Speech #490064467

I hope that it may be brought to a vote at this sitting and without a very prolonged debate. certainly I shall occupy but a very brief time. It came in my way as Secretary of State early to take up for deliberate and responsible consideration the relations between this country and its Government and the Chinese population here and the Chinese Government. I then formed the opinion that the interests of the United States required that Chinese immigration. as it was called. really presented no conformity with. in fact no similarity to. the immigration that we have been hospitable to through the whole history of this country. and which I hoped. so far as my opinions went. would never be changed. Without insisting upon the traits of this discrimination to which I have adverted. I formed the opinion that the coming of the Chinese as they were here and as they were expected to be if the country was still open to them. was more properly the condition of importation or of invasion than of immigration. I have therefore from the beginning and have acted from the beginning on the opinion that the arrangements existing under the former treaties ought to be changed. and took the lead therefore in a commission that brought about the treaty of 1880. That treaty still left remaining in this country the Chinese population that had come here under the Burlingame treaty. and the question therefore was of the right acquired by this Government to regulate the condition of the Chinese here. how that was properly to be administered in conformity with the concession and the terms found in the new treaty.