against the service where of necessity a large number of officers are brought together. If lack of zeal is found in many sections of the country on this subject, it is because the people are never brought in contact with the evils, the abuses, and the corruptions which are well known to exist at points where the patronage is large, and where consequently many citizens are struggling for place.

No reform in the civil service will be valuable that does not release members of Congress from the care and the embarrassment of appointments; and no boon so great could be conferred upon senators and representatives as to relieve them from the worry, the annoyance, and the responsibility which time and habit have fixed upon them in connection with the dispensing of patronage, all of which belongs under the Constitution to the Executive. On the other hand the evil of which President Harrison spoke the employment of the patronage by the Executive to influence legislation -is far the greatest abuse to which the civil service has ever been perverted. To separate the two great Departments of the Govern ment, to keep each within its own sphere, will be an immeasurable advantage and will enhance the character and dignity of both. A non-political service will be secured when Congress shall be left to its legitimate functions, when the President shall not interfere therewith by the use of patronage, and when the responsibility of appointments shall rest solely with the Department to which the Organic Law of the Republic assigns it.

The rapid settlement of California, stimulated as it was by the discovery of gold, attracted a considerable immigration from China. Industrious and patient laborers, the Chinese were found useful to the pioneers; and they received for their work a degree of compensation many fold greater than they had ever realized in their native land, yet far below the average wages of an American laborer. The treaty relations between China and the United States, negotiated originally by Caleb Cushing in 1844 and afterwards by William B. Reed in 1858, did not contemplate the immigration into either country of citizens or subjects of the other. But in 1868 the treaty negotiated by Mr. Seward as Secretary of State and Mr. Burlingame, acting ast Minister Plenipotentiary for China, recognized the right of the citizens of either country to visit or reside in the other, specially excluding in both, however, the right of naturalization.

Upon Mr. Seward's urgent request the following stipulation was inserted in the Fifth Article of the Treaty: "The high contracting parties join in reprobating any other than an entirely voluntary emigration. . . . They consequently agree to pass laws making it a penal offense for citizens of the United States or Chinese subjects to take Chinese subjects either to the United States or to any 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 foreign country without their free and voluntary consent respectively."

The treaty was negotiated in Washington on the 28th of July, 1868; but the ratifications were not exchanged until November, 1869. Fear of the evils that might result from it followed so closely upon its conclusion that General Grant, in his first annual message (December, 1869), gave this warning: "I advise such legislation as will forever preclude the enslavement of Chinese upon our soil under the name of coolies, and also to prevent American vessels from engaging in the transportation of coolies to any country tolerating the system." In his message of December, 1874, the President recurred to the subject, informing Congress that "the great proportion of the Chinese emigrants who come to our shores do not come voluntarily to make their homes with us or to make their labor productive of general prosperity, but come under contracts with head men who own them almost absolutely. In a still worse form does this apply to Chinese women. Hardly a perceptible percentage of them perform any honorable labor, but they are brought here for shameful purposes, to the disgrace of the communities where they are settled and to the great demoralization of the youth of those localities. If this evil practice can be legislated against, it will be my pleasure as well as duty to enforce any regulation to secure so desirable an end." In his message of December, 1875, he again invited the attention of Congress to "the evil arising from the importation of Chinese women, but few of whom are brought to our shores to pursue honorable or useful occupations."

These repeated communications to Congress by the President were based upon accurate information furnished from California, where the condition of Chinese immigrants had created grave solicitude in the minds of leading citizens. So serious, indeed, had it become in the view of the people of California, that the Legislature of that State, in January, 1876, memorialized Congress in favor of a modification of the treaty with China, for the purpose of averting the grave evils threatened from immigration - carried on against

the letter and spirit of the treaty. Before appealing to Congress California had attempted the accomplishment of this end through laws of her own; but the Supreme Court of the United States had decided that the subject was one within the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress, and hence the State could do nothing to protect itself against what a large majority of its citizens regarded as a great danger. On the 20th of April, 1876, Mr. Sargent of California submitted a resolution, asking the Senate to "recommend to the President to cause negotiations to be entered upon with the Chinese Government to effect such change in the existing treaty between the United States and China as will lawfully permit the application of restrictions upon the great influx of Chinese subjects to this country." A few days later Mr. Sargent addressed the Senate at length on the whole subject of Chinese immigration in California, and presented in full detail the grievances of which the people on the Pacific Coast complained.

The Senate, reluctant to take at once so decisive a step as was involved in Mr. Sargent's resolution, adopted a substitute, moved by Mr. Morton of Indiana, directing that "a committee of three senators be appointed to investigate the character, extent, and effect of Chinese immigration to this country." It was afterwards enlarged by being changed into a joint committee with the addition of two members from the House. Mr. Morton of Indiana, Mr. Sargent of California, and Mr. Cooper of Tennessee were the senatorial members; Mr. Piper of California and Mr. Meade of New York were the Representatives on the joint committee. The Committee made a thorough examination of the question, visiting California and devoting a large part of the Congressional recess to the duty. Their report embraced a vast amount of information touching the Chinese immigrants in California, their religion, their superstitions, their habits, their relations to the industrial questions, to trade and to commerce. A large number of the reports were printed but nothing further was done for the session.

In the succeeding Congress, the first under President Hayes, the subject was kept alive in both branches, in the first and second sessions, by the introduction of bills and resolutions; but no conclusions were reached until the last session. Early in December (1878) a bill was introduced by Mr. Wren of Nevada, "to restrict the immigration of Chinese into the United States," and was referred to the Committee on Education and Labor. It was reported to the House

by Mr. Willis of Kentucky on the 14th of January, and on the 28th, after brief debate (maintained in the affirmative by the California members and in the negative principally by Mr. Dwight Townsend of New York), the bill was passed by ayes 155, noes 72, considerably more than two-thirds voting in the affirmative.

The bill called forth prolonged debate in the Senate. The senators from California (Mr. Booth and Mr. Sargent), Mr. Thurman, Mr. Mitchell of Oregon, and Mr. Blaine, took the leading part in favor of the bill; while Mr. Hamlin, chairman of the Committee on Foreign relations, Mr. Conkling, Mr. Hoar, and Mr. Stanley Matthews, led in opposition. The bill passed the Senate by ayes 39, noes 27. The principal feature of the measure was the prohibiting of any vessel from bringing more than fifteen Chinese passengers to any port of the United States, unless the vessel should be driven to seek a harbor from stress of weather. The bill further requested the President to give notice to the Emperor of China of the abrogation of Articles V. and VI. of the Burlingame treaty of 1868. A large portion of the debate was devoted to this feature of the bill, — the contention on one side being that fair notice, with an opportunity for negotiation, should be given to the Chinese Government, and on the other, that as the treaty itself contained no provision for its amendment or termination, it left the aggrieved party thereto its own choice of the mode of procedure.

The argument against permitting Mongolian immigration to continue rested upon facts that were indisputable. The Chinese had been steadily arriving in California for more than a quarter of a century, and they had not in the least degree become a component part of the body politic. On the contrary, they were as far from any assimilation with the people at the end of that long period as they were on the first day they appeared on the Pacific Coast. They did not come with the intention of remaining. They sought no permanent abiding-place. They did not wish to own the soil. They built no houses. They adhered to all their peculiar customs of dress and manner and religious rite, took no cognizance of the life and growth of the United States, and felt themselves to be strangers and sojourners in a country which they wished to leave as soon as they could acquire the pitiful sum necessary for the needs of old age in their native land. They were simply a changing, ever renewing, foreign element in an American State. They were ready to work at a rate of wages upon which a white man could not subsist and support a

family. Theirs was in all its aspects a servile labor,- one which would inevitably degrade every workman subjected to its competition. To encourage or even to permit such an immigration, would be to dedicate the rich Pacific slope to them alone and to their employers — in short, to create a worse evil in the remote West than that which led to bloody war in the South. The number at home was great. The cost of landing a Chinaman at San Francisco was less than the cost of carrying a white man from New York to the same port. The question stripped of all disguises and exaggerations on both sides, was simply whether the labor element of the vast territory on the Pacific should be Mongolian or American. Patriotic instinct, the sense of self-preservation, the importance of having a thorough American sentiment dominant on the borders and outposts of the Republic, all demanded that the Pacific coast should be preserved as a field for the American laborer.

President Hayes vetoed the bill rather upon the ground of its abrogation of a treaty without notice, than upon any discussion as to the effects of Chinese labor. He did not doubt that the legislation of Congress would effectually supersede the terms of the treaty, but he saw no need for a summary disturbance of our relations with China. Upon the communication of the veto to the House a vote was taken thereon without debate; and upon the question of passing the bill despite the objections of the President, the ayes were 110, the noes 96. A considerable number of gentlemen who voted for the bill on its passage had meanwhile changed their views, and they now voted to sustain the veto. Among the most conspicuous of these were Mr. Aldrich of Rhode Island, Mr. Abram S. Hewitt of New York, Mr. Blair of New Hampshire, Mr. Landers of Indiana, and Mr. Townsend of Ohio. Finding his veto sustained by Congress, President Hayes opened negotiations with the Chinese Empire for a modification of the treaty. To that end he dispatched three commissioners to China, gentlemen of the highest intelligence, adapted in every way to the important duties entrusted to them, James B. Angell, President of Michigan University, also appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to China, John F. Swift of California, and William Henry Trescot of South Carolina. They negotiated two treaties ; one relating to the introduction of Chinese into the United States, and one relating to general commercial relations. Both treaties were ratified by the Senate, and laws restricting the immigration of Chinese were subsequently enacted.