Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1892-12-12
A Mongolian Example.

cess to this country think it would be an
easy matter to keep immigrants from
coming over the Canadian and Mexican
borders. There is no doubt that this
could be done by stationary armies of
policemen on the respective frontiers.
In caselthis should not be deemed exped
lent, it is next proposed to annex Canada
| and Mexico to the United States, and to
follow this up by the absorption of Cen
tral America. With the Isthmus of
Panama in our possession, and with all
the seaports closed against immigrants,
they could be shut out of the country
very effectually.
The evidences .of history show that
there was a time when the Monaghan
conquerers of China were making great
and rapid progress in all the arts of civ
ilization What contributed more than
anything else to suddenly and fatally ar
rest this progress was the policy of pro-
hibiting intercourse with the outside
barbarian world. The motive of the
Chinese for this monstrous policy was in
foolish vanity. They imagined them
selves vastly superior to all the rest of
mankind, and feared that their morals
and religion would be corrupted by con-
tact with inferior..races. They feared,
too, in their absurd jealousy, that out
siders would not only steal their wonder
full inventions, but would also endeavor
to get possession of their lovely land.
The effect of this policy was to stamp
upon the Chinese and their social and
political institutions a hideous uniform
ity, as if they had been struck by a de-
cree of fate. They had wantonly and
ignorantly violated law of nature that
is essential to progress and civilization.
When they had completed their great
wall, and all the other arrangements to
protect themselves from contact with the
outside barbarians, the reaction began,
and they sank gradually into moral and
intellectual decrepitude. In this second
childhood of a race the Chinese for ages
have not made step forward in the arts
and sciences, in manufactures, or in any
thing that relates to social and political
development, except in reluctantly imi-
tating the hated foreigners. Whilst,
thanks to a genial climate and to soil
of unexampled fertility, they multiplied
like rabbits for many generations, few
among these millions have ever risen
above the dead level of intellectual uni
formity to which they were condemned
when intercourse with the other races
of the world was forbidden. As result,
the cultivated nations of the world are
as adverse to social contact with the
Chinese as the Chinese are jealous of
foreign influence.
The imitators of this Chinese example
in the United States are endeavoring, by
every appeal to predjudice and fear, in
! Guiding the dread of cholera, to famil-
iarize the country with their scheme to
suspend immigration. If they did not
possess in the cholera alarm conven-
lent weapon for their purpose they
would readily find another. 1t is posi-
BILE that they may succeed in violating
the right of locomotion which belongs to
every human creatare who is innocent
of crime and free from pauperism or
contagious disease. But the systematic
denial of this right by any nation is sure
to be attended by the fatal arrest of its
own development. If all civilized ma
tions should adopt the Chinese policy it
would be followed universally by the
same penalty which the Chinese have
paid for their self-inflicted seclusion from
intercourse with the world. This dim
spot which men call Earth is compara-
lively small but it is too big for so mar
row and barbarols system.-Record