Part 47 (1/2)
He meant to vote against the pa.s.sage of the bill over the veto. But when he heard my vote for it, he saw that I was bringing down on my head a storm of popular indignation, and made up his mind that he would not throw the weight of his example on the side against me. So, contrary to his opinion of the merits of the bill, he came to my side, and voted with me.
I suppose a good many moralists will think that it is a very wicked thing indeed for a man to vote against his convictions on a grave public question, from a motive like this, of personal friends.h.i.+p. But I think on the whole I like better the people, who will love Mr. Dawes for such an act, than those who will condemn him. I would not, probably, put what I am about to say in an address to a Sunday-school, or into a sermon to the inmates of a jail or house of correction. I cannot, perhaps, defend it by reason. But somehow or other, I am strongly tempted to say there are occasions in life where the meanest thing a man can do is to do perfectly right. But I do not say it. It would be better to say that there are occasions when the instinct is a better guide than the reason. At any rate, I do not believe the recording angel made any trouble for Mr. Dawes for that vote.
CHAPTER IX CHINESE TREATY AND LEGISLATION
Much of what I have said in the preceding chapter is, in substance, applicable to my vote on another matter in which I had been compelled to take an att.i.tude in opposition to a large majority of my own party and to the temporary judgment of my countrymen: that is the proposed legislation in violation of the Treaty with China; the subsequent Treaty modifying that negotiated in 1868 by Mr. Seward on our part, and Mr. Burlingame for China; and the laws which have been enacted since, upon the subject of Chinese immigration. I had the high honor of being hung in effigy in Nevada by reason of the report that I had opposed, in secret Session of the Senate, the Treaty of 1880.
My honored colleague, Mr. Dawes, and I were entirely agreed in the matter. Mr. Dawes complained good-naturedly to Senator Jones, of Nevada, that he had been neglected when the Nevada people had singled me out for that sole honor, to which Mr.
Jones, with equal good-nature, replied that if Mr. Dawes desired, he would have measures taken to correct the error, which had inadvertently been made.
In 1868 the late Anson Burlingame, an old friend of mine and a man highly esteemed in Ma.s.sachusetts, who had been sent to China as the American Minister in Mr. Lincoln's time, was appointed by the Chinese Government its Amba.s.sador, or Envoy, to negotiate treaties with the United States and several European powers. He made a journey through this country and Europe, travelling with Oriental magnificence, in a state which he was well calculated to maintain and adorn. It was just after we had put down the Rebellion, abolished slavery, and made of every slave a freeman and every freeman a citizen.
The hearts of the people were full of the great doctrines of liberty which Jefferson and the Fathers of our country had learned from Milton and the statesmen of the English Commonwealth.
The Chinese Treaty was concluded on the 28th of July, 1868, between Mr. Seward and Mr. Burlingame and his a.s.sociate Plenipotentiaries Chih-Kang and Sun Chia-Ku. It contained the following clause:
”The United States of American and the Emperor of China cordially recognize the inherent and inalienable right of man to change his home and allegiance, and also the mutual advantage of free migration and emigration of their citizens and subjects respectively from one country to the other for purposes of curiosity, of trade, or as permanent residents.”
Article VII. of the same Treaty stipulated that citizens of each power should enjoy all the privileges of the public educational inst.i.tutions under the control of the government of the other, enjoyed by the citizens or the subjects of the most favored nation, and that the citizens of each might, themselves, establish schools in the others' country. Congress pa.s.sed an Act, July 27, 1868, to a like effect, to which the following is the preamble to the first section:
”Whereas the right of expatriation is a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and whereas in the recognition of this principle this government has freely received emigrants from all nations, and invested them with the rights of citizens.h.i.+p; and whereas it is claimed that such American citizens, with their descendants, are subjects of foreign states, owing allegiance to the governments thereof; and whereas it is necessary to the maintenance of public peace that this claim of foreign allegiance should be promptly and finally disavowed: Therefore,” etc.
Thereafter, in the first term of the Administration of President Hayes, in the December Session of 1878, a bill was introduced which, almost defiantly, as it seemed to me, violated the faith of the country pledged by the Burlingame Treaty. There had been no attempt to induce China to modify that Treaty.
I resisted its pa.s.sage as well as I could. But my objection had little effect in the excited condition of public sentiment.
The people of the Pacific coast were, not unnaturally, excited and alarmed by the importation into their princ.i.p.al cities of Chinese laborers, fearing, I think without much reason, that American laboring men could not maintain themselves in the compet.i.tion with this thrifty and industrious race who lived on food that no American could tolerate, and who had no families to support, and who crowded together, like sardines in a box, in close and unhealthy sleeping apartments.
I supposed that the labor of this inferior cla.s.s would raise the condition of better and more intelligent laborers. That, however, was a fairly disputable question. But I could not consent to striking at men, as I have just said, because of their occupation. This bill was vetoed by President Hayes, who put his objections solely upon the ground that the bill was in violation of the terms of the existing Treaty. The House, by a vote of 138 yeas to 116 nays, refused to pa.s.s the bill over the veto.
But in 1880 a Treaty was negotiated, and approved by the Senate and ratified July 19, 1881, which relieved the United States from the provisions of the Burlingame Treaty, and permitted the exclusion of Chinese laborers. I made a very earnest speech, during a debate on this Treaty in Executive Session of the Senate, in opposition to it. The Senate did me the honor, on the motion of Mr. Dawes, of a vote authorizing my speech to be published, notwithstanding the rule of secrecy.
But one Senator from the Pacific coast complained, I think with some reason, that I was permitted to publish my argument on one side when he not only was not permitted to publish his on the other, but his const.i.tuents had no means of knowing that he had defended his views or made proper answer to mine.
So I thought it hardly fair to make by speech public, and it was not done.
Later, in the spring of 1882, a bill was pa.s.sed to carry into effect the Treaty of 1880. That I resisted as best I could. In opposition to this bill I made an earnest speech showing it to be in conflict with the doctrines on which our fathers founded the Republic; with the principles of the Const.i.tutions of nearly all the States, including that of California, and with the declarations of leading statesmen down to the year 1868. I showed also that the Chinese race had shown examples of the highest qualities of manhood, of intelligence, probity and industry. I protested against a compact between the two greatest nations of the Pacific, just as we were about to a.s.sert our great influence there, which should place in the public law of the world, and in the jurisprudence of America, the principle that it is fitting that there should be hereafter a distinction in the treatment of men by governments and in the recognition of their right to the pursuit of happiness by a peaceful change of their homes, based, not on conduct, not on character, but upon race and occupation; by a.s.serting that you might justly deny to the Chinese what you might not justly deny to the Irish, that you might justly deny to the laborer what you might not deny to the idler. I pointed out that this declaration was extorted from unwilling China by the demand of America; and that laborers were henceforth to be cla.s.sed, in the enumeration of American public law, with paupers, lazzaroni, harlots, and persons afflicted with pestilential diseases. I ended what I had to say as follows:
”Humanity, capable of infinite depths of degradation, is also capable of infinite heights of excellence. The Chinese, like all other races, has given us its examples of both. To rescue humanity from this degradation is, we are taught to believe, the great object of G.o.d's moral government on earth.
It is not by injustice, exclusion, caste, but by reverence for the individual soul that we can aid in this consummation.
It is not by Chinese policies that China is to be civilized.
I believe that the immortal truths of the Declaration of Independence came from the same source with the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount. We can trust Him who promulgated these laws to keep the country safe that obeys them. The laws of the universe have their own sanction. They will not fail. The power that causes the compa.s.s to point to the north, that dismisses the star on its pathway through the skies, promising that in a thousand years it shall return again true to its hour and keeps His word, will vindicate His own moral law.
As surely as the path on which our fathers entered a hundred years ago led to safety, to strength, to glory, so surely will the path on which we now propose to enter bring us to shame, to weakness, and to peril.”
The Statute then enacted, expired by its own limitations twenty years afterward. Meantime the prejudice against Chinese labor had modified somewhat. The public had become somewhat more considerate of their rights and, at any rate, there was a desire to maintain some show of decency in legislating the matter. So a more moderate Statute was enacted in 1902. I was the only person who voted against it in either House.
It was, of course, clear that resistance was useless. It was not worth while, it seemed to me, to undertake to express my objections at length. I contented myself with the following brief remonstrance:
”Mr. President, I think this bill and this debate indicate a great progress in sentiment.The sentiment of the country has pa.s.sed, certainly so far as it is represented by a majority of the Senate, the stage, if it ever was in it, of a reckless seeking to accomplish the result of Chinese exclusion without regard to const.i.tutional restraints, treaty obligations, or moral duties. There was in some quarters, as it seemed to me, in olden times, a disregard of all these restraints, certainly in the press, certainly in the harangues which were made to excited crowds in various parts of the country. Among others I can remember a visit of the apostle of Chinese exclusion to Boston Common which indicated that spirit.
”Now, that has gone largely, and the Senate has discussed this question with a temperate desire on the part of all cla.s.ses and all Senators, whatever ways of thinking they have, to do what seemed to them for the benefit of labor, the quality of the citizens.h.i.+p of this country, in a moderate and const.i.tutional fas.h.i.+on.
”But I cannot agree with the principle on which this legislation or any legislation on the subject which we have had in the country since 1870 rests. I feel bound to enter a protest.
I believe that everything in the way of Chinese exclusion can be accomplished by reasonable, practical and wise measures which will not involve the principle of striking at labor, and will not involve the principle of striking at any cla.s.s of human beings merely because of race, without regard to the personal and individual worth of the man struck at. I hold that every human soul has its rights, dependent upon its individual personal worth and not dependent upon color or race, and that all races, all colors, all nationalities contain persons ent.i.tled to be recognized everywhere they go on the face of the earth as the equals of every other man.”