Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

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 friendship. 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 attitude 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 Massachusetts, who had been sent to China as the American Minister in Mr. Lincoln's time, was appointed by the Chinese Government its Ambassador, 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 associate 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 institutions 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 passed 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 citizenship; 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 passage 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 principal cities of Chinese laborers, fearing, I think without much reason, that American laboring men could not maintain themselves in the competition 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 class 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 pass the bill over the veto.