Speech #470047617

The President tells you that. in his judgment. it is not in conformity with the treaty. The Senate was evenly divided on that subject. On the question whether the suspension of immigration should be ten or twenty years I was paired with my colleague. when a single vote would have reduced the suspension to ten years. On the first proposition stated by the Chinese minister you have the concurrence of onehalf the Senate. you have the opinion of the President of the United States. you have a very large vote in the House of Representatives. all against this term of twenty years suspension. We should consider that this provision is based upon a treaty yielded cheerfully to us by the Chinese Government at a time when we were under treaty obligation to allow the subjects of China to come here as freely as the people of any other nation or any other country. Upon your representation to them that this embarrassed you. that in created trouble in a portion of the country. they made with you. at your request. a sew treaty. by which you expressly stipulated that yea would not prohibit this immigration. but would only regulate it and limit it. Then they went on. accordingto the papers shown here in this docuet. and stated to you what they rteant by that. what they meant to agree to by the words of the treaty. that XlII---164 is. that you must fix the number that should come. that no more should come in any one year in future than had come in the past. that in the aggregate it should not exceed a fixed number that you might name. They illustrate what they meant by the power to limit and suspend in the very negotiation of the treaty. and they tell us now that this substantial prohibition for twenty years under peculiar circumstances is not . reasonable exercise of the powers granted by that treaty.