zen, did create a moral responsibility towards him on the
part of the American Commonwealth. Towards the Chinaman it had no
responsibility whatever. Doubtless he had, as a man, his natural rights
to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"--in China. But whoever
said anything so absurd as that it was one of the natural rights of man
to live in America? It was, however, less to the increased absurdity of
his argument than to the less favourable bias of his audience that
Sumner owed his failure to change the course of legislation in this
instance. An argument only one degree less absurd had done well enough
as a reason for the enslavement and profanation of the South a year or
two before. But there was no great party hoping to perpetuate its power
by the aid of the Chinese, nor was there a defeated and unpopular
section to be punished for its "treason" by being made over to Mongolian
masters. Indeed, Congress, while rejecting Sumner's argument, made a
concession to his monomania on the subject of Negroes, and a clause was
inserted in the Act whereby no person "of African descent" should be
excluded--with the curious result that to this day, while a yellow face
is a bar to the prospective immigrant, a black face is, theoretically at
any rate, actually a passport.

The exclusion of the Chinese does but mark the beginning of a very
important change in the attitude of the Republic towards immigration. Up
to this time, in spite of the apparent exception of the Know-Nothing
movement, of which the motive seems to have been predominantly
sectarian, it had been at once the interest and the pride of America to
encourage immigration on the largest possible scale without troubling
about its source or character: her interest because her undeveloped
resources were immense and apparently inexhaustible, and what was mainly
needed was human labour to exploit them; her pride, because she boasted,
and with great justice, that her democratic creed was a force strong
enough to turn any man who accepted citizenship, whatever his origin,
into an American. But in connection with the general claim, which
experience has, on the whole, justified, there are two important
reservations. One is that such a conversion is only possible if the
American idea--that is, the doctrine set forth by Jefferson--when once
propounded awakens an adequate response from the man whom it is hoped
to assimilate. This can generally be predicted of Europeans, since the