IS AUSTRALIA TO BE CHIN - ESE? T HERE is no question in
politics upon which it is more difficult to think straight than this of Chinese immigration into Australia. Most of the theories are upon one side, and all the facts upon the other. The emigrating classes of China have discovered that Aus- tralia, which is of all continents the one most easy for them to reach, is an excellent place to which to emigrate. They like the climate, they find land cheap for their favourite occupation of market-gardening, there are mines of many sorts, and there is a quantity of work to be done in the cities for which the white immigrants are apt to charge extravagant rates. They know the British flag well in Hong Kong, the Straits Settlements, and. Calcutta, and approve not only the British Courts, but the British habit of tolerating the " Hoeys," or dangerous Secret Societies with which China is honeycombed—the Triad Society, for example, is much the largest in the world—and which they carry with them wherever they go. They have begun, therefore, to swarm down to the Southern continent in numbers which the prohibition to enter America will rapidly increase ; with the marvellous industry bred in them by centuries of over-population, they all prosper there ; and the rush is assuming such proportions, that but for the deficiency of women among the immigrants, the white settlers might in twenty years be lost among the multitudes of Chinese. As they are the best labourers in the world, working fifteen hours a day for seven days in the week, and obey all laws which are strictly enforced— keeping up, however, supplementary laws of their own, en- forced by terrible penalties—it seems at first sight most unjust to restrict their immigration. We go to China at dis- cretion, we claim to be exempt from all special taxes, we even use artillery to enforce our right of entry ; and. to deny to Chinamen the privileges we claim for ourselves seems violent injustice. There is no argument for it, it is said, except that we either dislike or dread the Chinese ; and if we may urge either of those two pleas as in itself sufficient, then so may they, and Chinese exclusiveness receives at once an ample justification. The argument from colour, it is alleged, is or ought to be as good against the white man as the yellow ; and if we may tax Chinese washermen, so may Pekin tax English telegraph clerks.
There is, so far as we know, no answer possible to the abstract reasoning of those who approve the immigration ; but the Australians say, and. say truly, that it involves consequences of the most terribly grave kind. If they have no right to prohibit Chinese immigration, then they have no right to discourage it ; and to leave it undis- coura,ged is to hand over the great Southern continent to Chinese. Their mimbers are limitless, their industry knows no intermission, and when their habit of coming and going has reached a certain point, they will bring their women, and settle as they have done in Siam, Java, and Singapore. They will within a half century number millions, the Australian climate suiting them as well as their own, and the white men will be completely eaten out. They cannot compete with the Chinese in any but the highest kinds of labour; they will not work side by side with them in the field ; and they cannot live on the wages which are to China- men, whose thriftiness has been developed by centuries of hereditary want, sufficient not only for existence, but also for accumulation. They must, therefore, retire, and the destiny of the great Southern continent will be finally and lamentably changed. It might be a new Europe without poverty, but it will be a new Asia with a Pagan creed, a Pagan morality, and a stereotyped civilisation. The Chinaman is as enduring as the European ; he nowhere merges himself in another popula- tion, and nowhere surrenders his belief that he alone among mankind possesses a social scheme which is obviously divine. The world can gain nothing by an addition of provinces to China, while Europe loses not only a vast possession in which her children might advance beyond European precedent, but a means of relief for the over- pressure on her resources which every century appears to make more severe. Rather than see all their hopes thus disappointed, the Australians, whose dream it is to be citizens of a great white Federation, the mistress of the Southern world, declare that they will encounter prematurely all the perils and annoyances of independence, and thus enable themselves to confine Australia absolutely to men of their own colour and civilisation. They add that the argument of justice, if seriously put forward, is not well founded, for China would not endure a similar immigration of Europeans for a moment. She lets a few score traders enter her ports because it is convenient, and even grants them a separate jurisdiction; but if there were any chance of an arrival of millions of European labourers to compete with Chinamen in ordinary industry, to shatter her ancient civilisation, and to make it impossible that China should remain Chinese, she would fight to the death, and in all human probability would slaughter her visitors out. The equality of rights demanded is one of words only ; for while the Chinamen enter Australia in thousands, and may enter it in millions, Englishmen can never in China be more than an insignificant handful. The climate alone is a barrier no treaty can repeal. Are we to sacrifice a continent for a theory unjustified by answering facts ? That last contention is a sound one, and we confess we cannot, as advocates of progress, look with complacency on the possibility of Australia being filled with Mongolians ; but, fortunately, there is no necessity for discussing such far-reaching questions. The Chinese Government, as we understand, is indignant at the recent treatment of its sub- jects in the Colonies, but is by no means anxious to encourage limitless emigration. As Sir John Pope Hennessy recently told us, it has vast provinces of its own requiring population, and it dislikes the neglect of all those semi-religious duties upon which the organisation of Chinese society, and, indeed, of its political system, is ultimately based. At this moment, the two Shans, which were recently desolated by famine, require five million emigrants, and there is a steady demand from the West and North-West, the Chinese plan of con- quest being to urge upon conquered, or, as they describe them, " revindicated " provinces, like Kashgar, hundreds of thousands of cultivators. It is quite possible, therefore, if we will stop all ill-treatment of Chinamen in Australia, to make a treaty like the American one,—that is, establishing an honest reciprocity. Only English traders go to China, and only Chinese traders would be permitted to go to Australia. We do not believe that the Australians, once relieved of their fear of swarms of Mongolians, would hesitate for one moment to concede the quid pro quo,—that is, to guarantee the Chinese already arrived against ill-treatment or ex- ceptional taxation. There is and can be no justification for either. There may be, we think there is, grave reason for a treaty limiting the outflow from China ; but the Chinamen already present in Australia had a right to come, and are guests, entitled, so long as they obey the laws, to every non-political right of our own citizens. We would rather, for the general benefit of humanity, that Australia remained a white land, and understand perfectly the horror of Australians at the idea of its becoming an appanage of Mongolia ; but assaulting Chinese immigrants or wrecking Chinese shops is outrageous oppression. If the yellow men are bad, as the colonists say, let them be tried and punished for badness, not lynched without pre- text, simply for being yellow, or, as one writer pleads, for teaching Englishmen to smoke opium. How many people in this world have Englishmen taught to drink gin, or who binds Englishmen to accept such teaching from Chinese ? The plea is absurd ; but it is not absurd to say that it is better for mankind that Europe should grow than that China should.
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