Speech #470032464

And I fear. sir. that we of the Pacilie coastwiIl yet regret that we ever consented that this treaty might be finally conslinItated. But. like drowning men who catch at anything which proilises the possibility of escape from peril. we were unwilling to ittake opposition to this treaty. fearing that nothing better might be obtained iu any reasonable time. and also hoping that legislation under its provisiols might be so fralIed as to check the tide of Chinese imuigration to our coast until snh time as the morbid and U nnatural. though prevailing. craze about theuniversal brotherhood of itan might il some tdegree subside and wiser counsels prevail. What was needed was the assertion authoritatively of our absolute right to control this immigration il our own way and in our own good tiinetho assertion of our right to terminate Chinese iiniigration absolutely and tnconditionally when and as we please. and above and over all the assertion of our right as a nation to do jIust what China has always done under the Burlingame treatyas respects citizeis of the United States traveling or residing in China. and that is the right to prohibit Chinese residing or traveling in the United States frotm igaging il any of the labor avocations of the country. That is what was needed and what should have been insisted upon. lind if we had had a foreign policy worthy a nation of fifty million people it is wlat would have been exacted. not as a concession from China but as a right belonging to us as a people and nation and as inlering to our sovereignty. It is humiliating to ai American to read this later treaty and find from its termis and provisions that the United States is placed in the attitude of a recipient of favors from the hands and ty the gracious benignity of tie imperial Government of China. as if this country was a dependency.