The United States should never surrender the power to protect its own citizens and to say who should come here and who should not. I think this mistake was made in attempting to guard against what was a notorious and manifest evil. Chinese were imported as coolies here. We had been legislating against the cooly trade. Chinese were taken to other countries as coolies. In the Burlingame treaty an effort was made to stipulate against that cooly trade. which they deny is practiced now. and probably it is not in that aggravated sense in which it was carried on in exporting Chinese. I say the cooly trade is not in operation between the United States and China to the same extent that it was between China. the West Indies. and South America. But the fifth article of the Burlingame treaty provided against what both parties recognized as an illegal traffic in coolies. as follows: