Mr. Pung to Mr. Blaine.
Washington , June 7, 1890. (Received June 7.)
Sir: I have been honored by the receipt of your note of the 27th ultimo, in which, in answer to the request contained in my note of the [Page 222] 24th ultimo for the interposition of the Government of the United States against the execution of the ordinance of the city of San Francisco respecting Chinese, you are kind enough to point out to me the articles of your Federal Constitution under which you say the Chinese subjects are secured in their treaty rights, and as a consequence of which you think there is no occasion to invoke the interposition of your Government.
I feel it my duty to tender you my thanks for bringing to my attention these provisions of the Constitution of your country. In view of what seems to many foreigners the complex system of your Government, it must be held as a great kindness to have the force and effect of your Constitution in its relation to treaty rights and privileges explained in so authoritative a manner; and I am glad to be thus confirmed in the conviction I already entertained that under the Constitution and laws of your enlightened country its courts were open to the subjects of all friendly nations for protection against wrong or injury to their persons or property. You will, however, excuse me for stating that it was not from ignorance of the articles cited of your Constitution that I made the request contained in my note of the 24th ultimo, but because my Government entertained the belief that the Government of the United States, in proffering and confirming article 3 of the treaty of 1880, assumed for itself a special and additional obligation towards Chinese subjects within its territory—an obligation which it had not before undertaken.
I do not think it necessary to relate the history of the negotiations resulting in the treaty of 1880, which has already been the subject of notes of this legation. It is sufficient to recall the fact that it was entered into at the express request of the United States, and that China consented to surrender certain treaty rights as to immigration upon the express condition and assurance of the American commissioners that the Chinese subjects in the United States should receive special protection, and that assurance was embodied in article 3. My Government can not understand the meaning of that article if its insertion did not imply that it was to throw around the Chinese subjects in the United States some protection which they did not then have. If, in exchange for the surrender of the right of immigration, a stipulation was to be given that the courts of the United States were to be thrown open to Chinese subjects, that would have been held to be a superfluous guaranty, for they already possessed that right under the most favored nation clause of article 6 of the treaty of 1868. There would seem to be no meaning in or occasion for simply reinserting that clause. The history of the negotiation, the concurrent assurances of the American commissioners, and the language of the treaty itself certainly justified the Imperial Government in entertaining the belief that under the stipulation of article 3 some positive, affirmative, active, interposition of the executive department of the United States would be exercised when it received notice that Chinese subjects in its territory were receiving ill treatment at the hands of the local authorities. It would hardly have been considered by the Imperial Government as a sufficient inducement to enter into the new treaty to be assured that, when the authorities of the great and powerful city of San Francisco should seize upon the Chinese subjects in that city and drag them from their long-established homes and business, the Federal Government would do nothing more than point them to the courts, where they could have the poor privilege of carrying on a long and expensive litigation against a powerful corporation in a cummunity where they were treated as despised and outcast race.
[Page 223]I also find an additional reason to support the construction placed upon article 3 by my Government in the fact that the language employed therein is exceptional and peculiar. I have made careful examination of the volume containing the “Treaties and Conventions concluded between the United States and other Powers,” published in 1889, and I have not been able to find any such or equivalent language used in any of the treaties with other nations.
In addition to the foregoing reasons for presenting the request contained in my note of the 24th ultimo, I was led to do so because such has been the uniform practice of the American minister at Peking, acting under the instructions of your Department, in all similar cases in China. Whenever American residents in that country are threatened with ill treatment at the hands of the local authorities, or of combinations of evil-disposed persons, the American minister is prompt to demand the active interposition of the Imperial Government; and in no instance has my Government returned the answer that the American residents must alone, and unsupported by the Imperial power and influence, carry on their contest with the local authorities; but, on the contrary, in every instance of threatened ill treatment or of wrongdoers, the Imperial Government has been prompt to interpose its authority to secure to American citizens their treaty rights.
It is earnestly to be hoped, therefore, that when the Attorney-General, to whom, you inform me, you have kindly submitted my note, shall learn of the great wrong that is being inflicted upon my poor countrymen at San Francisco, he will find some prompt and effective way whereby “the Government of the United States will exert all its power to devise measures for their protection and to secure to them the same rights” which other foreign residents enjoy without molestation.
It is hardly necessary for me to state to you that the Government of China can have no official relations with the authorities of the city of San Francisco, and that whatever loss is sustained by the Chinese residents of that city by reason of the enforcement of the ordinance cited must be regarded as occasioned by the failure of the Government of the United States to secure to those Chinese subjects their treaty rights, and that the Imperial Government must look to that Government for proper indemnification therefor. It is confidently expected, however, that the Government of the United States will exert its power so as to avoid all cause of complaint or indemnification.
I repeat, etc.,