A letter from F. A. Bee, Chinese Consul, approving the management of the estate, accompanied the report of the referee:
“Mr. President, I will not detain the Senate by reading the abundant testimony, of which this is but the sample, of the possession by the people of this race of the possibility of a development of every quality of intellect, art, character, which fits them for citizenship, for republicanism, for Christianity.
“Humanity, capable of infinite depths of degradation, is capable also 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 keep 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 ring us to shame, to weakness, and to peril.”
On the 3d of March the debate was renewed. Senator Farley protested that unless Chinese immigration is prohibited it will be impossible to protect the Chinese on the Pacific coast. The feeling against them now is such that restraint is difficult, as the people, forced out of employment by them, and irritated by their constantly increasing numbers, are not in a condition to submit to the deprivations they suffer by the presence of a Chinese population imported as slaves and absorbing to their own benefit the labor of the country. A remark of Mr. Farley about the Chinese led Mr. Hoar to ask if they were not the inventors of the printing press and of gunpowder. To this question Mr. Jones, of Nevada, made a brief speech, which was considered remarkable, principally because it was one of the very few speeches of any length that he has made since he became a Senator. Instead of agreeing with Mr. Hoar that the Chinese had invented the printing press and gunpowder, he said that information he had received led him to believe that the Chinese were not entitled to the credit of either of these inventions. On the contrary, they had stolen them from Aryans or Caucasians who wandered into the kingdom. Mr. Hoar smiled incredulously and made a remark to the effect that he had never heard of those Aryans or Caucasians before.
Continuing his remarks, Mr. Farley expressed his belief that should the Mongolian population increase and the Chinese come in contact with the Africans, the contact would result in demoralization and bloodshed which the laws could not prevent. Pig-tailed Chinamen would take the place everywhere of the working girl unless Congress extended its protection to California and her white people, who had by their votes demanded a prohibition of Chinese immigration. Mr. Maxey, interpreting the Constitution in such a way as to bring out of it an argument against Chinese immigration, said he found nothing in it to justify the conclusion that the framers of it intended to bring into this country all nations and races. The only people the fathers had in view as citizens were those of the Caucasian race, and they contemplated naturalization only for such, for they had distinctly set forth that the heritage of freedom was to be for their posterity. Nobody would pretend to express the opinion that it was expected that the American people should become mixed up with all sorts of races and call the result “our posterity.” While the American people had, in consequence of their Anglo-Saxon origin, been able to withstand the contact with the African, the Africans would never stand before the Chinese. Mr. Maxey opposed the Chinese because they do not come here to be citizens, because the lower classes of Chinese alone are immigrants, and because by contact they poison the minds of the less intelligent.
Mr. Saulsbury had something to say in favor of the bill, and Mr. Garland, who voted against the last bill because the treaty had not been modified, expressed his belief that the Government could exercise properly all the powers proposed to be bestowed by this bill. Some time was consumed by Mr. Ingalls in advocacy of an amendment offered by him, proposing to limit the suspension of immigration to 10 instead of 20 years. Mr. Miller and Mr. Bayard opposed the amendment, Mr. Bayard taking the ground that Congress ought not to disregard the substantially unanimous wish of the people of California, as expressed at the polls, for absolute prohibition. The debate was interrupted by a motion for an executive session, and the bill went over until Monday, to be taken up then as the unfinished business.
On March 6th a vote was ordered on Senator Ingalls’ amendment. It was defeated on a tie vote—yeas 23, nays 23.
The vote in detail is as follows:
Yeas—Messrs. Aldrich, Allison, Blair, Brown, Cockrell, Conger, Davis of Illinois, Dawes, Edmunds, Frye, Harris, Hoar, Ingalls, Jackson, Lapham, McDill, McMillan, Mitchell, Morrell, Saunders, Sewell, Sherman and Teller—23.