Mr. Wu to Mr. Adee .

No. 258.]

Sir: I have to thank you for your note of the 31st July last, with which you kindly inclosed an opinion from the Acting Attorney-General on Circular No. 52 of the Bureau of Immigration, Treasury Department.

I gave at some length, in my note to your Department of June 14 last, my view of the unreasonableness of the circular in question, and do not see that it will be productive of any good end to elaborate further my objection to the same. The opinion of the Acting Attorney-General is another confirmation of a declaration in an opinion given by his Department on the 11th February last that in the enforcement of the Chinese-exclusion laws the ordinary principles of law and equity can not be followed, but that they must be subjected to a construction peculiar, severe, and strict.

Accept, etc.,

Wu Ting-fang.