Mr. Tsui to Mr. Blaine.
Washington, May 5, 1892. (Received May 5.)
Sir: I learn from the reports of the proceedings of the Congress that the bill concerning the Chinese, about which I have written and talked with you, has finally been passed by that high body, and I am told that it only remains for it to secure the name of his excellency the President to become a law of this country. I have already protested to you against it as a violation of the treaty of 1880, and I now want to make use of the privilege which is secured to me by Article 4 of that treaty, to bring the matter to your notice in the most urgent manner that I can, and ask you to lay what I have to say before his excellency the President before he shall act upon the bill which has just passed the honorable Congress.
In the notes which my predecessor and I have sometime ago sent to your Department we have shown how the Scott bill, passed by the Congress of 1888, was a clear violation of the treaty of 1880. Your own silence on the subject must be understood to be a recognition that what we have charged is true. In fact, your own Supreme Court has admitted that. Now, the Congress, in the bill which has just been voted, has a provision that this bad law shall be kept in force.
But this bill does even worse injury than the Scott law. In its section 5 it denies to Chinese the right of bail in habeas corpus suits. One of the honorable Senators, who, I have heard, is a very fine lawyer, stated in the Senate that this section “was inconsistent with one of the fundamental principles of justice that exists in China, America, and everywhere where God reigns.” You must agree with me, Mr. Secretary, that it violates sections 2 and 3 of the treaty of 1880.
Section 6 of the bill makes it necessary for all Chinese laborers to get a certificate from the collector of internal revenue to entitle him to remaim in the country. The collector may give it to him if he wants to, and if he does not want to the Chinese must leave the country, as there is no method provided to compel the collector to do justice to the Chinese laborer. If a Chinese is arrested for not having a certificate he must [Page 150] prove by a white man that he is entitled to be in the country, and as the first law prohibiting Chinese laborers coming to the country was passed just ten years ago, the laborer must find a white man who knew him on or before 1882. The laborer who is now in Washington City, or Texas, most likely lived in California in 1882. He must go to California and see if he can find a white man who knew him ten years ago, and return with the evidence to the place where he now lives. One of the Senators from Texas said that Chinese in his State would have to travel 500 miles to find a collector to give the certificate, and he would have to take a white witness with him. In pointing out some of these difficulties, the Senator from Connecticut said that the law practically meant that all the Chinese laborers now in the United States would have to depart within a year and leave their possessions and their property, and in some instances their families. And the honorable chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs said the same thing, and he compared this provision of the law to some of the regulations of the old slavery times before the great war which you fought to get rid of slavery; and he said, also, that it was precisely like the ticket-of-leave practice of the Australian convicts.
The same section permits a Chinese to be arrested without any warrant or authority, and then he is required to prove his innocence before the court. I do not claim much knowledge of American law, but I had supposed that in all good and just governments a man had to be proved guilty before he could be punished. And I see that in the discussion of this bill Senators who have been educated as lawyers, and understood your laws, have declared that such a provision is contrary to all your law imnciples and practice and denounced it as “unquestionably an act of barbarous legislation.”
These are some of the objectionable provisions of this bill which is now before his excellency the President. I could point out others, as they have been mentioned by honorable Senators, but it is a waste of your time for me to do so, as both the President and you are so much better informed than I am as to the law principles which govern your country, and which have made it one of the most enlightened nations of the world. It only remains for me to direct your attention to the stipulations of articles 2 and 3 of the treaty of 1880, and to ask you and his excellency the President to see how plainly section 6 of the bill now before the President violates those stipulations.
In the unanswered note of my predecessor to your Department, dated January 26, 1889, the circumstances under which the treaty of 1880 was negotiated are told, and I beg you to have the President read that note. (See Senate Ex. Doc. 41, Fifty-first Congress, first session, p. 5.) This action of my Government in making the treaty of 1880 at the particular request of your Government, as well as its conduct at other times, led one of your predecessors, Mr. Evarts, to say in the Senate that China has always made whatever treaty stipulations and changes the American Government ever asked, and had always been most conciliatory in its negotiations. Under such a state of relations I can not understand why the honorable Congress should be so hasty to pass laws which violate the very treaty which your Government asked China to make, and I can not believe that the enlightened Chief Magistrate of this great country will join with the Congress in such treaty violation by approving this bill. Relying upon you, Mr. Secretary, to use your powerful influence to prevent such a sad event, I improve this occasion to assure you of my highest consideration.