Year: 1869

For the Dispatch.


THE PROPOSED CRIME OF THE AGE.


To the LaJoring Glasses of Virginia:


The writer who addresses you this COM
munication has been an interested observer
of the movement making in certain quar-
ters to influence the introduction of coolie
labor in the United States, and the cotton
States particularly, in competition with
immigrant. As sea-captain engaged in
the China trade, and frequent sojourner
in Canton and other Chinese ports, have
had opportunities of studying the character
of these people enjoyed by few Americans.
And in view of my estimate of that charac-
ter, confess I look upon this scheme of
coolie immigration with dismay and alarm,
and dark forebodings for the future of this
country. l regard the proposition as mon
strous, and it's consummation would be the
crowning crime of the century that has
witnessed the abolition Of the African slave
trade.


The three hundred millions of Chinese
population are divided into three castles
the mobiles, who rule; the wealthy, who are
the agriculturists and, lastly, the serfs,
who perform the labor in every department
of menial service. These are the coolies,
the degenerate spawn of the Tartar and
Malay tribes, descended through thousand
centuries, each succeeding generation more
degraded and lower THAI the last.


In moral PERCEPTION the coolis is beneath
the negro. As a laborer he has proved a
failure in California-usefui only when
worked in masses like brutes-on great ma
tional works, such as the Union Pacific rail-
road, the tunnel Of the Alps, and the IBthmus
of Suez canal. Tens of thousands Of these
wretched coolies have been employed on
these great national undertakings thou
sands of them have perished, but hume
rous as vermin on plague day in Egypt, their
ranks are recruited from the e1haustless
millions of human beings pouring from the
celestial kingdom. .-.-..


That the coolie would fail, as G laborer,
on the cotton and rice plantations of the
South is certainty. His presence there
would be standing menace to the negro.
Then there is grave danger to our insti-
tutions from coolie inundation. He ls q
barbarian whom no missionary can convert
to Christianity. He is an idolater, and car
ries with him in his wanderings his false
gods of grinning wood and stone. The
males are efeminate, thieves all, lecherous,
treachcrous, and revengeful. The females,
who follow the men wherever they travel,
know nothing of virtue, and the intercourse
of the sexes is as promiscuous as that of the
animals Of the field. And yet there are to
be found in the United States the advocates
of this monstrous and unnatural scheme,
that would prove more hurtful to the country
than the revival of the African slave trade
possibly could. The stain OF slavery wiped
away in the best blood of our land, why
seek to add another fresh plague-spot In
this accursed coolie businessi


1t is reassuring to know that the most in
fuential of the American newspapers, North
and South, divided on almost every other
question of national Importance, are united
on this-united in opposition to the coolie
immigration scheme, and in condemnation
of it's originators. A very few newspapers,
| Influenced by party spleen and prejudice
against the negro, look with any favor upon
this movement, 80 repugnant to humanity
and shocking to the instincts of Christian
people. We have amongst us the black
man, in his state of freedom ; and he, with
the white native and imported population,
must continue to constitute the laboring
classes. The coolie cannot be.successfully
grated into this system no more is it pos
sible to e1pel the negro. 1t is time, there
fore, there was some emphatic expression
Of the popular feeling on the subject.


There is an act of Congress now in full
force which prohibits the introduction of
coolie laborers into the United States. An
effort, combined and powerful, will bs made