to be published, notwithstanding the rule of secrecy.
But one Senator from the Pacific coast complained, I think
with some reason, that I was permitted to publish my argument
on one side when he not only was not permitted to publish
his on the other, but his constituents had no means of knowing
that he had defended his views or made proper answer to mine.
So I thought it hardly fair to make by speech public, and
it was not done.

Later, in the spring of 1882, a bill was passed to carry
into effect the Treaty of 1880. That I resisted as best I
could. In opposition to this bill I made an earnest speech
showing it to be in conflict with the doctrines on which our
fathers founded the Republic; with the principles of the
Constitutions of nearly all the States, including that of
California, and with the declarations of leading statesmen down
to the year 1868. I showed also that the Chinese race had
shown examples of the highest qualities of manhood, of intelligence,
probity and industry. I protested against a compact between
the two greatest nations of the Pacific, just as we were about
to assert our great influence there, which should place in
the public law of the world, and in the jurisprudence of America,
the principle that it is fitting that there should be hereafter
a distinction in the treatment of men by governments and in
the recognition of their right to the pursuit of happiness
by a peaceful change of their homes, based, not on conduct,
not on character, but upon race and occupation; by asserting
that you might justly deny to the Chinese what you might not
justly deny to the Irish, that you might justly deny to the
laborer what you might not deny to the idler. I pointed out
that this declaration was extorted from unwilling China by
the demand of America; and that laborers were henceforth to
be classed, in the enumeration of American public law, with
paupers, lazzaroni, harlots, and persons afflicted with pestilential
diseases. I ended what I had to say as follows:

"Humanity, capable of infinite depths of degradation, is also
capable of infinite heights of excellence. The Chinese,
like all other races, has given us its examples of both. To
rescue humanity from this degradation is, we are taught to
believe, the great object of God's moral government on earth.
It is not by injustice, exclusion, caste, but by reverence
for the individual soul that we can aid in this consummation.
It is not by Chinese po