ho should seek
our shores. This was the object, and forms the subject of the sixth
article, by whose reciprocal engagement the citizens and subjects of
the two Governments, respectively, visiting or residing in the
country of the other are secured the same privileges, immunities,
or exemptions there enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most
favored nations. The treaty of 1858, to which these articles are made
supplemental, provides for a great amount of privilege and protection,
both of person and property, to American citizens in China, but it is
upon this sixth article that the main body of the treaty rights
and securities of the Chinese already in this country depends. Its
abrogation, were the rest of the treaty left in force, would leave
them to such treatment as we should voluntarily accord them by our
laws and customs. Any treaty obligation would be wanting to restrain
our liberty of action toward them, or to measure or sustain the right
of the Chinese Government to complaint or redress in their behalf.

The lapse of ten years since the negotiation of the Burlingame treaty
has exhibited to the notice of the Chinese Government, as well as to
our own people, the working of this experiment of immigration in great
numbers of Chinese laborers to this country, and their maintenance
here of all the traits of race, religion, manners, and customs,
habitations, mode of life, segregation here, and the keeping up of
the ties of their original home, which stamp them as strangers and
sojourners, and not as incorporated elements of our national life and
growth. This experience may naturally suggest the reconsideration of
the subject as dealt with by the Burlingame treaty, and may properly
become the occasion of more and circumspect recognition, in renewed
negotiations, of the difficulties surrounding this political and
social problem. It may well be that, to the apprehension of the
Chinese Government no less than our own, the simple provisions of the
Burlingame treaty may need to be replaced by more careful methods,
securing the Chinese and ourselves against a larger and more rapid
infusion of this foreign race than our system of industry and
society can take up and assimilate with ease and safety. This ancient
Government, ruling a polite and sensitive people, distinguished by
a high sense of national pride, may properly desire an adjustment of
their relations with us which would in all things confirm and in no
degree end