A Chinaman is supposed to regard his tail in a religious light, but those who have dispensed voluntarily with them in California, do not seem by any means to have placed themselves without the pale of society.
Some of them adopt the European costume, and patronise patent leather boots and gold watch-chains. I remember a very beautiful drawing, I think by Allom, of the “Feast of Lanterns� in China; the same festive day is observed at San Francisco, and if the accompanying sketch of two Americo-Chinese, celebrating this fête, on hired hacks, is less picturesque than the drawing alluded to, it is none the less a faithful delineation of the appearance of civilised Celestials.
All the Chinamen of San Francisco are fond of riding out on these feast days, and in whatever costume they may be, they invariably pursue one mode of horsemanship, that is, to ride at full gallop, shouting or screaming, and then to tumble off into the sand or mud, the last act being involuntary. There is no doubt that these people are excellent colonists as regards their own interests, for they have learnt the first art of colonisation, a systematic obedience to a chief, and wherever they go, they quietly submit to the code of discipline established among themselves, and submit even when this authority is abused, by the imposition of taxes and extortions, by their own head men. Part of Sacramento Street is entirely occupied by Chinese retail merchants, and it is similar in appearance to the Old Bazaar at Hong-Kong. Immediately a ship arrives in port with Chinese emigrants, these are taken in charge by the head men, and are supplied with stores and packed off to the mines, with great precision and regularity, there to pay a tax to these self-constituted chiefs as long as they are in the mines.
I have already alluded to the existence of a combination of three or four of the most powerful of the Chinese merchants, which being discovered, was interfered with ineffectually by the police. Now I have no doubt that this clique of wealthy Chinese not only supply the Chinese emigrants, as aforesaid, looking to their labour in the mines for a profit, but that they also invest money in chartering ships to bring the poorer classes of their nation to California, thus exercising a monopoly in the gold fields.
Much has been said and argued relative to checking by law the Chinese emigration to California, and believing, as I do, from such facts as I could gather, that this system of private taxation is on the increase, I wonder at the forbearance that has hitherto been shown by the authorities. “Live, and let live,� is a capital creed, properly carried out, but when the mines of California are overrun with bands of poor fishermen, whose profits serve to enrich a clique, and these latter remove the money from the country as fast as they collect it, the principle is an unfair one, injurious to the country, and antagonistic to the principles which have made it a free state as regards black slavery.
An instance of the power these head men attempt to exercise came under my notice, for whilst staying with an English friend in the suburbs of San Francisco, there arrived one day a carriage, from which a gorgeously dressed “John� emerged. He stated in tolerable English that he was a “lawyer,� and that he had come for a Chinese woman who, for many years, had been in my friend’s service, and who, he said, had complained of being confined against her will. The woman had saved a large sum in wages, and could speak no language but her own, but she resolutely declined to go when an interpreter was procured. The Celestial lawyer was consequently well kicked for his pains, and departed, but we had no doubt that all that was wanted of the old woman was the money she had saved, and it was fortunate for her, that her master was a Hong Kong merchant, and knew something of the wiles of John Chinaman.
Much has been said, also, at home here, relative to the conversion of the Chinese, and no one would more gladly see this brought about than myself, provided it is done with Chinese money.
The Chinaman is highly intelligent, inventive, laborious and patient, be he where he will, but he is ever avaricious; it may or may not be that those are right who, knowing something of his character, hold that he would worship any god if thereby he can better worship mammon;[21] but I confine my opinion to this, that it is time enough to build colleges for the Chinese, when we have suitably provided for the instruction of our own ignorant poor, and until this is done, I humbly submit, with every respect for the Missionaries among the Heathen, that every sixpence that leaves our country for the conversion of the Chinese, is an injustice to those at home, whose claims upon our charity ring daily in our ears, with a truth that ought to be more forcible than the energetic appeals that are raised for John Chinaman, but which unfortunately is not always so.
Never doubting that it is our first duty as a Christian nation to disseminate those truths that come from an inspired source, why should we, under the influence of a false sympathy, strive to do for the Chinese what so many of our own people yet require. The Chinese have an advantage over many of our lower classes; they are intelligent and reflective, and have Confucian maxims daily brought even in the highways before their notice, that enjoin most of the social duties that render man’s life more in accordance with the Divine wish. Morally at least, the Chinaman is cared for; and although a heathen, ignorant in this respect he cannot be said to be. Let him therefore, for the present, study from gilded sign-posts the Confucian maxims that ordain him to be charitable, honest, and reverent to his parents; and let us first instil these commands given from a holier source to those around us who have never heard them, who could not read them if they were written up, and who are too ignorant, too poverty-stricken, and too much at war with the life that has entailed nothing but misery upon them, to accept them even as truths, until they first see charity in a more substantial form. This done,[22] we may build colleges for the Chinese, in a full hope that He who has ordained us to love our brother, may bless the work of CONVERSION.