No disability accrues from nonresidence of a plaintiff, whose claim can
be enforced in the usual way by him or his assignee or attorney in our
courts of justice.
In this respect it can not be alleged that there exists the slightest
discrimination against Chinese subjects, and it is a notable fact that
large trading firms and companies and individual merchants and traders
of that nation are profitably established at numerous points throughout
the Union, in whose hands every claim transmitted by an absent Chinaman
of a just and lawful nature could be completely enforced.
The admitted and paramount right and duty of every government to exclude
from its borders all elements of foreign population which for any reason
retard its prosperity or are detrimental to the moral and physical
health of its people must be regarded as a recognized canon of
international law and intercourse. China herself has not dissented from
this doctrine, but has, by the expressions to which I have referred, led
us confidently to rely upon such action on her part in cooperation with
us as would enforce the exclusion of Chinese laborers from our country.
This cooperation has not, however, been accorded us. Thus from the
unexpected and disappointing refusal of the Chinese Government to
confirm the acts of its authorized agent and to carry into effect an
international agreement, the main feature of which was voluntarily
presented by that Government for our acceptance, and which had been the
subject of long and careful deliberation, an emergency has arisen, in
which the Government of the United States is called upon to act in
self-defense by the exercise of its legislative power.
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