Irth June.
In the interesting letter from Washington which we printed yesterday morning, our correspondent expressed in reference to the anti-Chinese bill that has just passed Congress the sentiments that every generous American must feel, unless he is running for office and believes that his success depends on his conciliating the last close of voters. The absolute exclusion bill proposed by Mr.
and by' the House of Representatives was rejected by the Senate, but a bill was substituted for it which has passed both Houses of Congress and been signed by the President, which is only a little less harsh and unjust than the Geary bill. It provides "that all Chinese labourers not legally entitled to residence in the country at the time of its passage shall be removed to China; that when arrested they must furnish affirma~ tive proof of their right to remain in the States; that no bail shall be allowed in habeas corpus cases; and that all labourers must within 'a year obtain certificates of their right to remain on the evidence of at least one white witness." Thus the law does not leave the unfortunate Chinese labourer alone until some informer comes forward to deny his right to remain in tle country; the law takes on itself the odious role of general informer, and all Chinese labourers must go who cannot prove on the evidence of at least one white witness that they have a right to remain. And this is done to exclude less than a hundred thousand men from a population of some sixty-three millions. There are in all the United States only about 110,000 Chinese, and certainly not a hundred thousand of these are labourers, at whom this new exclusion bill is directed.
The New York Nation, in its latest issue received, has two very ertnent notes on the passage of this bill. "Senator Shermay," it says, "fought to the eud against the barbarous spirit manifested by the majority of both branches of Congress... He refused to sign the report of the Committee of Conference, taining that he fully sympathised with popular feeling against the free introduction of Chinese labour: ers but that he regarded the provision requiring every Chinaman now legally here to take out a certificate, under penalty of removal from the country, as in jain violation of the existing treaty with hina. Representative Hitt was equally outspoken against the report of the Conference Committee in the House. But, of course, arguments were without avail, for the majority of both parties seem to believe that it is right to trample upon a treaty' so long as it is a treaty with Chinamen. Two-thirds of the Senate voted to sustain the report of the Conference Committee, and the House concurred. by the overwhelming vote of 185 yeas to 28 nays, And we are sending missionaries to convert the Chinese to such Christianity as this!" Tt is worth while recalling the terms of the existing "immigration treaty between China and the United States, signed at Peking on the 17th of november, 1880: " Chinese labourers who are now in the United States shall be allowed to go and come of their own free will and accord, and shall be accorded all the rights, privileges, immunities and exemptions which are accorded to the citizens and subjects of the most favoured nations." American citizens in China, equally with Englishmen and the men of other countries, depend for the security of life and property on the faithful observance of treaties by the Chinese, and yet the Congress and President of the United States deliberately violate their treaty with China without apparent compunction.
But to return to the Nation: "The passage and signing of the Chinese clusion Bill came in very pat with the missionary meeting of the Methodist. General Comference at Omaha on Friday, and the occasion was not lost for addressing some very plain words to the pin who passed the law and the President who approved it. And it is to be remembered hat the Methodist speakers simply expressed the sentiments of all the religious bodies in the country. The others will no doubt be equally outspoken on the subject when they come to pass upon it officially, The assertion made at Omaha that "our mission in China is gravely inipeded by this law' is just as true of Presbyterian and Congregationalist: and Baptist missions as it is of Methodist. This sect may have been a little more impetuous and unparliamentary than Mr. Harrison's own denomination will be in referring to the matter, yet there are thousands of Presbyterians who will agree with the utterance of Dr. Edwards: ' This is a sop to the steerages of the vessels that are being unloaded at the Battery. It is a political question, and that is why our noble Senators and our most unimpeachable President complete the iniquitous proceedings.' When a Senator, Mr. Harrison spoke and voted on the Chinese question like a civilised man. As candidate for the Presidency, he had to repudiate the most: honourable part of his record. As candidate for renomination, he has to put his name to a law which is in flagrant violation ofa treaty, which was properly described by an excited Methodist at the coiference as an outrage on civilisation' and which, moreover, will subject hundreds of Americans in China to the gravest perils."
Tt was no doubt: some undefined fear of these perils that induced our correspondent to say: "It is to be hoped
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.