hibits absolutely all transportation of Chinese laborers under whatever pretext or in whatever way "to be held to service or labor;" but expressly excepts, however, from its prohibition all free and voluntary emigration of any Chinese subject, provided a permit or certificate is procured from a consul, or consular agent, containing name and setting forth the fact of such voluntary emigration. This act also extends the provisions of the act of February 22, 1847, regulating carriage of passengers in merchant vessels. This wise and humane legislation effectually broke up all the flagitious coolie traffic in American vessels, and prevented its extension to this country.

In 1866 the Chinese government, hitherto opposed to emigration, consented to allow it under certain restrictions and conditions in a convention primarily made between the Chinese, British, and French authorities, but extended and applied to all American traffic. This convention furnishes the fullest and wisest protection to the emigrant in leaving China, in his transportation, in his labor and wages abroad, and in his return home, that perhaps governmental interposition and supervision can secure.

Further, the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, and the fourteenth amendment declaring who shall be citizens and prohibiting any abridgment of the privileges or immunities of citizens, or the denial by any State "to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of its laws," while opposed to all introduction of Chinese which shall be subject to oppression or any kind of servitude, yet in their general tendency and effect are protective and favorable to immigration. The State legislation which oppressed the Chinaman by excluding him from our courts as a witness or as a party except as a delinquent or a culprit, was annulled by these humane ordinances of the General Government.

Nor can we reasonably expect that any new governmental action will be interposed to hamper or hinder this emigration. The Chinese government will not in any rational probability reverse its whole tendency to a free intercourse with foreign nations which has so wonderfully characterized its course for the last thirty years. By the treaty with Great Britain, of August 29, 1842, to which it was constrained after an unsuccessful resistance, and by that of 1844 with the United States, ports were opened for foreign trade that had hitherto been entirely closed; and in the Anglo-French invasion of 1858 treaties were wrung from the Chinese government that effectually demoralized their old wall of exclusiveness, and that mark a new epoch in its history. It had now learned that there were mightier powers, a better civilization, higher intelligence, more advanced arts, a richer culture every way among the long despised barbarians; and it now began to seek a freer intercourse and traffic with the western nations, and also to further the introduction of their arts and sciences. It is apparent that America is with the Chinese the favorite country, preferred before all the other western nations. It has been always made to share in all the privileges accorded to other nations, and besides has secured for itself special preferences. The singular honor was conferred on an American to introduce China into the circle of civilized nations, and establish a permanent diplomatic intercourse. The imperial college, instituted in Peking, to instruct the Chinese in foreign science and arts, is placed under the presidency and general management of an American scholar and philanthropist. Although such a revolution from the old exclusiveness of China and hatred of foreigners might naturally be expected to occasion here and there outbursts of opposition among a people characteristically conservative and jealous of change, there cannot reasonably be anticipated any such reversal of the new policy as shall work a hinderance to the current of emigration to this country.

Nor should we anticipate any such hinderance from our own people. To oppose this immigration by legislation, direct or indirect, would be to contradict all the antecedents of our history and the characteristic spirit and sentiment of our people, never more emphatically and decisively pronounced than in the last few years. The principle of no caste has been finally adopted and established in America, as it has ever prevailed in China. So long, accordingly, as we invite to our shores all in Europe who would improve their condition, we must keep unobstructed the channels of immigration from Asia. Certainly we cannot retrace our steps by breaking up in the interest of exclusiveness the treaty with China, ratified by the United States Senate, July 16, 1868, which guarantees reciprocity of rights in regard to trade, residence, and educa tion.

POLITICAL BEARINGS OF THE IMMIGRATION.

Nor can any reasonable opposition arise from any quarter. We have nothing to fear from a migration of Chinese that shall be left open and be unobstructed except by those general checks which Providence ordains shall rise of themselves to moderate whatever is impetuous and excessive in the movements of the race, in regard to any pernicious effect such a migration might have on our political integrity, and purity. We are to bear in mind in estimating this political effect that the Chinese are, as already observed, properly still in the family stage of development, and have not yet attained the proper spirit of nationality. The Chinaman on his arrival in this country accordingly manifests little disposition to enter into our political life. Thus, al

though by the unjust legislation of California, he is subjected, if he engages in mining, to an onerous tax, from which he would be exempt simply on condition of becoming naturalized or declaring his intention to become a citizen, it is not known that he has ever availed himself of this mode of obtaining exemption. At this germinal stage of the migration, then, there is no ground to apprehend a dangerous incursion of Chinese voters, even if partisan zeal should here and there override or evade the legislative safeguards to naturalization and admission to citizenship. We need only to look forward to that stage, which may indeed be near at hand, when the Chinaman, satisfied that he can be secure in family settlements, shall bring over his ancestral memorials and fix himself permanently in the country. In estimating the possible evils from such an inundation of Chinese voters in the future we must bear in mind that the Chinaman, who, in his own land, is a stranger to the social inequalities which feudalism so firmly rooted in European civilization, comes to us in hereditary sympathy with the political equality which is the glory of our land. He comes habituated in all his past life to feel that the high places in government are, out of the imperial circle at least, open to all alike-to the most obscure or to the most eminent in social conditionand are reached only by long training and the most exact and thorough competitive examinations; that political distinction comes surely and solely to merit, carefully and impartially ascertained.

INDUSTRIAL OPPOSITION TO IMMIGRATION.

More formidable, if not more unreasonable, is the opposition to the free admission of the Chinese that may spring from industrial interests. This opposition has already manifested itself in loud denunciations against the cheapening of labor threatened in such a large influx of foreigners. Doubtless this hostility, which has been active and violent in some quarters, has operated as a partial check, rather indirectly than directly, to immigration. But it should be borne in mind in estimating the force of this opposition that, as being against all reason, it cannot be either lasting or very effective. It comes chiefly from men who have themselves profited by their free admission to the open hospitalities of the land, and so with an exceedingly ill grace. It is against nature, against the spirit of our people and all its antecedents, against the true interests of our national prosperity. It is but another form of the old narrow-minded hostility to the introduction of labor-saving machinery. We acknowledge its own unreasonableness in the unsoundness of the reasons it urges. To cheapen production is not necessarily to cheapen labor. The substitution of machinery and of animal force for human labor has ever worked, in the long run, to the benefit of the laborer, as it has both cheapened the cost of the necessaries of life and also opened fields of more remunerative employment. The allegations of ignorance and incompetency are disproved by the successful competition of the Chinese in every department of industry, in navigation, in mining, in railroad construction, in agriculture, in superintending machinery, in the family occupations of the laundry and the kitchen, in the common mechanic arts, as of shoemaking and tailoring, and also in mercantile employments. If, indeed, the Chinaman were no more intelligent than a brute, there is no more reason for opposing his importation than for opposing the importation of camels. If he be in truth a man, and brings intelligence and reason with his manual force, there is certainly still less ground of objection.

This industrial opposition, which is not a legitimate outgrowth of our national spirit, and is essentially selfish and short-sighted, can work save only locally and exceptionally. The very laborer who has ignorantly been led away into the fiercest hostility to Chinamen willingly accepts them when they come to do the more menial work and drudgery of his own calling. In this way, in fact, we see how the difficulty disappears; how the labor problem is to be quickly solved. The Chinaman takes the lower place, the more repulsive, the less remunerative work, to the glad relief of the white man, who is thus lifted to a higher plane of social condition. In solving this problem it must not be forgotten that the Chinaman is just as eager to improve his condition as any other man; just as earnest to obtain the largest remuneration possible, and, accordingly, just as earnest to keep up the rewards of labor to the highest mark.

This industrial opposition to the immigration of the Chinese must hence be regarded as against all reason and the true interest of our people, and consequently as only temporary and ineffectual. Combinations to resist the employment of the Chinese have in fact been forced to give way after the briefest struggle, and the momentary damming up has been followed by a larger, freer flood.

DANGER FROM INTRODUCTION OF PAGANISM.

Still another check may be apprehended from those who tremble at the thought of the introduction among our people of so much paganism and superstition. The existence of idolatry, or of ignorance and immorality, is certainly an evil to be deplored anywhere. But it is not diminished in amount by being simply transported to other

shores; and if it can be here more readily encountered and remedied, the truly philanthropic moralist and Christian will not object to its coming to us. Certainly there is little danger of its infecting our native population; little danger of its spreading at all among us. Who ever heard of an American convert to Chinese Buddhism? We do hear of conversions from our own people to Mormonism; yet a flood of ignorant, fanatical Mormons from the dregs of European life is pouring in upon us, and swelling the pool of Mormon organized society, with no disturbance of pious tranquillity and confidence. But it is proved that the Chinaman easily drops off his superstitions and his idolatries. He readily puts himself under Christian tuition; he freely accepts Christian teaching. No class of people offers so hopeful a field of Christian labor as the Chinese among us. They are without difficulty gathered into Sunday schools; they receive without cavil Christian instruction; they become Christian converts; they enter with true Christian zeal into the work of spreading the truth among their countrymen, both here and in their own land. An enlightened philanthropy and piety should, hence, rather encourage than hinder their coming among us. That the Christian civilization and culture of this country is to array any opposition to the free influx of the Chinese is, therefore, not to be anticipated.

This rapid survey of the causes which may be thought to work as serious checks to the free immigration from China shows that direct opposition and hinderance will probably effect little; the effective checks will lie in the want of facilities for transportation and in the ordinary hinderances to removing of households and to procuring of satisfactory employment. It is reasonably to be anticipated that in the future more comparatively will arrive with the purpose of permanent residence. The past successes of employers will invite to other arrangements for Chinese labor on railroads, in manufactories, in mines, on plantations, and for household service. The success, too, of the Chinese agricultural enterprises for the production of silk and cotton and tea will lead to the multiplication of these enterprises; and all such permanent locations of Chinese communities will invite immigrants. The increased intercourse between those that are here and friends at home will naturally facilitate emigration. Every view indicates a steady and rapid increase, while yet no facts or reasons in the case enable us to fix any limits to the immigration within hundreds of thousands a year. It is to this possible, not to say most probable, vastness of the element with which we have to deal that both political and philanthropic policy and effort should be addressed.

II. RESULTS TO BE ARRIVED AT.

This incoming element, then, which must either greatly hamper or greatly help our national prosperity, which, perhaps we should say, must either overwhelm and smother, or immeasurably enlarge and enrich our political and social life, is to be controlled, not checked; and we cannot too carefully and steadily keep before us the definite end to which all the particulars of this control should be directed. It is, in a proper sense perhaps of that expression, but a high peculiar sense, to be utilized. It is to be utilized after the laws of its own nature-after the principles of rational freedom in the most exact reciprocity of duty and privilege. It is to be assimilated to our own life and incorporated into it. The thorough Americanization of this new element is the comprehensive result which all political and individual endeavors in regard to them should seek. It is to be assimilated to the highest, completest form of our civilization, as intelligent, free, Christian.

It will prove a terrible pest and bane if it be allowed to have a place in our social system only as a foreign element, as fungous or parasitic, China has never known caste; America knows it no more. The institutions of both countries alike repel and abominate it. Only the greed or the tyranny of individuals, or of communities among us, can, and then only in spite of our fundamental laws and in audacions resistance to them, make a servile class of these immigrants; and the true way to prevent this result is not to stop back the stream, but arrest the iniquity that would poison it. Full and exact equality of social duty and privilege is the fundamental principle of all true and wise policy in the treatment of immigrants to our shores. The indispensable condition of our highest national well-being is the organic membership of all the races, all the kindreds, all the families, all the individuals dwelling among us, so that each shall minister and be ministered to, nourish and be nourished by, all the rest-one common pulsation beating through every element in our system.

Nor need any alarm be taken from outcries against the horrors of "amalgamation" and "miscegenation." These are mere bug-bears, invented by political cunning to frighten silly men, who do not understand that the freedom of our life and institutions assures, in the main, that social connections and alliances will be between parties best suited to each other, and therefore that public morality and decency will not be shocked by unseemly unions. At all events, history shows that whatever evil of this kind may arise, it is sporadic and exceptional, and can only be aggravated by governmental interference.

Chinese civilization has much that is in common to what is peculiar to American as distinguished from European civilization. Its principles of social equality, as before alluded to, its submission to law and authority rather than to hereditary and personal rule, its love of home and family, its requirement of universal education, its enforcement of political responsibility, are true American principles; and fresh importations will but help to overthrow and exterminate what of hostility to the free working of these principles the feudal and out-of-door life of European society has introduced among us. The characteristic vices of Chinese life are rather moral and religious than political, as their superstition, their idolatry, their gambling propensities, their love of opium, which last vice, it should be remarked, is but of recent introduction and of limited extent, forced, in a sense, upon them by foreign cupidity and power against their established laws. These vices are not to be kept out by a futile attempt to stop the providentially-ordered intercourse between nations, but to be cured by suitable moral means. Most certainly it would be very unwise to oppose their spread by closing the channels of intercommunication between members of our own political body. Fusion, rather than fencing and walling into separate fields, is the true result which wisdom prescribes.

This thorough incorporation into our common national life involves some particulars of policy which it may not be amiss to specify.

THE ADOPTION OF THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE.

The citizens of this country should speak the same language incorruptly. Diversity of dialects may possibly consist with a certain national unity and integrity; it is certainly ever a hinderance to it. The thoughts and sentiments of a people to be in accord and sympathy, to be healthful and nourishing in the fullest extent, must flow in and out, to and from the different parts, through the channel of a single dialect. A pure, incorrupt English should be held forth as the indispensable attainment of every American citizen. Any corruption of our noble speech by foreign dialectic intermixtures, any patois, should be everywhere and by every means discountenanced and opposed. It is gratifying to learn that the Chinese immigrant shows no proclivity in himself to that miserable jargon called Pigeon-English. In North Adams he has nothing of it, knows nothing of it, desires nothing of it.

On the other hand, and positively, no more efficient means of assimilating foreigners to our manners, our institutions, our national life, than the learning, the reading, the speaking our language habitually; than the habitual admission of all thoughts and sentiments, and the habitual utterance of them through the common speech of American life.

ADOPTION OF AMERICAN DRESS AND HABITS.

In common with the foreign dialect, the foreign dress and all the personal habits which are foreign to our manners should be replaced by such as are properly American. Every conspicuous badge of alienism should be avoided. It is one of the favorable prognostics of the experiment at North Adams that the American dress is adopted so far as taste and comfort dictate. The fact indicates how far the treatment which the stranger receives at our hands may keep him from that isolation which is betrayed by the foreign dress and speech; how far that isolation, where it exists, is attributable to the social atmosphere into which he is brought.

ADOPTION OF AMERICAN HOMES.

A thorough American domestication is to be sought. The family life, as has been stated, is the predominant characteristic of the Chinese. The love and reverence paid among them to parents and to ancestors, the religious sentiments that they are trained to cherish toward the home of the family should be provided with the opportunities of gratification. They should be guided and helped to homes in America, where all the sacred relics of the departed may be securely and permanently enshrined, where the strong family feeling may be indulged and cherished. The low, narrow superstition that defies this worthy domestic disposition is to be eliminated by lifting and enlarging the filial sentiment from the earthly to the heavenly Father, so that the piety which rightly and naturally begins, and is fostered toward the natural parent, shall develop into a love and reverence for the eternal and supreme. There will be difficulty in this at the start. Work on railroads and in mines, and first employment in factories and in private households, must, of course, hinder separate establishment in dwellings. But certainly the settling down in families in the midst of native Americans, so that all the neighborhood intercourse of common life shall be in a fully American atmosphere, must have an influence in Americanizing that cannot be too highly estimated. Most earnestly to be deprecated is the isolation of foreigners, and especially of Chinamen into separate villages, towns, or wards. The testimony is that the Chinaman is not more clannish than other men; but it is purely natural that common origin,

common estrangement in regard to the land of their adoption, common dialect, should breed common sympathies, and should draw together. Thorough and complete Americanization is, however, hindered by all such isolation.

As the man is fashioned in the training of the child, and as the spirit of the nation is shaped in the family, it is of the first importance that not only the family life be maintained and protected, but also in order to the completest fusion that this family life be impregnated by the true American spirit, and be sliaped after a pure American and Christian pattern. The family spirit which so characterizes the Chinaman should not be eradicated and supplanted, but only elevated and expanded.

ADOPTION OF AMERICAN MANNERS.

In like manner a full initiation into the peculiar social usages and manners of American life, so far, at least, as worthy, is to be desired, as also a free introduction into the vast diversity of our arts and occupations, as likewise into our religious usages and habits. Into this whole social life, this new element may bring in something that will liberalize, expand, enrich, as well as purify and elevate our manners; but it should be carefully grafted into the fundamental principles and spirit of our social order and economy, and not root itself and grow up a distinct and isolated growth.

ADMISSION TO CITIZENSHIP.

Finally, on the broadest, surest grounds of a true and wise policy, the Chinaman should be brought to a free participation in our political life. Intelligence and morality, indeed, should be the conditions of political rights and privileges; but such conditions only as are accorded to others should be imposed on him. His wonted training and spirit, as already observed, do not predispose him to seek political privileges, rather to shun them. He, therefore, needs no unusual checks. He is to be nationalized in his feelings and views, his characteristic family spirit being expanded into the proper love of country as the characteristic filial spirit rises and swells into reverence for the Divine Father of all. This is the only safe result for him, as for the country. The sordid calculations of political partisanship will doubtless often prompt to strong opposition to the naturalization of the Chinaman, perhaps sometimes seek to effect it too hastily, and with too much disregard of settled limitations and safeguards. The dangers of the too free admission of foreigners to citizenship will be as much exaggerated in the one case as underrated in the other. The one safe, desirable course is, under suitable limitations and conditions of intelligence, morality, time of residence, and the like, to bring in all that dwell among us into the full exercise of all political rights, and the corresponding participation in all political burdens and responsibilities.

III.-METHOD OF ATTAINMENT.

To the question, now, how such thorough assimilation of this foreign element to American life after its highest type is best to be accomplished, all the facts in the case point to the answer: By education under a right popular sentiment.

This right popular sentiment in regard to the whole Chinese question is indispensable even to much success in any educational effort, for this must itself spring from an enlightened, philanthropic feeling, and be guided and sustained by this feeling, while all educational endeavors may be effectually prostrated by a strong popular sentiment arrayed in hostility, and bent on oppression or extermination. It is most important, therefore, that the public mind be carefully and accurately informed in respect to all the facts and principles involved in this question. It should be lifted above the low, mean selfishness which vitalizes the caste spirit in every form, whether industrial or political. It should be familiarized with the lofty, worthy views that are inspired at once by that superintending providence which has brought the swelling tide of population onward till it has reached our waiting continent, that it may spread over its wastes a reclaiming, regenerating life; and also by that noble spirit of philanthropy which from the first has extended a hand of welcome to all the oppressed and crushed from other lands. It is a necessity that drives to us from overcrowded China, a necessity that it is folly to struggle against. The overflowing waters will, must, find their resting-place. They threaten no harm, if a judicious, efficient, and timely guidance be given them. They can be so controlled and influenced as to nourish and foster every good interest, and immensely augment our true prosperity and well-being. The one fundamental condition is that the Chinaman, as he comes among us, be treated as a man; as having the same rights, as he has the same natural endowments, as ourselves; in the free reciprocation of all human sympathies and courtesies; and, especially, in the true spirit of a pure Christian philanthropy, that shall generously seek to elevate and bless him. The cost of prohibitory measures and of oppressive legislation will greatly exceed that of an effective philanthropic effort to Americanize and Christianize; while such unworthy policy must necessarily bring in influences pernicious