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being is, work in order to eat and so to live; then to repel from work is to violate that law, and is essentially homicidal. In this country, at the present time, opposition to the introduction of foreign labor is in the worst form of the dog-in-themanger spirit. It is too brutish to succeed; and is suffered in providence only as a part of that needful friction in moderating the impetuosities incident to all great movements among

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A second problem which this migration presents to our consideration is the political problem. As already indicated, the era of this migration is most providentially ordained to be that of the settlement of those great principles of equality before the law, both civilly and politically, asserted in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Federal Constitution. It will be most interesting to the reflecting to watch the phases of the application of these principles to each of the three colored races, to which they have a more special referThat there will be resistance in divers ways in the interest of demagogues and of political partisanship, combined with whatever help can be borrowed from the interests of labor and of irreligion and even of theory and speculation, is to be expected. It will be the imperative duty of every patriot and philanthropist to watch with unceasing vigilance every demonstration of this resistance, to guard against it, and to overcome it to the full protection of those for whose benefit these wise and beneficent ordinances were designed. Let it be met in every form with a wise but prompt and earnest reprobation.

There will obviously be two stages in the working out of this problem. The first is the stage of weakness, when some interest of selfishness, of trade, of labor, of party, or of creed, will seek to overwhelm and crush and enslave. Its cry will be natural inferiority and providential destination to servitude; and ignorance and moral weakness, as well as physical inferiorities, will be pleaded, as also the alleged unfitness for political rights and privileges and the danger from allowing suffrage to such a mass of ignorant foreigners. We have become too familiar with these kinds of clamor to be much intimidated or moved by them. It will suffice here merely to throw out the

suggestion that, although naturalization and citizenship, under the fifteenth amendment, are to be guaranteed alike to all persons, of whatever race or color and in whichever of the States or Territories of the Union, on the same terms and conditions, citizenship comes only by the gradual process of birth and growth under our own institutions, and naturalization only under the safeguards of federal legislation. It is a most suggestive fact to be brought to mind in this connection, that, although by the unrighteous discriminations of California statute law, the Chinaman is taxed oppressively in his mining products so long as he remains not naturalized or forbears to declare his intentions to become naturalized, not an instance is known of an effort to escape the tax in this easy way. There is no danger, then, now imminent, of our political destinies being swayed by a sudden incursion of Chinese voters.

The second stage will be that of power, when, as in our Eastern cities, suffrage that may be clannish can be corruptly bargained for political ends. That this danger is real, although distant, must be confessed. It should keep us vigilant and on the alert. The preventives must be found in the diffusion, so far as practicable, of the foreign element among the proper American communities. The separation into distinct quarters in cities, into distinct villages and districts, is to be deprecated; and the tendencies in this direction are to be arrested or checked. Free labor and employment in all the various departments of our industry will be a great hindrance to this gregarious tendency. Then sympathy, free inter-communication in all the channels of social intercourse, education, religious teaching, are obvious moral protectives against this apprehended evil. It will be the duty of every American citizen to seek to Americanize, as of every servant of Christ to seek to Christianize them.

Let it be remembered, what we have stated before, that the Chinese mind is yet in all its habits of thought, and feeling, and acting, thoroughly imbued with the proper patriarchal or tribal sentiment. It has not yet developed itself into the proper spirit of nationality. It is in this respect ages behind the spirit of the Caucasian race. It will require time to grow up into this stage of human development. It will be slow to

enter into our political movements and to participate in the control and management of our interests as a nation. As already intimated, it has no aspiration in this direction. The enlargement, it is true, inay possibly come quickly. With them the prophecy may be fulfilled that nations shall be born in a day. This bursting of the shell, this emergence from the family or tribal condition into that of a full nationality, in whatever way, at whatever speed, by whatever influences, with whatever modifications, will be matter for close study, as of rich instruction. It invites our vigilant and our docile contemplation. The extreme conservatism of the Chinese, their love of antiquity, and their tenacity of the old and traditional, have, with their self-conceit and contempt of other peoples, received a heavy, perhaps fatal blow in the collision of the last thirty years with the West. The Burlingame treaties have ushered China into the family of nations. The spirit of the West has penetrated to the very heart of the empire. Peking has, within the last few weeks, received back to its new Imperial College for Western Literature and Science, a representative of American learning and philanthrophy-we refer to Rev. Dr. W. A. P. Martin, a contributor of two Articles on China to the last volume of this journal-with a significant warmth of welcome. The progress towards a proper cosmopolitan sentiment has been marvelous during the last few years, and prepares us for almost any development in the fu ture, however rapid. But we have no sympathy with late British croakings that are foreboding disintegration from the introduction among us of this unwieldy mass of ignorance and barbarism. If it does not assimilate itself to our political institutions, then our politics will not be vitiated by their being within our territory any more than by the importation of so many cattle. If the spirit of family enlarges into the proper feeling of nationality, it will be because their minds have been expanded and liberalized, and so prepared to participate in our political life. There is no central power, as in the Romish priesthood, to unify their political action, and thus make them a serviceable tool of party; and so far, at least, there is less ground of apprehension.

The third problem which offers itself for solution in the study of this migration, is the moral and religious problem. What is to be the result, if there are to be poured in upon us, as is possible if not probable, millions of heathens, with their low morality and their idolatrous religion? To answer this question satisfactorily, we must know the character and working of Chinese morality and religion, and must weigh in comparison with it the power of a pure, active Christianity, as the two come in contact. Chinese morality is heathen, and is of a lamentably low degree, as measured by a Christian standard. It is yet high, as compared with that of most heathen peoples. Chinese immorality is not of the coarser, more brutal kind. The Chinese are courteous in manners, peaceable and orderly, patient of injury, and submissive to authority. They are kind in their household life. Even the infanticide that prevails is not from any brutal instincts, but originates only in the driving necessity of want; and the concubinage that is equally prevalent is of the old patriarchal type, rather than of the low harem pattern of the Turk. The sacredness of the proper family life is maintained; and this fountain of personal and social virtue is kept for a heathen community comparatively pure. Filial duty is inculcated. with great assiduity, and the fruit is seen in the universal respect shown to parents and superiors, and the care which even the aged and the infirm ever receive. Cupidity is a universal trait. It leads to gambling, which everywhere prevails; it runs, also, into trade, and makes the Chinese an intensely commercial people. Hence their fondness for such pursuits as fishing and mining; and their readiness for any trading adventure. They are superstitious, and especially afraid of evil spirits, against whose machinations they employ all the arts and devices of heathenism. They have but the faintest notion of a supreme God, the old worship of Shangte as the creator of all things having fallen away. Confucius never inculcated any duty to any power higher than that of the head of the family or of the State. Tauism and Buddhism enter into the religion of the Chinese as a people only as by their divers specific teachings they cater to the underlying superstition that is characteristic. The real religion of the Chinese is confined to

the worship of ancestors and heroes and of those spirits or agencies which may bring good or inflict evil. Their morality and their religion alike are grounded not in a love of truth as truth, but in a desire of good or fear of evil. They are not skeptical, for they do not apply reason to matters of religion, even in the way of speculation; they are indifferent as to creeds. They crave good; and what meets this want, even their conservatism will not reject. Buddhism, although imported, they embraced without reluctance.

Such a condition certainly is not forbidding to the introduction of Christian ideas. The family sentiment is a good soil in which to root evangelical theism. The promises of the gospel meet their cravings for good. The revolution of the last quarter century in the feeling towards foreigners, the awakening of a desire for Western learning and Western culture, are auspicious. The success which has attended the efforts to evangelize the Chinese in San Francisco and other Pacific cities, during the last twelve months, is most encouraging. The practical solution of this problem, it would seem, will depend not on any untowardness of the Chinese mind for receiving the gospel, but on the wisdom, the fidelity, and the zeal of American Christianity. Let the inhuman oppression which has characterized some of the legislation of the Pacific States, and the brutal treatment dealt out to the unprotected foreigner by the insolent and rude under the sanction and with the countenance of such legislation, give place to humane and equal laws, and to kind, courteous demeanor on the part of the white population; let the narrow-souled selfishness that would exclude them from our industries and arts be put away; let the tendency to settle in districts by themselves be arrested by this change of treatment; and so make the flood of migration diffuse itself into our families, our factories, our mining camps, meeting everywhere a kind, humane, Christian spirit; let a wise but earnest missionary work be begun and energetically sustained in the form of Sunday Schools, itinerant missionaries, and caste-discarding churches, and we have little to fear. The issue is plainly left to the determination of the practical Christianity of our land and age.

The call to this evangelical labor, we are happy to see, has

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