We publish to-day a telegram which Gotouial Congress which met at Sydney purports to give the resolutions of the on the 12th June to consider the colonial policy for the restriction of Chinese immigration. The first resolntion is intended to be the justification of those colonies which recently adopted extreme measures to keep out the Chinese, and of those other colonies who desire that a stringent restriction policy should be adopted. This is declared to be necessary to the welfare of the Australian Colonies and no doubt we shall find, when full reports of the proceedings come to hand, that the claptrap fears of Australia becoming made full use of. we said re-province of " Mongolia" have been cently, and as the Saturday Review said in the extract which we published yesterday, the whole movement against the Chinese in Australia is uothing but a Trades-Union movement against cheap Chinese labour. There has been a dull season in trade in late years in Australia, as in every other part of the world, many hundreds of working men have been out of employment in the cities and large towns, and they naturally look with apprehension on the prospect of severe competition from the Chinese in their various handicrafts. The working men have at least a controlling power in the Colonial constituencies, and politicians who wish to sit in tke Assemblies and share in the sweets of office are obliged to fall in with their dis-Tike or hatred of the competing Chinese. Probably, also, other classes, who have little or no sympathy with the anti-Chinese movement, help it with their silence and abstention from opposition to it. There are matters, such as those connected with the squatting and land laws, which might become awkward for capitalists if they were seriously made hustings questions, and hence it is thought judicious to allow the extreme democracy to occupy itself with the Chinese immigration. This explains the silence of those Colonists who we are told look with contempt upon the whole movement, and are ashamed of the manner in which their Governments and public men have acted. And the latter, caring only for their places are oblivious of the injury which may be done to several rising industries from the want of the cheap labour which such a people as the Chinese alone can supply The Sydney Con; ands over the negotiations which will be necessary to obtain its objects to the Imperial Government, and will consider the joint presentations to that Government which may be necessary for obtaining the desired diplomatic action. The Con-fan legislation on the subject should was of opinion that the Austra-
apply to all Chinese, with certain speci-fed exceptions, and a note to the telegram says that the Bill for carrying out this policy will exclude from its operations Chinese accredited to the Colonies on any special mission, and the crew of any vessel landing only in the discharge of their duties, amd power is given to the Government to exempt any Chinese who may be regarded as worthy of consideration. The influx of Chinese will in future be on the smallest scale if legislation in the Colonies follows on the lines of these resolutions. Steamers are only to be allowed to bring to Australian ports one Chinese passenger to every 500 tons of the ships' burden, so that the vessels by which the trade between Hongkong and the Colonies has been conducted will only be able to take from two to three passengers each trip. This is absolute prohibition, and is so severe that like other extreme legislation it may be expected to become obsolete in a very short time. There are wealthy and worthy Chinese merchants at the Australian ports, whose families going from China to the Colonies might not be able to travel together in consequence of this provision, and these merchants might not be able to travel by the steamers with the assistants and attendants they required. As it stands, the restriction is to severe as to expose the Colonists to ridicule. So, too, are the regulations as to individual Chinese passing from one Colony to another; if they do so without a permit from the Colony which they enter, they will be subject to six months' imprisonment.
is evident from what has transpired in Parliament that the Government will adopt the views of the Colonies in the main. They will no doubt endeavour to get some of the resolutions modified so as to make them less unpalatable to the Chinese Government, supposing it to take serious objections to the proposals, on which we have as yet no information. The Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies stated in the House of Commons that the Colonial Office, this should no doubt be the Foreign Office, which alone could act in the matter, was willing to negotiate with China, and that the Government had no antagonism towards the attitude taken up by the Colonies. This was, however, said before the Sydney Conference had met, but it no doubt indicates the line which Lord Salisbury will take. Lord Derby, the leader of the Liberal Unionists in the House of Lords, said that the Government had no option in the matter and that the Colonists must please themselves, while Lord Kimberley, as representing the Gladstonians, only hoped that interests would not be overlooked and that the Government would seriously consider the relations of the country with China. It was doubtless reference to these that the Times said that the treaties of Nanking and Peking are absolutely incompatible with the enactment passed by the New South Wales Assembly. But we do not see that either the Treaty of Nanking or the Peking Convention of 1860, contains provisions with which the exclusion of Chinese from the Colonies is incompati=: ble. Article I of the Nanking treaty says that the respective subjects of-\England and China shall enjoy fail security and protection for their property and persons within the dominion of the other, which is renewed and confirmed by the treaty of Tientsin, Article Vides that Chinese will be allowed to of the Convention of Peking pro-
(emigrate to British Colonies and that {they shall be protected in emigrating. But there is no Treaty under which the right of the Chinese to, enter any British possession can be claimed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.