at it is a national
Congress living, with the executive, in direct touch with the foreign
nations themselves. Broadly speaking, our national legislation is to
exclude immigration, but guarantee equality of property right, at
least, to such Mongolian aliens as are actually in the country; and
to extend or guarantee such right of treatment by treaties, which
treaties are, of course, acts of Congress, like any other act of
Congress, entirely valid in favor of the foreign power and enforceable
by it even to the issue of war, but possibly, as a constitutional
question, not enforceable by the Federal government against the
States. An endless mass of legislation in California and other Western
States has been devised, either openly against the Chinese or so
couched as to really exclude them from the ordinary civic liberties,
and most of our State laws or courts declare that the Japanese are
Mongolian although that people deny it. Many statutes, moreover,
are aimed at Asiatics in general; which would possibly include the
Hindoos, who are of exactly the same race as ourselves. Indeed, some
judges have excluded Hindoos from naturalization, or persons of
Spanish descent, while admitting negroes, which is like excluding your
immediate ancestors in favor of your more remote Darwinian ones.
Even in New York and other Eastern States, the employment of aliens,
particularly Asiatics, is forbidden in all public work--which laws
may be invalid as against a Federal treaty. Yet statutes against the
employment of any but citizens of the United States in public works
are growing more frequent than ever, and seem to me quite within the
rights of the State itself to determine. But Pennsylvania could not
impose a tax of three cents per day upon all alien laborers, to be
paid by the employer. Many States are beginning to provide against
the ownership of land by aliens. This, of course, is perfectly
constitutional and has full justification in the history and precedent
of most other countries, and as applied to foreign corporations it is
still more justifiable; and the Western States very generally provide
against the ownership of land, other than such as may be taken on
mortgage, by foreign corporations, or corporations even of which a
large proportion of the stock is held by foreigners.

Racial legislation as to negroes may be divided into laws bearing on
their legal, political, and social rights, including, in the latter,
contracts of labor an