A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 8, part 3: Grover Cleveland, First Term

by Grover Cleveland

In 1886, as appears in the documents heretofore referred to, the Chinese foreign office had formally proposed to our minister strict exclusion of Chinese laborers from the United States without limitation, and had otherwise and more definitely stated that no term whatever for exclusion was necessary, for the reason that China would of itself take steps to prevent its laborers from coming to the United States.

In the course of the negotiations that followed suggestions from the same quarter led to the insertion in behalf of the United States of a term of "thirty years," and this term, upon the representations of the Chinese plenipotentiary, was reduced to "twenty years," and finally so agreed upon.

Article II was wholly of Chinese origination, and to that alone owes its presence in the treaty.

And it is here pertinent to remark that everywhere in the United States laws for the collection of debts are equally available to all creditors without respect to race, sex, nationality, or place of residence, and equally with the citizens or subjects of the most favored nations and with the citizens of the United States recovery can be had in any court of justice in the United States by a subject of China, whether of the laboring or any other class.

No disability accrues from nonresidence of a plaintiff, whose claim can be enforced in the usual way by him or his assignee or attorney in our courts of justice.

In this respect it can not be alleged that there exists the slightest discrimination against Chinese subjects, and it is a notable fact that large trading firms and companies and individual merchants and traders of that nation are profitably established at numerous points throughout the Union, in whose hands every claim transmitted by an absent Chinaman of a just and lawful nature could be completely enforced.

The admitted and paramount right and duty of every government to exclude from its borders all elements of foreign population which for any reason retard its prosperity or are detrimental to the moral and physical health of its people must be regarded as a recognized canon of international law and intercourse. China herself has not dissented from this doctrine, but has, by the expressions to which I have referred, led us confidently to rely upon such action on her part in cooperation with us as would enforce the exclusion of Chinese laborers from our country.

This cooperation has not, however, been accorded us. Thus from the unexpected and disappointing refusal of the Chinese Government to confirm the acts of its authorized agent and to carry into effect an international agreement, the main feature of which was voluntarily presented by that Government for our acceptance, and which had been the subject of long and careful deliberation, an emergency has arisen, in which the Government of the United States is called upon to act in self-defense by the exercise of its legislative power. I can not but regard the expressed demand on the part of China for a reexamination and renewed discussion of the topics so completely covered by mutual treaty stipulations as an indefinite postponement and practical abandonment of the objects we have in view, to which the Government of China may justly be considered as pledged.

The facts and circumstances which I have narrated lead me, in the performance of what seems to me to be my official duty, to join the Congress in dealing legislatively with the question of the exclusion of Chinese laborers, in lieu of further attempts to adjust it by international agreement.

But while thus exercising our undoubted right in the interest of our people and for the general welfare of our country, justice and fairness seem to require that some provision should be made by act or joint resolution under which such Chinese laborers as shall actually have embarked on their return to the United States before the passage of the law this day approved, and are now on their way, may be permitted to land, provided they have duly and lawfully obtained and shall present certificates heretofore issued permitting them to return in accordance with the provisions of existing law.