Speech #520047673

I remember there was a very determined opposition to the bill. based upon the high ground that this country is the asylum and the refuge and the home of all peoples. We who favored then the restriction of the Chinese maintained. as we maintain now. that the exclusion of the Chinese from this country is no violation of that wellestablished and honored rule. We also maintained that rigid and strict rules may be enacted touching the immigration of people not of the same class as the Chinese. if we sa* fit. The question of the immigration of a class of people who are entirely different from ours. a class of people with whom we can have no social relations and with whom our people can not and will not amalgamate. preseats. in my judgment. a very different question from that which is presented even when we come to consider the undesirable immigration of persons from foreign countries who are of our family. We can assimilate with the most objectionable classes that come here from Europe. they become in a few years a part and parcel of the American citizenship. and we shall find in one or two generations at most a homogeneous people in language. in sympathy. in feeling. and in taste. possibly not altogether in religion. but in all those things that go to make a harmonious peopie and that induce coherence and peace within the borders of a nation. there will be no distinction between the children of the immigrant of today and the children of the immigrant of 200 years ago.