Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-03-18

nOE human DSIIit1S, SllA MY A4'y 49, ~
Frank Pixley as their authority, that dis
tinguished anthropologist having expressed
his opinion that a Chinaman has no soul,
and being evidently quite proud of the
observation, since he recently quoted it in
triumphant and aelf-satisfed way, in one
of his letters to the ArgoHam.
Our New England friends, however, will
find that the exclusion of the Chinese is
very different matter from the condemna-
ton of slavery, and though they are per-
haps too firmly welded to their universal
brotherhood doctrine to renounce it openly,
they have only to vote for the bill now
before the House to provide the means Of
convincing themselves that their hypoth-
esis is not working one. Indeed, when
the venerable doctrine they esteem so
highly is reduced to vulgar practice, and
is assailed by such arguments as the Dem
ocrats used to employ in connection with
slavery, they are certain to be embarrassed.
The question used to be put: g Would
"you like your daughter to marry ne
"gro ?'-and it always made the people to
whom it was addressed very angry. In
the way it was used, indeed, it was not a
fair argument, but when it is claimed that
the Chinese ought to be admitted on equal
terms with all the other nationalities, and
that they should have the ballot, it be-
comes pertinent to put the question to the
champions of the brotherhood doctrine:
9 Would you like your daughter to marry
"a Chinaman ?" For if the Chinese are
to be admitted to citizenship, and to be,
come candidates for Office, and to run con.
ventions and things, no objection can be
urged against their complete assimilation
by means of intermarriage.
It is indeed possible that some of our
Eastern friends, such az Rice and Hoar,
might be prepared to answer the question
We have suggested in the Affirmative be-
cause the Chinese are not with them, and
they know that they could make that an
swer safely. But though our friends per-
sist in regarding the anti-Chinese feeling as
narrow and IN American, it seems to the
people of the Pacific coast much more IN
American to advocate a system OF immi-
grafton which threatens to Mongolianize
the nation, and which has already partly
Mongolianized this State and coast. 1t
would, our people think, be hardly worth
while to belong to a Government which
upheld SO suicidal principle, nor could
there continue much patriotic sentiment
towards country which virtually included
the four hundred millions of Chinese in its
scheme of citizenship, and which refused
to protect its Anglo Saxon citizens against
the Eruption of these barbarians. The
recent debates in Congress, however,
while eliciting good deal of turgid
rhetoric of the Rice and Hoar kind, have
also developed the fact that the majority
of the national representatives are pre-
pared to take the Pacific coast view of this
question. We suppose there is no doubt
as to the ultimate passage OF the bill In
the House, though it may possibly be
altered so as to shorten the period during
which Chinese immigration is to be sus-
pended
There is. however, much difference of
opinion as to the results to be expected
from this law. At the East it is feared
that too much is being conceded. Here
we are more apprehensive that we are
getting too little. We do not believe that
the passage of the bill will be followed by
any decided change in the situation, in fact,
and therefore we cannot agree with those Of
ourrepresentatives who speak of it as though
it were new emancipation proclama-
ton. 1t may be victory over the preiu-
dices of the Eastern States. but it does not
follow that it is to be a victory over the
Chinese. Those who fancy that it will
end the Chinese question must have made
very superficial examination of the
situation here, in short, and those who
believe that it will take that question out
of politics are equally mistaken. When
it is found that the only effect of it is to
prevent more Chinese from coming here,
and that it does not mean the deportation
OF any of those now resident on the Pacific
coast when it is found that it makes no
new openings for white labor, but is more
likely to result in reduction OF the wages
OF that labor we fully expect that it will
become the object of very strenuous as
saults, and that demands will be made for
drastic legislation, which Congress will be
unwilling to concede. For these reasons
we shall not "enthuse over the pas
sage of the bill, but shall await the de-
velopment of public opinion after its
passage, with well grounded expectation
that the agitation will at no distant date
be renewed, and not improbably In less
temperate and reasonable manner than at
the present time.
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