This view of the Chinese Government, so completely in harmony with that of the United States, was by my direction speedily formulated in a treaty draft between the two nations, embodying the propositions so presented by the Chinese foreign office.
The deliberations, frequent oral discussions, and correspondence on the general questions that ensued have been fully communicated by me to the Senate at the present session, and, as contained in Senate Executive Document O, parts 1 and 2, and in Senate Executive Document No. 272, may be properly referred to as containing a complete history of the transaction.
It is thus easy to learn how the joint desires and unequivocal mutual understanding of the two Governments were brought into articulated form in the treaty, which, after a mutual exhibition of plenary powers from the respective Governments, was signed and concluded by the plenipotentiaries of the United States and China at this capital on March 12 last.
Being submitted for the advice and consent of the Senate, its confirmation, on the 7th day of May last, was accompanied by two amendments which that body ingrafted upon it.
On the 12th day of the same month the Chinese minister, who was the plenipotentiary of his Government in the negotiation and the conclusion of the treaty, in a note to the Secretary of State gave his approval to these amendments, "as they did not alter the terms of the treaty," and the amendments were at once telegraphed to China, whither the original treaty had previously been sent immediately after its signature on March 12.
On the 13th day of last month I approved Senate bill No. 3304, "to prohibit the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States." This bill was intended to supplement the treaty, and was approved in the confident anticipation of an early exchange of ratifications of the treaty and its amendments and the proclamation of the same, upon which event the legislation so approved was by its terms to take effect.
No information of any definite action upon the treaty by the Chinese Government was received until the 21st ultimo—the day the bill which I have just approved was presented to me—when a telegram from our minister at Peking to the Secretary of State announced the refusal of the Chinese Government to exchange ratifications of the treaty unless further discussion should be had with a view to shorten the period stipulated in the treaty for the exclusion of Chinese laborers and to change the conditions agreed on, which should entitle any Chinese laborer who might go back to China to return again to the United States.
By a note from the chargé d'affaires ad interim of China to the Secretary of State, received on the evening of the 25th ultimo (a copy of which is herewith transmitted, together with the reply thereto), a third amendment is proposed, whereby the certificate under which any departing Chinese laborer alleging the possession of property in the United States would be enabled to return to this country should be granted by the Chinese consul instead of the United States collector, as had been provided in the treaty.
The obvious and necessary effect of this last proposition would be practically to place the execution of the treaty beyond the control of the United States.
Article I of the treaty proposed to be so materially altered had in the course of the negotiations been settled in acquiescence with the request of the Chinese plenipotentiary and to his expressed satisfaction.