nant with the
system of our institutions and approved by the experience of the
nation. Unquestionably the adhesion of the Government of China to
these liberal principles of freedom in emigration, with which we were
so familiar and with which we were so well satisfied, was a great
advance toward opening that Empire to our civilization and religion,
and gave promise in the future of greater and greater practical
results in the diffusion throughout that great population of our arts
and industries, our manufactures, our material improvements, and the
sentiments of government and religion which seem to us so important to
the welfare of mankind. The first clause of this article secures this
acceptance by China of the American doctrines of free migration to and
fro among the peoples and races of the earth.
The second clause, however, in its reprobation of "any other than an
entirely voluntary emigration" by both the high contracting parties,
and in the reciprocal obligations whereby we secured the solemn and
unqualified engagement on the part of the Government of China "to pass
laws making it a penal offense for a citizen of the United States or
Chinese subjects to take Chinese subjects either to the United States
or to any other foreign country without their free and voluntary
consent," constitutes the great force and value of this article. Its
importance both in principle and in its practical service toward our
protection against servile importation in the guise of immigration can
not be overestimated. It commits the Chinese Government to active and
efficient measures to suppress this iniquitous system, where those
measures are most necessary and can be most effectual. It gives to
this Government the footing of a treaty right to such measures and
the means and opportunity of insisting upon their adoption and
of complaint and resentment at their neglect. The fifth article,
therefore, if it fall short of what the pressure of the later
experience of our Pacific States may urge upon the attention of this
Government as essential to the public welfare, seems to be in the
right direction and to contain important advantages which once
relinquished can not be easily recovered.
The second topic which interested the two Governments under the actual
condition of things which prompted the Burlingame treaty was adequate
protection, under the solemn and definite guaranties of a treaty,
of the Chinese already in this country and those w
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