hailed them, and they stopped. Would they take us to Chalco in their canoe? No. We offered them two dollars—an enormous price. No; they were going to the fandango. Three dollars. No; money was no object. This was too much. Morphy was boiling over with wrath. Springing to the edge of the water he brought his rifle to his shoulder, and ordered them to put their canoe alongside the bank. They protested, but there was danger in the blonde barbarian's eye, and the Aztecs were compelled to yield. Sulkily they pushed their boat to the bank, and we all stepped in. wishing them a bon voyage back through the dismal wilderness, we turned our faces towards the town. It was dark as Erebus, and the rain still continued; but Chalco was a pretentious place, and had a hotel, which we found eventually, and our immediate troubles were at an end. Such minor inconveniences as arose from adjusting ourselves to the accommodations of the caravansary shall not find expression in this article. We did object somewhat to sleeping in our wet clothes, on a dirt floor, in the same room with six or eight swarthy-looking citizens one of whom had the delirium "Now, pull for Chalco," ordered Morphy, tremens all night-but it was somewhat bet"and, mind you, no treachery!" He tapped the butt of his rifle significantly as he spoke. Seeing that resistance was useless, and knowing that they would be well paid for their services, our impressed. crew soon recovered their good humor, and the canoe sped rapidly down through the swamps and the rain, and, two hours later, we were landed on the outskirts of the vil lage of Chalco. Bidding good-bye to our dusky guides, and ter than the next grade of accommodations, in the corral. Next day we took the stage-coach, and night found us once more in the city of Mexico. "O Tenochtitlan," Morphy apostrophized, as we rattled down its beautiful streets and past its stately palaces, "who would dream, while gazing on thy marble front, that Cathay is just beyond thy walls!" "THE WYOMING ANTI-CHINESE RIOT."-AGAIN. THE spirit of courtesy that animated the reply of "J." to my article upon "The Wyoming Anti-Chinese Riot," may well be appreciated, even if regret is felt that one who writes so ably did so under cover of an initial, in a magazine accustomed to give the names of its contributors. The reply is amiable, hopeful, optimistic. It bears internal evidence of being the work of a religious teacher; and expresses the ideas of a considerable class in the East and a smaller one here. As such, and for its apparent conscientiousness, it is entitled to respect, although some of its propositions are startling. The tenor of his article is, that by the laws of God and nature, the Anglo-Saxon race have no more right to the ownership and control of the territory embraced in the United States than have the Asiatics; and, as a corollary, no more right to take necessary measures to preserve here republican institutions, or Christian observances, than the Tartars have to bring and establish here imperialism and pagan rites. He asserts a higher law, in God's ordinances, by virtue of which our occupancy gives no right of control and development, none of protection from the evils of Chinese invasion. Our possession of this fair heritage, watered by our own and our fathers' blood, must yield to any invader, who looks, like Alaric, from his inhospitable region upon our fair plains, and leads his swarms, if only he lead them covertly, to dispossess us. This follows, because "the earth is the Lord's, and he hath given it to the children of men—not to Protestants or Catholics, not to Christians or Jews, or to unbelievers, not to pagans or to Yankees, but to Men." We are, therefore, mere transitory tenants of this land, without right in nature or religion to maintain our ground, or guard one of the most enlightened spots of the great footstool from being plunged into the darkness and degradation of the worst. So far goes "J.'s" logic; and it matters not to the question of its correctness, whether the foreboding that this may occur is well or ill founded. The pagans have a right to occupy this country whether we will or no, and we are impiously disregardful of God's decrees, if we seek by law to keep them out. And it matters not how much our own people may suffer; how deep the poverty entailed on the workers of our own land; how contagious the vices spread in our society; how rapidly the heathen may come here; how their arrogance may increase, even until they shall have seized upon all the avenues of labor, and by strikes ruin employers, unless all white workmen are discharged; all this and more we are to suffer; all this we are powerless to avert by a restrictive law; because it is the will of God that the worst of mankind shall have free course on the earth, to trample down the prosperity and blight the hopes of the best. If the above are fair elements in the consideration of this great question in "J.'s" mind, why does he ignore them? One would be happy to find, in all his article, a line which shows the sympathy of its able author for the white workers of our own country; a response to their desire to retain the means to maintain the humble, happy homes of the artisan and laborer which are a distinctive feature of this country; and an appreciation of the pressing fact that cheap labor means poverty, ignorance, and vice. If his allusions in that regard are correctly understood, his sympathies are rather with the capitalist who "wants labor"; and he sees or states no objection to the coolie furnishing it at rates that would starve a white man. This view of the relation of capital and labor is not new. Gibbon said of the Ro mans: "It was more for the interest of the merchant or manufacturer to purchase than to hire his workman; and in the country slaves were employed as the cheapest and most laborious instruments of agriculture." Our institutions are founded on a higher view of labor, and we expelled slavery because inconsistent with their spirit. But the old idea of cheapening labor still exists in human selfishness, and ever the fight goes on between the worker who seeks to keep his head above the tide of want, and those who are indifferent to his fate. The most specious means yet found in this country to depress the laborer is in this Chinese immigration, for it furnishes most of the conditions of a cheap and servile class; while objections to its influx are met with suggestions of inhumanity and irreligion. The solution of a problem long held impossible is thus furnished, and the way is discovered to serve both God and Mammon. But "J." asks: "Have we a right to exclude by law?" Yes; we have the right of self-defense. It was believed by our forefathers that we had such right as a nation. Jefferson expressly taught it in the Federalist. If necessary to our own happiness and comfort, we have the same right to exclude any immigration that "J." has to exclude a drunkard or adulterer from his home. How contemptible would be the condition of a people, which could not shield itself from the vices or diseases of other people by an effective quarantine! We derive the right of exclusion from the same source that we do that to imprison lunatics, or execute criminals. There is the same natural and divine right for every man to roam over the country that there is to roam over the earth. Yet if the defense of society requires that he be shut up or killed, who quotes this natural right for his exemption? Every man has a right to live in the bosom of his family. If, from an infectious disease, the preservation of society requires it, he is shut up in a pest-house. If the moral and physical health of a community require it, can it not rightfully take analogous measures for its security? That no injustice be done to "J." let us quote him. This right to exclude "does not come from the divine Author of all rights, for he is no respecter of persons, and geographical or political lines are of no consequence to the all merciful Father." Before that assertion is assented to, it will be necessary to learn when God's policy in that particular changed. By the reading of His word He chose the Jews as a peculiar people; He helped them destroy the Canaanites because of the idolatry of the latter, and gave their country to the Jews as a perpetual inheritance "to them and to their seed forever," enjoining them to cut off all their heathen neighbors who should come within their borders to practice idolatrous rites. He certainly established their "geographical lines," and taught them to tolerate no Joss houses within them. His restrictive law was enforced by terrible penalties; and He evidently did not have confidence in a pure religion to expel a vile one, or mold into grace the heathen, for He would allow, under pain of death, neither the idolater nor his religion within the "geographical lines" of the chosen land. So Elisha slew all the priests of Baal, who had set up their worship within the same "geographical lines"; and his act was preceded and sanctioned by a miracle by the Deity, whom "J." portrays as frowning upon our efforts to preserve here a Christian civilization by excluding those who would overwhelm and stifle it. If the instances given occurred under the "old dispensation," the "new dispensation" also declares that God is not indifferent to geographical limits. St. Paul says: "God made of one blood all the nations of men to dwell upon the face of the earth, and has fixed the bounds of their habitation." We may safely defer to St. Paul, and reject the newer interpretation. It does not seem very monstrous, then, to ask the Chinese to keep to the bounds of their habitation, fixed for them by supreme decree. As the impiety of exclusion-its defiance of God's will, policy, and teaching-is "J.'s" principal objection, and that of a great many good men, to Exclusion Acts, it has seemed worth while to examine the foundation of the objection; and hence, more space is given to it than otherwise would be proper. Self-deception is always possible where feeling or sentiment is involved. In this matter we may sincerely ask ourselves, Where is the right? Is our duty to the millions in our own country, to shield them from threatened evils? or is it to the barbarians whose material condition would, undoubtedly, be bettered could they enjoy the plenty of this favored land? The materials for a judgment are not wanting, and the only doubt arises because many sincere, good men have apparently their sympathies engaged on the barbarian side, in the idea that they are wronged if kept away. Yet, it seems most strange that they can compare the effects of our civilization and what is known of that of Asia, and not shudder at a mixture of these; or, what seems possible, a supplanting of the one by the other. Concede for a moment that the great energies of Steam will, during the next hundred years, transport so many Mongolians to America that they will be the great majority of its inhabitants. Will these not make our laws, and substitute their customs, their morality, and their system of government for ours? What assurance is there worth consideration that they will not? How could such fatal results be averted? It is not they who are wronged by being kept away. It is our children and their children who are wronged, if they are allowed to come. "J." further seems to hold, first, that there is no danger of any great influx of Chinese, without a restriction law; and second, that our Christian influence will obviate all difficulty, and make the Chinese a not undesirable element of our population. "The present great incompatibility might almost disappear under favorable circumstances, if the pagan race were thoroughly molded by Christian influence and Christian graces." It is not easy to share in the implied belief, that the Christian influences which are cast about the Chinese in America will redeem them from paganism. There is more danger of their paganizing, by their notorious vices, our young people of both sexes. Without a desire to undervalue the benefits of Christianity, when it is proposed as a solvent for this indigestible mass cast in our midst, its efficiency may be challenged. Let "J." take the census of this city, or of any American city or community, and ascertain the proportion of those who ever give any heed to religious observances, or acknowledge the influence of religion in their lives. He must admit the proportion to be small. However regretable, it is so. But if, with a century of unrestrained religious teaching in the United States since the adoption of the Constitution, so few of our own people have been brought to actively accept the truths of Chris tianity, with the number lessening in proportion to population instead of increasing, what promise is there of vigor to attack and conquer the still greater obstacle to its universality presented by imported and encrusted paganism? He must be a narrow observer of the current of human thought, who does not see that science is pantheistic; that Spencer and Tyndall are getting to have more followers than Wesley and Calvin; that Ingersoll has larger audiences and leaves deeper effects than Beecher or Talmage; that novels are read with more avidity than sermons; that Sunday excursions are more attractive than churches. The tendency of the age is materialistic, despite all efforts of the churches to render it emotional and spiritualistic nor is the wish here father to the thought. But the success of the Christian religion in "molding" the mass of paganism in San Francisco during the past thirty-five years has not been so striking as to warrant "J.'s" anticipations. Chinatown has presented an invincible resistance to the well-meant efforts of the church to redeem it from its abominations. I think "J." must admit that paganism can show more trophies in white opium fiends, than Christianity can in converted pagans. If the balance is in favor of our better faith, it is lamentably small, and chills any hope that the future will see "the pagan race thoroughly molded by Christian influences and Christian graces." Sir Henry Sumner Maine, in his lectures on the History of Institutions, shows, with great ability and research, that the Western nations have succeeded in the course of ages in steadily enlarging personal independence, and breaking up the despotism of groups over the members composing them; while the Eastern nations are not only contented under primal tyrannies, but their laws and customs have, even when originally comparatively enlightened, been undergoing, in the course of centuries, deterioration in the direction of enslavement, until individual liberty is unknown and even undesired. There must be something in the genius of the two races to account for this divergence; and something more than converting a Mongolian to Christianity is needed, to make him a desirable citizen. Yet there is a precious influence from the Christian religion, result it from tradition or from present conviction, or both, that enlightens our laws, modifies our civilization, and purifies our thought and manners. This is worth preserving on this continent, even if its cause has weakened as a propaganding force. To preserve it, the influx of Mongolians is deprecated. The parallel which "J." draws between the sentiments of the Eastern opponents of Chinese restriction and those of the opponents of slavery, is not well considered. Senator Hoar and his confréres have no clearer right to the distinction of being early or late opponents of slavery, than many of those who oppose this Chinese invasion ; and therefore, the presumption is not "so far in their favor." Those who oppose lawful resistance to the incoming of Chinese are consistent with old ideas in favor of free labor, while Senator Hoar and "J." are not. It is difficult to reason with one who repeats the oft-refuted statement that the Chinese laborers come here as free emigrants. In the volume of testimony taken by the Congressional Commission which lies before me, the fact is demonstrated that the Chinese affected by the exclusion bill are of the coolie class, and are imported like cattle by their Chinese owners. They are the slaves, whose influx is deprecated largely because they are such, and because they remain such here, and degrade free labor by their competition. Senator Hoar and his Eastern coagitators, to whom "J." alludes, are insisting on the right of Chinese to import and work their slaves here. We deny the right, and insist upon exclusion. As the writer "was right on the question of human freedom then," so he now contends for the discontinuance of this new slave trade, which is absorbing all employment, and, by its competition, turning our white people into "poor white trash." The writer repels the intimation, however courteously put forth, that he is in any degree false to the love of liberty and humanity, which was his inspiration in early manhood. Those who clamor to break down all restrictive laws against the Chinese, on the ground that they are unjust and inhuman, will yet shed tears of blood, if their efforts succeed, over a ruined republic and prostrated liberty and religion. "J." finds "fearfully threatening" evils in the immigration from some European States. Can that be so? If they exist, will not our Christian teaching overcome these evils, and deck the immigrants with "Christian graces?" Besides, why urge such considerations, if the right of free immigration is given to all men? Is it not irrelevant to the argument, whether some immigrants are or are not vile or dangerous, if we have no right to protect our country from their influx? Only in the event of the existence of such right, is it worth while to discuss its exercise. Believing in the right, we ask its application to Chinese coolies. The issue is not changed, when "J." insists that dangers exist from other immigration. If there are such fearful dangers ahead, and he sees them, he ought to arouse his countrymen to resist them, and not deny all right of self-defense against such calamities. The desire of the opponents of a restrictive law is, according to "J.," that "no wrong be done to humanity, and that the reciprocity of nations be respected." These are amiable motives, and worthy of all respect, if in the word humanity is also embraced those of our own race and religion, whose homes and civilization are imperiled, and if the government sees that no wrong is done to them in the application of these maxims. But if "J." means by the "reciprocity of nations" that by international law the consent of government is not necessary to expatriation, or to the residence of aliens, his law is as open to criticism as his theology. It is only within fifteen years that any European nation has assented to the doctrine that its citizens can expatriate themselves, and several have not yet agreed to it; while one finds its inconvenience so great that it watches for an opportunity to retract its assent. There is no European power that does not claim, and exercise more or less frequently, the right to exclude obnoxious visitors. gave, at the mouth of British cannon, a grudging assent to the residence (not citizenship) of foreigners, in a few sea-ports; but the life of a foreigner in these is only safe because his own government protects it; and that safeguard grows less, the farther he ventures away from the range that can be swept by foreign cannon. The United States exercise, more or less fitfully, this right in reference to immigrating Mormons, the objection to whom is their polygamy and anti-republicanism. No objection has been made by the class for whom "J." speaks, that this is irreligious or inhuman. If the Mormons came in extremely limited numbers, no attention would probably be paid to them. But they come by hundreds, in ship-loads; and therefore the matter is looked to, and the powers of the government to exclude them are exerted unchallenged. But the Chinese are also polygamists and imperialists. They come by thousands, and not by hundreds. They build themselves up, not in one or two territories, but here and everywhere. The Mormons share with the Chinese one detestable habit; the Chinese have scores of vices unknown to Mormons, that would have put Heliogabalus to the blush; and practice and communicate them, as the police will testify, in the heart of our cities, and in the very shadow of our churches. But the point is not here made, that the evils of the influx of Mongolians are greater than those of the in |