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 constituents 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 passed 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 Constitutions 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 assert 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 asserting 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 classed, 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 God'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 compass 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 passed, 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 constitutional 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 classes and all Senators, whatever ways of thinking they have, to do what seemed to them for the benefit of labor, the quality of the citizenship of this country, in a moderate and constitutional fashion.
"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 class 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 entitled to be recognized everywhere they go on the face of the earth as the equals of every other man."
I do not think any man ever hated more than I have hated the affectation or the reality of singularity. I know very well that the American people mean to do right, and I believe with all my heart that the men and the party with whom I have acted for fifty years mean to do right. I believe the judgment of both far better than my own. But every man's conscience is given to him as the lamp for his path. He cannot walk by another light.
It is also true that the great political principles which have been in issue for the last thirty years, have been, in general, those that have been debated for centuries, and which cannot be settled by a single vote, in a legislative body, by the result of a single election, or even by the opinion of a single generation. In nearly every one of what I am sorry to say are the numerous instances where I have been compelled to act upon my judgment against that of my own party, and even against that of the majority of my own countrymen, the people have subsequently come around to my way of thinking, and in all of them, I believe, I have had on my side the opinion of the great men of the great generations of the past. Certainly the Chinese Exclusion Bill and the Chinese Treaty; the Spanish Treaty and the War against the Philippine people could not have lived an hour before the indignation of the American people at any time from the beginning down to the time when, in 1876, they celebrated the centennial of their Independence.