(3.) Finally, as if to supply the last term required to complete our relationship for all possible service to the Chinese race, as if to openly designate and summon us to the office of aiding its emergence into a new life, especially of ministering to it the holy faith, (which is the best gift we have to impart, the one secret and source of our happier lot,) for us and for us alone, of all Protestant Christendom, by bringing to our soil, to the presence of our institutions, to our church doors, a multitude of Chinese people themselves, God provided the condition of personal contact. That was the rounding and perfection of our opportunity.
But, it will naturally be inquired, is not whatsoever exceptional advantage gained for us in the past mostly annulled by the later and recent record of social and political hostility here at home, which stands against us in our account with China? I think not.
The shameful truth is, China is wonted to the ill-treatment of her subjects on foreign Christian soil, and if we have furnished no exception to the rule, our outrage has been milder than she is accustomed to; so that, after all that has happened to wound her feelings here, there still remains to us the benefit, though it is nothing, I repeat, to be proud of, of comparison with worse doers.
ADVANTAGES OF THE ANTI-CHINESE AGITATION.
I am glad to pass to a pleasanter topic, and to remark next, that there are certain incidental consequences of the anti-Chinese agitation, and, as well, certain circumstances felicitously contemporaneous with it, that have operated to offset and countervail the injury which that agitation may be supposed to have inflicted on our relation with China—that have done more than that.
First, it has developed and brought out into expression a vastly preponderant public opinion adverse to the whole movement. The argument for it has been heard and canvassed, and not without sympathy; for it was presented by our own countrymen, and it was not to be questioned that they were in a measure of honest difficulty of some sort with the matter they brought to trial. But I think it is entirely true to say that the event of the discussion has been that the argument is answered. It did not stand as to its facts. I believe that all the main counts of the indictment against Chinese emigration and Chinese emigrants we severally disproved to the public satisfaction.
But beside this aspect of the case, and to a great extent independently of it, the judgment asked for, viz., the adoption of the policy of exclusion, was considered. Whereupon it appeared that it was the proposal of an act no less serious, no less forbidden, than to disown and repudiate a principle, the maintenance of which more than any other thing distinguishes us as a nation, which our fathers built into the foundation of our government, which we have always advocated to the world in every publishment of our political creed—a principle which we have ever claimed to be one of natural right, which we have persistently endeavored, from the outset of our national existence, to persuade other governments to recognize as such, and which we had particularly emphasized in the very treaty of which this act, if consented to, would be the violation. It appeared, furthermore, that it was a proposal that we take toward China the very attitude which we had helped force China out of, as towards ourselves and other nations, i. e., that we borrow a page of cast-off Chinese politics and insert it in our law—that it was a proposal to return from the nineteenth to the eleventh century, and convert to the use of a modern free republic something in the likeness of a medieval edict against the Jews; that, finally, it was a proposal to go back upon ourselves, to revoke our own most recent step of advance in civilization, and restore that doctrine of race discrimination, which we had lately put away.
And when this was seen, the country said, No! Legislature, chamber of commerce, institutions of learning, benevolent organizations, united in the protest. The general voice was, that whatever evil there was to be remedied must be dealt with in some other way. A Congressional committee, indeed, brought in a report not warranted by the evidence it had heard, favorable to the policy of exclusion—the lamented Morton dissenting—and Congress itself passed the anti-Chinese bill. But that was Congress, which has reasons of its own for what it does sometimes, not very mysterious in this instance. But the report for the people, which the people with little distinction of party gratefully and audibly accepted, was made by President Hayes in his strong veto.
Of course the Chinese Government, through its representatives at Washington, is accurately informed of all this; and besides, the Chinese Government reads the papers. Thus an attempt which, had it succeeded, would have destroyed our friendship with China, has not only failed, but has been the occasion of such an expression of the national sentiment of good-will toward her as never had been made before, and as could not have been made otherwise.
A minor but very much to be noted result of the affair has been the disclosure of the actual state of things in California. It has shown how and where the anti-Chinese movement started, how low its origin was and how it grew, by what means, by what management it drew into it such respectable elements as it did; that it was fomented by the press operating in the field of State politics—that it was mainly a worked-up irrational furor kindling by contagion, and did not really signify what it seemed to. It was shown that much of the best part of California was not in it. Why, the evidence for the defence on which the country, balancing it with the other evidence heard, found its verdict aforesaid, was, all of it, the evidence of California men—men from the first rank of citizenship. It transpired that there was in California a not inconsiderable party on the poor Chinaman’s side, not forbearing to denounce and oppose the violation of his rights, and to testify in his favor, that much as had been said and done there against him, a good deal in the name of Christian benevolence and humanity and justice had been said and done for him. And so in the upshot of the public trial of the case it has come about that the offence of California is mitigated by it.