapid ratio from that time to the present. 
 
 Even as concerns the Chinese in their own country, the 
 direct consequence of the artificial impulse given to the 
 importation of Chinese laborers was in many respects no 
 less than an an unmitigated wrong. From the poverty of 
 the class from among whom the immigrants were of neces 
 sity taken, few had themselves the means to pay their pas 
 sage across the ocean. Thus it was that when the runners 
 and the agents of the would-be employers of Chinese in this 
 country scattered their promises throughout the clustering 
 village in the region around and beyond Canton, the coolie 
 mortgaged his wife and children at exorbitant rates of in 
 terest to raise the money for his journey ; and when for 
 any reason he failed to repay at the stated time, his family 
 was torn asunder, the male children sold for slaves and the 
 wife and daughters for baser uses. Such was one of the 
 incidental results of the unnatural and forced impetus given 
 to Chinese immigration consequent upon the inception and 
 adoption of the Burlingame treaty. 
 
 In that convention are comprised substantially our present 
 treaty relations with China. For, as I have before remarked 
 the modifications introduced by the treaty of 1882 have no 
 other practical value than that of respecting the amour 
 propre of the Chinese Government, a result which, on gen 
 eral principles of international comity, is not to be under 
 valued except it be secured at too great a cost. If it is 
 feasible to avoid wounding the susceptibilities of China 
 without hindrance to measures required for our own pro 
 tection, assuredly no objection can reasonably be had there 
 to. But it is far from clear that the astuteness of Chinese 
 diplomacy has not overreached our own ; for while the 
 Burlingame treaty referred to the " privileges " of the 
 Chinese in the United States, that of 1882 added the word 
 " rights," which is certainly a much more comprehensive 
 and significant term. In that, as in many another matter 
 
1 82 THE CHINESE. 
 
 of diplomacy, the acuteness of the Chinese intellect has 
 been more than a match for that of the Caucasian. 
 
 To the Acts of Congress of 1882 and of 1884 it is not 
 necessary to more than allude. They are worthless except 
 as indicating the development of public opinion and its 
 awakening to the necessities of the time. The project of a 
 new treaty with China has proved a nullity, as the additions 
 made by the Senate, through which alone actual effect could 
 be given to its purpose, have caused its rejection by the 
 Chinese. This, it is said, is due to British influence at 
 Pekin ; a further evidence of the actual antagonism between 
 British interests and our own. The treaty, with the pro 
 posed legislation in furtherance thereof, contained, at the 
 best, provisions which would have afforded many open 
 opportunities for fraud, which would have caused its object 
 in a great measure to be defeated. Like all merely pallia 
 tive measures it would have been a weak and inefficient 
 instrument for the end desired. Relief from the Chinese 
 scourge can only be obtained through our own efforts, and 
 the agencies of our own government. The prohibitory act 
 now before Congress has greater promise than any measure 
 heretofore proposed. But it has the radical defect of seek 
 ing but a partial remedy. Far more radical measures 
 will need to be taken, not only to prevent the incoming of 
 the Chinese, but to lessen, if not to wholly eliminate, the 
 number already here. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 MEASURES REQUISITE TO MEET AND SUPPRESS THE INVA 
 SION OF THE CHINESE. 
 
 THERE is no safety save in sweeping away the whole web 
 of absurd treaty provisions which a reprehensible policy 
 has created and permitted to exist in defiance of the in- 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 183 
 
 terests and rights of our people ; and this, to be effective, 
 must be supplemented by the adoption and enforcement of 
 measures which will not only put an end to Chinese immigra 
 tion but sooner or later remove the Chinese now in the 
 country. Without this course there can be no suppression 
 of the Chinese scourge, no actual limitation to its extent ; 
 and to expect relief through any other course will be the 
 acme of human folly. 
 
 Not only is such a course demanded by the necessities 
 of the case, and within the sovereign powers of our govern 
 ment, but it is one against which China can have no right 
 nor reason to protest. Apart from the grounds to which I 
 have already referred, the fact that China herself has set 
 the example in more than one instance of expelling by tens 
 and even hundreds of thousands, foreigners inimical to her 
 interests, should close the lips of her statesmen when like 
 measures for like reasons are taken by other countries. 
 At intervals through centuries China has exercised her 
 sovereign right and prerogative not only to expel but to 
 slaughter those who, from the peoples of the west, have 
 settled within her borders. As I have remarked in a pre 
 ceding portion of this work, she massacred, a thousand 
 years ago, a hundred and twenty thousand foreigners who 
 had settled in her seaport cities ; and at intervals, upon a 
 larger or smaller scale, the same action has been repeated. 
 China, above all other nations of the earth, has exercised her 
 sovereignty to exclude foreigners whenever for any reason 
 it has pleased her to do so ; and neither the lives or the 
 property of Caucasians, for generations at a time, have been 
 safe within her borders. In 1723, all Christian missionaries 
 were driven from their places, their three hundred churches 
 destroyed or applied to ignoble purposes, and their flocks, 
 numbering three hundred thousand people, were scattered. 
 Thirteen years later the same thing recurred, " churches 
 were plundered and property confiscated," and many of the 
 Christians were put to the torture; and nearly a century 
 
1 84 THE CHINESE, 
 
 later the government of China repeated the procedure by 
 strangling the chief men among the Christians, and sub 
 jecting others to life-long torment with the cangue. And 
 all this, be it borne in mind, was not the irresponsible action 
 of a mob, but the carrying into effect of a governmental 
 policy, traditional in its character and deliberately put in 
 force. If every Chinaman in the United States were wan 
 tonly shot and his dwelling burned above his head by act 
 of Congress or executive order, precedent after prece 
 dent could be found in the history of China, and 
 she would need to stand mute in the light of her own 
 record. It is the tenderness born of the Christianity that 
 China has spurned that restrains the exercise of measures 
 which she, under far less provocation, has time and again 
 used without mercy. 
 
 But no course necessary in the exclusion and expulsion 
 of the Chinese need work undue hardship to them. The 
 first requisite is, of course, the prevention of any addi 
 tion to the Chinese population already here, and the 
 prevention of the return of any who leave the country. 
 The former would prevent any further ingress, the lat 
 ter in view of the practice of the Chinese in return 
 ing to their own homes after having acquired property 
 would tend directly to diminish their number here. Both 
 of these were provided for, I understand, in the treaty of 
 the present year entered into between the Chinese envoy 
 and the State Department, but since rejected. The exact 
 provisions of this, however, appear to be as yet inac 
 cessible, and without disrespect to our officials it may be 
 safely said that our former experience in diplomacy with 
 China leaves but little margin for expectation than any treaty 
 will be more than a platitude. If, however, the provisions 
 referred to had been accepted in due form there would 
 still have remained the need of legislation to carry them 
 into effect ; and beyond this the task of executing the laws 
 themselves. There is but little doubt that China, if so dis- 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 185 
 
 posed, could do much toward preventing the emigration of 
 her subjects by the simple expedient of putting an end to 
 the stimulating methods in use. But there would still 
 remain the fact that the emigration starts from the port of 
 Hong-Kong, which is under British and not at all under 
 Chinese control. For the most part the effective means of 
 preventing the incoming of the Chinese must consist in 
 vigilance upon our own borders, not only at the ports of 
 entry, but especially along the whole Pacific coast and the 
 northern and southern boundaries west of the Rocky 
 Mountains. At the present time the only obstacle to the 
 immigration of the Chinese to the British dominions is a 
 head tax of fifty dollars, and strong corporate influences 
 are at work in Canada to secure the repeal of this. There is 
 now practically no obstacle to the passage of the Chinese 
 from British Columbia into our adjoining territory and 
 thence to all portions of the United States. Should Chinese 
 be landed upon the Pacific coast of Mexico they would 
 similarly find easy ingress to the country. Once mingled 
 with their fellows already here they are undistinguishable, 
 and the same increase in their number which is now going on 
 will continue unchecked to the extent to which they may be 
 able to evade the law along thousands of miles of frontier. 
 For this reason a domestic police system with reference to 
 them must be necessary in addition to any measures which 
 may be taken to prevent their coming. 
 
 The record of every Chinaman at home is kept with care 
 by duly constituted authorities. The course of his wander 
 ings is recorded in like manner through agencies peculiar 
 to his race and nationality. But so far as concerns the 
 enforcement of American law neither of these are available. 
 The individual Chinaman, once in the country, is an un 
 known element of the alien mass to which he belongs, and 
 whether he has entered legally or illegally is practically 
 unascertainable. With the strict enforcement of anti- 
 immigration legislation should be combined an equally 
 
1 86 THE CHINESE, 
 
 strict registry of the Chinese in the localities which they 
 inhabit ; and absence of registration should insure vigorous 
 punishment, followed by prompt expulsion. Nothing less 
 thorough than this will be found effective to practically 
 secure the object sought by restrictive measures. 
 
 Nor is there any objection, practical or theoretical, to the 
 propriety and utility of such a remedy. Were every China 
 man in the country compelled to register himself, his resi 
 dence, his occupation, and his removal from place to place, 
 the detection of those who enter the country illegally would 
 be comparatively easy. In such case each Chinaman would, 
 of course, need to be provided with a certificate guarded 
 by due provision against transfer from one to another, the 
 possession of which would be evidence of his privilege to 
 remain in the country. The absence of such a certificate 
 would in like manner be sufficient reason for sending him 
 out of the country. There is nothing impracticable in the 
 carrying out of such a system, for it would be but the appli 
 cation to the Chinese of laws that are enforced in the 
 countries of Continental Europe with reference to large 
 portions of their own population. It would, in fact, be 
 merely the application to the Chinese in this country of the 
 same method of registration and identification to which, as 
 just remarked, they are subject at home. No necessity 
 exists, nor, probably, ever can exist, for the application of 
 such a system to any portion of our own people, but it is 
 an absolute necessity that something of the kind should be 
 applied as a means of insuring the operation of laws in 
 tended to prevent the illicit admission of Chinese and to 
 diminish their number among us. Were this method 
 thoroughly persisted in and effectually carried into effect 
 a rapid diminution of the Chinese population would un 
 doubtedly result, though there would still exist the need 
 of severer measures to secure their final expulsion. 
 
 If it be possible upon such a plan to secure their elimi 
 nation, it will have the quasi merit of avoiding even the 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 187 
 
 appearance of harshness, and of preventing individual hard 
 ship. The Chinaman entering the country in defiance of 
 the law would certainly have no just cause of complaint if 
 the law discovered him, punished him, and sent him 
 away. By the same token the Chinaman who would leave 
 the country knowing that the law forbade his return, could 
 hardly complain if the law held to its word and kept him from 
 coming again. Concerning the Chinaman who is already 
 here and prefers to remain, even his ultimate elimination 
 should be regarded as a result to be sought by legislation, 
 affording reasonable time for the disposal of property 
 and settlement of business affairs. But a registry and sur 
 veillance of our Chinese population, as strict as that which 
 France and Germany exercises with regard to strangers, as 
 thorough as that to which China subjects her own people, is 
 indispensable to the discovery of those who evade or attempt 
 to evade the law. Whatever the course adopted, the time 
 for its adoption can not be postponed without constantly 
 accumulating harm. The work and the uses of state 
 craft, and of diplomacy, are to prevent the aggrandizement 
 of evils until they reach the stage at which they must be 
 either removed by violent means or be submitted to as un 
 avoidable and irreparable wrongs : it is not in our race or 
 in our people to do the latter : it is for the statesmen, the 
 jurists, and diplomatists of the present to see to it that the 
 former shall not be required. 
 
 I have thus far spoken of the exclusion of the Chinese 
 with the prospect in view that the Government of China 
 may prove recalcitrant to a proper determination on the 
 part of our people and government to apply to her 
 the same principle of exclusion which she, for so many 
 ages, applied to foreigners in her own behalf. A rumor 
 it is scarcely more, though made the subject of telegraphic 
 transmission that China is to recall, within the next three 
 years, her people from Australia with an intent of hostilities 
 with Great Britain, furnishes, however, a hint of what 
 
1 88 THE CHINESE, 
 
 would secure an even more speedy and effective removal 
 of the Chinese from our territory. That the ruler of China 
 has the power to direct the return of every Chinaman to 
 his home in his own country is beyond gainsaying. That 
 the mass of the Chinese would have no idea of disobe 
 dience is undeniable. And that recusants could be severely 
 dealt with through the manifold ramifications of Chinese 
 authority exerted through the Six Companies and other 
 agencies is almost equally indisputable. If such return 
 can be enforced as a preliminary to war with a European 
 nation, it may also in the interests of peace, and as an ele 
 ment in a broader and juster policy between our own 
 country and China. It should be offset by a total with 
 drawal on our part from the aggressive schemes and brutal 
 diplomacy of Europeans concerning China, and by the ren 
 dering in her behalf of at least a moral support in her 
 defense of her own territory, her ancient usages and laws, 
 her peculiar institutions, and her policy of isolation from 
 the social, political, industrial, and commercial complica 
 tions of other countries. Such a dream of peace and jus 
 tice appears to be, and probably is, Utopian to the last 
 degree, but its realization affords the sole escape from the 
 alternative of the exclusion and expulsion, more or less 
 forcible, of the Chinese, or the subjugation of the land by 
 their gradually increasing hordes. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 QUASI SENTIMENTALITY AND INACCURATE AVERMENTS OF 
 PRO-CHINESE ADVOCACY. 
 
 As I draw toward the conclusion of this^xamiftatioft of 
 our relations with China, it may be proper to speak some 
 what of the objections made to the repeal of the Burling- 
 ame convention and its adjuncts by the advocates of the 
 present state of affairs. Few of these merit sober discus- 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 189 
 
 sion ; and many, were it not for the grave import of the 
 subject, might well call for mirthful derision. For example, 
 it is urged that we should not cancel the treaty inasmuch 
 as it was forced upon China ; as if a blunder or a crime 
 committed must be persisted in while the evil of it 
 broadens and deepens until remedy becomes impossible- 
 We are told that Chinese labor " in our fields and shops 
 will certainly benefit our industry," despite the teaching of 
 nearly forty years to the contrary. We are informed, in 
 sentimental phrase, that " if the higher civilization and 
 Christian energy of the American people of California can 
 not devise means to remove the ignorance, abate the pre 
 judices, and enlighten the paganism of those thus brought 
 to their doors, it is weak indeed." The sentimentalist, 
 being unmindful of the historic truth that the higher civili 
 zation which necessitates comfort and luxury of life, inevi 
 tably goes to the wall when brought in competition with 
 the lower civilization which asks for none of these ; and 
 heedless also of the further truth that the real object of our 
 Christian energy should be to retain our country for the 
 Christian civilization of our own and kindred peoples, and 
 not to convert it into a colossal remedial institution for the 
 eradication of the moral deficiencies of a race so utterly 
 distinct that its fusion with the Caucasian is impossible. 
 
 Proceeding in the same strain, it is gravely pleaded that 
 our law should be "formulated in Chinese " for the benefit 
 of the immigrants, " and that direct oversight by responsi 
 ble officers [should be] maintained over this alien popula 
 tion, which it is the duty of a government to do ; " which 
 would require the addition to our government of a special 
 eleemosynary department. We are also to " prevent the 
 extension of opium-smoking among them," but are not in 
 formed how this very desirable object is to be achieved, the 
 penalty of death having been insufficient to restrain the 
 Celestials from this vice in their own country. We are to 
 " learn thoroughly the working of their companies and 
 
19 THE CHINESE, 
 
 guilds," but are left in darkness as to the modus operandi of 
 so doing, and necessarily so, for these companies and guilds 
 have a secrecy as deep as that of any secret societies in the 
 world : these associations being one of the means by which 
 Chinese competition with the white races is advanced and 
 strengthened. We are to " encourage them to bring their 
 families," but as the advocate of this "encouragement 1 
 sets forth in another part of his statement (I am quoting 
 from an official report) that " Chinese women refuse to go 
 anywhere," it is difficult to perceive in what way the en 
 couraging process could bring forth any tangible result. 
 
 It is also said that we are to " inform them upon what 
 ever will help them to become better," and this is proposed 
 to be accomplished by "educating a number of Americans 
 in the Chinese language for official interpreters and trans 
 lators ; " in other words, through the agency of a legion of 
 pensionaries of the government. I would not have referred 
 to this spur of the subject in so long a paragraph were it 
 not that the sentences quoted are fair illustrations of what 
 passes for reasoning in the pro-Chinese mind. They are 
 taken word for word from the public document, Foreign 
 Relations of the United States, for the year 1876. Their 
 author was a member of the United States Legation at 
 Pekin. It may perhaps be worth while to quote still further 
 from the document from which these extracts are taken. It 
 ascribes the inflow of Chinese in California to " the Provi 
 dence of God," forgetful that it had its beginning, as we 
 have had occasion to note, in brutal aggressions of which 
 we were quick to take advantage and in which to no small 
 extent we shared, upon a power that had never harmed us, 
 and that it has reached its present proportions because we 
 have recklessly left open the gateways of our own land 
 while wantonly reaching forth to spoil the possessions of 
 another. 
 
 One further comment on this encomiast of Chinese inva 
 sion. He asserts that the repeal of the treaty " would have 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 191 
 
 little or no effect upon the emigration," and that " the im 
 perial government can no more control the movements of 
 its subjects or keep them within its territory than the Pres 
 ident can restrain those of our citizens." This is on page 
 67 of the volume referred to, and is dated Pekin, June 30, 
 1876. On page 48, under date of March 21 of the same 
 year, another official, the American Minister, writing from 
 Hong-Kong concerning the treaty concluded six weeks 
 earlier between China and Peru, states that " the great 
 object of Peru in procuring a treaty was to promote Chinese 
 immigration ; this had been virtually stopped by the action 
 taken at Macao, here in Hong-Kong, and by the Chinese 
 authorities." It is, moreover, a matter of the commonest 
 historic notoriety that for ages the emperor had, and exer 
 cised, the power of preventing emigration, wherever the 
 traditional policy of the country seemed to require it, and 
 that power still continues within the territory of China. 
 The assertion that the despotic ruler of China, whose will 
 is law throughout his vast dominions, has no greater power 
 than the president of a constitutional republic, calls for no 
 remark. 
 
 Of no greater weight as reasons, but from their origin 
 and occasion requiring more serious consideration, are the 
 allegations of the Executive who vetoed the bill passed by 
 Congress in February, 1879. These compose the stock 
 arguments of pro-Chinese advocates, and may therefore 
 be properly considered here. 
 
 The bill, as presented to the Executive, forbade the 
 transport of more than fifteen Chinese on any one vessel 
 entering the ports of the UnitedfStates, and it also directly 
 repealed articles V. and VI. of the Burlingame Treaty. This 
 repeal was designed to take effect through the action en 
 joined on the Executive. Omitting reference to the plati 
 tudes which have no practical bearing upon the question, it is 
 sufficient to consider that the veto turned upon an implied 
 denial of the right of Congress to act in the premises. 
 
192 7 ffE CHINESE. 
 
 The words of the veto on this head are as follows: " The 
 authority of Congress to terminate a treaty with a foreign 
 power by expressing the will of the nation to no longer ad 
 here to it is as free from controversy under our constitu 
 tion as is the further proposition that the power of making 
 new treaties, or modifying existing treaties, is not allotted 
 by the constitution in Congress, but in the President by and 
 with the advice of the Senate, as shown by the concurrence 
 of two-thirds of that body." The meaning of this is hardly 
 clear ; it first admits the authority of Congress " to termi 
 nate a treaty with a foreign power," and then sets forth, if it 
 has any meaning at all, that Congress can not terminate 
 two articles of that treaty. In other words, the somewhat 
 anomalous idea is advanced that while Congress can abro 
 gate an entire treaty, it can not abrogate a part of it. I 
 venture to say that there is nowhere in the jurisprudence of 
 the civilized world a single decision of any court or a single 
 opinion of any recognized publicist by which this proposi 
 tion can be claimed to be endorsed. Its fallacy is shown 
 by the decisions of our own courts, hereinbefore previously 
 referred to, for in regard to the treaty with Russia the right 
 of Congress to annul the provision relating to the duties on 
 Russian products was fully and absolutely sustained. The 
 then President in his veto appears to have been quite un 
 familiar with these decisions. He refers to the act of Con 
 gress in 1798 concerning the French treaty in a manner that 
 clearly indicates this to be the only case bearing upon the 
 subject to which his attention had been called ; and even 
 as concerns this, exception may be justly taken to the inter- 
 pretation which he has placed upon it. 
 
 This veto, however, indicated a meaning deeper than is 
 borne upon its face, and one that has been accentuated by 
 the tenor and tendencies of the judicial decisions on the 
 Pacific Coast to which I have hereinbefore referred. It is 
 that the action of the popular branch of the government may 
 be ignored even in municipal affairs by the treaty-making 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 193 
 
 power ; and that in certain contingencies affecting the inter 
 nal administration of the country, the President may defy 
 both houses of Congress together. Nothing more subversive 
 of the structure of our government or the genius of our in 
 stitutions can be conceived. Under cover of a treaty once 
 concluded the Executive could block the way to change, 
 however necessary, provided only that the requisite action 
 should be the repeal of some, but not all, of the articles. A 
 new treaty can not be concluded without the consent of the 
 President, and if a part of a treaty can only be repealed by 
 such new treaty it would follow that Congress and the 
 people would be powerless under the will of an obstinate 
 master, and the authority of Congress as a coordinate 
 branch of the government would in such cases be utterly 
 destroyed. It is not necessary to argue that in this coun 
 try it has never been intended that such power should be 
 asserted or wielded by the Executive. 
 
 There is another, though by comparison a minor error, in 
 that veto ; an error so palpable that it may well have been 
 an effort to mislead rather than a statement made in sincere 
 belief. It carries the idea throughout, although not in 
 express terms, that the passage of the bill would have 
 operated to destroy all our treaty relations with China. 
 But such would not have been the legal result. Our three 
 treaties with China, that of 1844, that of 1858, and that of 
 1868, were separate treaties, although successive in their 
 ratification, and the later comfirmatory of those preced 
 ing. It is almost a truism in public law that where two 
 or more treaties exist between nations the abrogation 
 of one does not necessarily involve that of the other, al 
 though it may be made the pretext of formally renouncing 
 the other. In the words of Vattel, " when there exists 
 between allies two or more treaties different from and 
 independent of each other, the violation of one of those 
 treaties does not directly disengage the injured party from 
 the obligation she has contracted in "the others ; for the 
 
194 THE CHINESE, 
 
 promises contained in these do not include those con 
 tained in the violated treaty." Even from the standpoint 
 of Mr. Hayes, who wholly ignored the fact that China has 
 abrogated the Burlingame treaty by neglect or refusal to 
 carry out one of its essential provisions, the formal annihi 
 lation of that treaty would not necessarily work the forfeiture 
 of the two preceding. To state the principle more briefly ; 
 while the infraction of one article of a specific treaty is 
 held under the code of nations to release the opposite party 
 from all the provisions of that particular treaty, the abro 
 gation of one treaty does not render other and distinct 
 treaties void, but at the most they are only made voidable. 
 
 In view of the utter fallacy of the pro-Chinese advocacy, 
 it may be asked with a semblance of reason, why has our 
 government touched the subject so delicately ? and why has 
 its action, when it has been forced to action, been so adverse 
 to the bitter cry from the Pacific Coast? The query admits 
 of a double answer. It may be assumed, without violation 
 of probabilities, that the same agencies which have so sed 
 ulously cultivated a deceived and deceptive public opinion 
 at the East in favor of the Chinese, have worked with no 
 less effort and success to secure influence at the centres of 
 legislative and administrative control. 
 
 There is, however, another explanation, which, at first view 
 may seem less worthy of credence, but which shows strong 
 claims to belief in the relative attitudes of the United 
 States and China, and the official utterances which, unless 
 they be taken as meaningless, cannot be held devoid of 
 timorous expression on the one hand and sinister intent on 
 the other. The veto of the Executive, before adverted 
 to, speaks vaguely of dangers that might accrue from re 
 scinding the treaty. The American Minister to China, in 
 writing of the possibility of its repeal asks, " Would it not, 
 indeed, imperil all our relations with the Empire ? " Not 
 all of official reports or international communications are 
 published in the " Diplomatic Correspondence " or " Foreign 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 19$ 
 
 Relations." The State Department retains in its secret 
 archives whatever either a far-sighted or a time-serving 
 policy may seem to require : what actual utterances of the 
 Chinese Government may have been communicated to our 
 own, or to what stress they may have subjected our foreign 
 policy, can not at this time be fully learned. But even with 
 that which is open to the public, the strong, clear postu 
 lates and decisive demands of the Chinese Central Authority 
 are manifest. Said Feng Taoti, twelve years ago, to 
 Bradford, American Consul-general at Shanghai : " Steam 
 ers, guns, and small-arms, the products of the west, the 
 Chinese can make for themselves." Two months later 
 Prince Kung, Minister of Foreign Affairs, hardly veiled a 
 threat under the forms of diplomatic courtesy in address 
 ing the American envoy concerning an alleged assault 
 upon some Chinese coolies landing at San Francisco. He 
 characterized in invidious terms a portion of the population 
 of California and " their purpose of interfering with Chi 
 nese immigration," and requested " the suppression of such 
 acts, in order to the maintenance of friendship between 
 the two nations." The full meaning of these words is only 
 apparent when we reflect upon the studied avoidance of 
 exaggerated language which forms the first lesson in the 
 training of the diplomat, and in which the Chinese are no 
 less adepts than are the statesmen of other nations. Nor 
 can we find the menace without meaning when we recall 
 again that China is stronger on the Pacific Coast in men 
 capable of bearing arms than ourselves, and that she can 
 transport ten warriors from the middle of the kingdom 
 to San Francisco at less expense than the United States 
 can convey a single soldier and his knapsack from Chicago 
 to the Coast ; that she can send vessels with stronger armor 
 and heavier guns to breach the walls of Alcatraz than we 
 could provide for defense, and could send them in shorter 
 time. Fear then, and its corollary, a futile expediency, not 
 less than pressure from the classes that profit from Chinese 
 
J 9 THE CHINESE, 
 
 cheap labor, may lie at the basis of our temporizing policy 
 with China ; a policy that drags and dawdles and sentimen 
 talizes ; that sends vain embassies abroad to talk, while at 
 home it operates to destroy the control of our own people 
 over our own country, our own institutions, and the direc 
 tion of our own future. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 ONE COURSE, AND ONE ONLY, CAN STAY THE EASTWARD 
 MIGRATION OF THE YELLOW RACE, AND ITS GRADUAL 
 CONQUEST OF THE LAND. 
 
 WHATEVER the causes of this policy, it has lasted far too 
 long. The conflict is upon us. It can not be evaded or 
 repressed. Each year of delay renders its labor more 
 arduous and its dangers more great. It has been approach 
 ing through unconscious ages, for it is the latest result of 
 the advance in opposite directions of two great peoples, 
 because of a destiny forced upon them by the configuration 
 of the earth. The fruitful alluvial of China lay within 
 boundaries that isolated her from the rest of the world ; 
 and here, separate from other races, her people increased 
 and flourished and grew strong. Meanwhile the hardy 
 populations of Northern Asia outgrew the food supply of 
 their comparatively sterile regions, and precipitated them 
 selves with futile valor upon the laborious, patient, brave 
 and enduring denizens of the Central Kingdom. Driven 
 back from the fertile plains at the southward, hindered by 
 the sea to the east, repulsed at the north by the bar 
 renness of Arctic solitudes, their only outlet lay westward 
 over the comparatively low-lying regions where were 
 traced the pathways of the caravans that carried to the 
 countries of the Caspian the slender traffic of the remotest 
 East. Displacing Goth and Alan and Vandal, they urged 
 these onward to new migrations which, in their turn, im 
 pelled the German toward the Atlantic. This, the sec- 
 
AND THE CHINESE QUESTION. 197 
 
 ondary result of Chinese power, gave a westward movement 
 to strong and hardy peoples whose successive invasions 
 changed the face of civilization from the borders of Persia 
 to the shores of Spain. The first waves of conquest were 
 displaced by those that succeeded or were dissipated by 
 fusion with the native populations, but through all the 
 advance was toward the west ; in the nature of things there 
 was no receding. And so in the vicissitudes of ages our 
 progenitors framed the new structure of Europe, and de 
 veloping from the rudest to the highest form of society, 
 created the nations from which our own people directly 
 sprang. 
 
 But the progress did not end with this. The conditions 
 under which the Caucasian developed in Europe, after the 
 fall of the Roman Empire, were parallel with none of those 
 known to anterior peoples. They favored a growth of civic 
 liberty, of earnest intellectual effort, and deep and intense 
 emotional feeling, from which grew the complex relations 
 and delicate adjustments of government, of law, of relig 
 ion, of science, of arts and industries, which have elevated 
 man to a higher semblance of the image of his Creator than 
 was possible under the grosser forms of antecedent civiliza 
 tions. Yet throughout all this lingered the tendency to 
 reach still further toward the west. And after the ventur 
 ous ships of Icelandic voyagers had crossed the sea, and 
 the records of Iceland had told the tale to the Genoese, 
 the way of the Caucasian was opened to the continent 
 beyond. Then, not yet four centuries ago, our immediate 
 ancestors, the descendants of the westward-moving hosts, 
 came and possessed the land and left it, an inheritance, to 
 us, their children. 
 
 And we, from the hamlets scattered along our Eastern 
 coasts, have followed the instinct inherited through cen 
 turies and have pressed westward still, ardent, earnest, 
 toiling, and victorious, until beyond prairie and buffalo 
 plain, beyond alkaline desert and Nevadan forest, we have 
 
igB THE CHINESE. 
 
 planted our civilization and builded our cities upon the 
 edge of the utmost ocean whose farther waves wash the 
 shores of that China whose prowess gave its first impulse 
 to the westward journey of our race. That journey is 
 ended. We have completed our share of the circuit of the 
 globe. And on our latest territory we are met by those 
 same Chinese, driven toward the east, their only outlet, as 
 we for ages have been toward the west. The two races 
 have met, and one or the other must give way. The 
 Chinese must recoil to his own land, or we must recede 
 from ours. The two races, distinct as if drawn from differ 
 ent planets, compelled by geographical conditions to 
 advance in opposite directions around the world are 
 brought face to face. They will not mingle, they can not 
 fuse. The Pacific Coast at an early day, and our entire 
 country at a remoter time, must be the inheritance of the 
 Caucasian or it must be the heritage of the Chinese. 
 
 Blind and futile indeed is the policy that wavers when 
 confronted with such an alternative. The question before 
 us is a question of the migration of races ; of the trans 
 planting of nations. It can not be met too soon or too 
 decisively, for every succeeding year of neglect renders the 
 issue more doubtful. To express the truth in language 
 plain and terse, if our Christian civilization, if our enlight 
 enment, if our free forms of government, if our prosperity 
 and power as a people, are to be preserved and perpetuated 
 for ourselves and our children, then the Chinese must be 
 expelled from our borders at any hazard, and at any cost. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
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