complied with, are
sufficient to discourage or deter me from following in the way which
I am convinced leads to better government for the people.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _March 1, 1886_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:

It is made the constitutional duty of the President to recommend to the
consideration of Congress from time to time such measures as he shall
judge necessary and expedient. In no matters can the necessity of this
be more evident than when the good faith of the United States under the
solemn obligation of treaties with foreign powers is concerned.

The question of the treatment of the subjects of China sojourning within
the jurisdiction of the United States presents such a matter for the
urgent and earnest consideration of the Executive and the Congress.

In my first annual message, upon the assembling of the present Congress,
I adverted to this question in the following words:

The harmony of our relations with China is fully sustained.

In the application of the acts lately passed to execute the treaty of
1880, restrictive of the immigration of Chinese laborers into the United
States, individual cases of hardship have occurred beyond the power of
the Executive to remedy, and calling for judicial determination.

The condition of the Chinese question in the Western States and
Territories is, despite this restrictive legislation, far from being
satisfactory. The recent outbreak in Wyoming Territory, where numbers
of unoffending Chinamen, indisputably within the protection of the
treaties and the law, were murdered by a mob, and the still more recent
threatened outbreak of the same character in Washington Territory, are
fresh in the minds of all, and there is apprehension lest the bitterness
of feeling against the Mongolian race on the Pacific Slope may find vent
in similar lawless demonstrations. All the power of this Government
should be exerted to maintain the amplest good faith toward China in
the treatment of these men, and the inflexible sternness of the law in
bringing the wrongdoers to justice should be insisted upon.

Every effort has been made by this Government to prevent these violent
outbreaks and to aid the representatives of China in their investigation
of these outrages; and it is but just to say that they are traceable to
the lawlessness of men not citizens of the United States engaged in
competition wi