The Americans have at length pushed their dislike of Asiatic
emigrants to its logical extreme. Under a Treaty already signed by the Government of Pekin, and about to be sanc- tioned. by the United States Senate, they prohibit the entrance of Chinese labourers into the United States absolutely. Merchants, students, travellers, or persons owning £200, may still travel or reside within the Union ; but the emigration of Chinese who work with their hands is, for the term of the Treaty, twenty-one years, entirely forbidden. They may be sent back from the ports by force. The Treaty is a new departure in the history of the United States ; and though defended by special reasoning, some of which is sound, may be used hereafter as a precedent for many laws restricting immigration. Part of the abhorrence felt towards the Chinese is based on moral grounds, and part is due to the instinctive aversion—felt by both sides—which exists between Asiatics and Europeans ; but the immediate origin of the feeling is economic. The Americans of the sea-board will not bear to see their scale of civilisation reduced through the com- petition of workmen by whom the need of civilisation is not felt. American action in the matter strikes us here as unfair ; but if half-a-million of Chinese came pouring into England, we should have an insurrection, and as it is, the Australians may compel the Government to adopt the American Treaty. They are raising their tax on the Chinese every two or three years without the smallest effect, the Chinese meeting it, whatever it is, by working a little harder.
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