Speech #500119472

There may occur changes of opinion. changes of interest. and caprice. if you please. of a domestic motive and a domestic application that will incline a government not to exchange ratificationA Sometimes a President may consider it for the welfare of the country to refuse a ratification. sometimes. when the government have committed themselves thus fully. they may regard that refusal on his palrt as not consistent with his duty to the country though it is within his power. but when ratifications are not exchanged then there is no treaty. There is no dilficulty about that. But here the transaction is of a legislative power intervening. interrupting. preventing the courtesy and amity and equality between nations. which thus rudely interrupts the action of the lbreign power without any public refison having arisen whatever. and the foreign nation thus interrupted in deliberation over what apparently was a sincere and deliberate proposition of treaty is notified "we prefer to take into our own law the changes in your treaties that we had held out to you might be accomplished with your concurrence and with the preservation of amity and mutual respect." and the foreign nation. whether it be feeble or great. whether it be connected with our European system of civilization and of commerce. or whether it confronts us as the great Asiatic power and the great Asiatic industry that confronts us across the Pacific sea. with being a great commercial Pacific Ocean nation nearer to the Orient and the Ind. that has been sought and followed after for the wealth to be gained from it for a thousand years. What. then. is there in our past relations that would thus be rudely jostled if they -be not actually abrogated and annulled? They were of the most friendly nature. There has not been an approach that this Government has made to China in our domestic interests. in the questions of our polity. the questions of our naturalization. and the questions of immigration. that the great nation confronting us has not met us in the most conciliatory and the most yielding attitude. We made a treaty of great importance. ratified and concluded by an exchange of ratifications in 1859. by which a vast improvement was made in our relations with China. and it took the place of the former somewhat fragmentary condition in which we stood to them. Everything there was of concession and of advantage to our trade. our citizens. our religious faith. our missionaries. and yet every one of these concessions and arrangements was a departure from the settled polity and policy of thousands of years.