the choice before me, having visited the United States as a young man, and brought me up in sympathy with American institutions, which he sincerely admired. I therefore found myself more at home here, when I arrived, than in the country of my birth. During the nineteen years of my residence here, I have exerted all my influence, in season and out of season, to make my countrymen good American citizens; to induce them to drop all quarrels and prejudices and religious animosities imported from the Old World, and to join heartily in labor for the industrial and intellectual development of this great republic. The Scandinavian immigrants have always been found on the side of law and order, and the counsel of the Chicago anarchists paid them a great and well merited compliment when he declared that he would not tolerate a single one of them on the jury. It is not, however, as a Norseman that I have spoken to you; but as an American citizen who is deeply attached to the country and its institutions, and who would avert, if he could, a danger which he believes to be threatening them. If I have in any wise exaggerated this danger, which I scarcely think I have, it is due to my zeal for the welfare of the republic, and my ardent desire that this noble experiment in self-government should not prove a failure. Macaulay prophesied the overthrow or dissolution of the American republic in the twentieth century because its constitution had too much sail and too little ballast. He predicted, as a preliminary to this dissolution, a state of things very similar to that which we are now experiencing. In optimism, which blindly hopes without taking note of actual conditions, lies our greatest peril, and he who can dispel this optimism will contribute to the security of the future. It is, therefore, a sign of the utmost significance when the Christian churches throughout the land become aroused to the necessity of grappling with these great and vital problems. They are not in themselves insoluble; but they require for their solution all the patriotism, the earnestness and noble self-devotion which are found within the Church of Christ. It is in this sign, and in this alone, that we shall conquer.

GENERAL DISCUSSION.

REV. S. L. BALDWIN, D. D., OF BOSTON.

FORMERLY MISSIONARY TO CHINA.

MR. PRESIDENT: The people of this country may well consider whether the time has not come for laying some restrictions upon immigration; but, as is often the case, we began at the wrong end, and restricted immigration at the Golden Gate when we ought to have done it at Sandy Hook. Restriction should be upon some line of principle, and there should be no unnecessary exclusion of any one nationality. The industrious, peaceable Chinaman should not be excluded while lawless socialists and anarchists are freely admitted. No preference should be given to immigrants from Christian Europe over those from Pagan Asia, in cases where the the Pagans to be the more Christian of the two.

facts

prove

If an immigration law, imposing a moderate tax on every immigrant, and requiring a certificate, from the American consul at the port from which the immigrant sails, that he is a person of good moral character, and purposes to be a law-abiding resident of the United States, could be passed and enforced, it might prove a very beneficial measure. Christianity can approve of such a measure, as being in the interest of our country, and equally in the interest of the immigrants themselves, and therefore in strict accord with the Golden Rule.

But the exclusion of a Chinaman, merely because he is a Chinaman, is unjustifiable, and our present law is an abomination. It prevents the coming to this country of a Chinese preacher to preach to his countrymen-not that he is forbidden to come, but that the regulations adopted to make sure that no laborer shall come to this land of the free and home of the brave, require him to get certain papers of the provincial authorities, which it is impossible for him to obtain.

It also prohibits a Chinaman already here from bringing to this country his wife and children, notwithstanding the fact that one of

the chief objections urged to Chinese immigration is, that they do not bring their families here. A Christian Chinaman in New Haven, a respected member of one of the churches there, going home to China for a visit, was very desirous of bringing his wife and little son, and making his permanent home here. A petition, signed by the President and Professors of Yale College, and many leading citizens of New Haven, praying that he might have that privilege, was sent to the Secretary of the Treasury, who replied that, under the Act, as construed by the Department, it was impossible.

We complain of the Chinese that they do not become citizens, and proceed to remedy that evil by passing a law that they shall not be allowed to become citizens. We complain that they do not bring their families, and then make such regulations as will effectually prevent their bringing them. We complain that they are not Christians, and then proceed to commend Christianity to them by breaking their windows, and sometimes their heads, even in Boston; by imposing discriminating taxes upon them; by driving them out of their homes, burning their houses, and shooting them. Is it any wonder that they are not suddenly and universally charmed with Christianity? If we were immigrants in China, and Buddhists gave us a welcome of stones and dirt, and unjust taxation, and broken glass and shot-guns, would it materially improve our conceptions of Buddhism?

When a Chinese mob raged about the residence of my colleague, Martin, at Foochow, and he broke through the partition between his house and the Taouist temple adjoining, the Taouist priests took him and his family under their shelter, and in the presence of the grimy gods of Heathenism, they dwelt secure during that dreadful night. When the poor, hunted Chinese of Rock Springs were fleeing from their murderous pursuers, one sought shelter in the house of a Christian minister, but was told that he had better move on, and he did move on-to his death! How long will it take this kind of reciprocity to win the Chinese to Christ? But, you say, these murderous men were not Americans; and, thank God, they were not! But the fact remains that they were foreigners-ignorant, vicious foreigners from Europe-whose immigration we were encouraging by hundreds of thousands in a single year, while our politicians were standing aghast at an immigration of peaceful Chinamen, which had barely reached the sum of 100,000 in a quar

ter of a century. And we reaped our harvest of shame when our boasted institutions had no sufficient control of those lawless European immigrants to prevent the slaughter, and no power to punish the offenders, or to secure any adequate redress.

We have reason for gratitude to God that, in spite of these wretched exhibitions of our weakness, and our complicity with wickedness, Christian kindness and Gospel work among our Chinese immigrants find the way to their hearts. A goodly number have been brought to Christ in our mission schools, even in San Francisco. Miss Carter's school, in the Mt. Vernon Church in Boston, had 124 Chinese pupils last Sunday. One of the leading Baptist churches in New York has as large a proportion of converts from its Chinese Sunday-school as from its American Sunday-school.

Briefly, then, let Christian statesmen deal with this immigration question on lines of Christian principle, looking to the securing of peaceful and law-abiding citizens, and doing away with all discriminations against a particular race. Let Christian philanthropy meet all the immigrants who come with kindness, protecting them from the miserable horde of sharpers who seek to fleece them on their arrival, so that the man who is not a pauper, when he lands at Castle Garden, is in danger of becoming such before he has been twenty-four hours in this land of freedom. Let it meet them with the warm, loving Gospel of Christ, get them into the churches, and give them the right start in their new home. of every class be protected in their just rights. Catholic Irishman, when legally naturalized, cast

Let immigrants Let the Roman his one vote, as

early as he pleases, but not more than once in one election. If, then, the Protestants of Boston choose to perpetuate the classic name of O'Brien in the mayoralty for scores of years to come, by staying away from the polls, on the ground that they are so bad

and

corrupt (because of their staying away from them), let O'Brien rule, and let the Mayor of the American Athens continue to present belts to brutal prize-fighters, while men who preach on Boston Common are sent to jail for that heinous offense, until Americans are shamed into united action to abolish such a disgraceful record, by taking off the heads, politically speaking, of the men who make

such a record for us.

Then it may come to pass that the hoodlums of San Francisco shall be taught that a Chinaman has rights which they are bound to respect; decent Christian treatment may be secured to all our

immigrants; a heathen Chinaman's life may come to be as safe in Christian America as a Christian missionary's life is in heathen China; our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens may be given a rest from the arduous duties of governing our great cities for us in the interests of rum, by the aid of boodle; the political atmosphere may be cleared of the dense fogs of corruption; our legislative halls may be purged from

"Ways that are dark and tricks that are vain,

For which the Heathen Chinee is by no means peculiar,"

and Christianity, exemplified in national, State and individual life, may conquer all our heterogeneous elements for Christ, and make these United States, as they "of right ought to be," not only a "free and independent," but a thoroughly Christian nation.

REV. J. M. FOSTER, OF CINCINNATI.

The immigration question must be settled in the light of our Christian civilization. This Republic is a child of the Reformation. John Calvin and the Reformers set up the Geneva Republic; William the Silent and the Reformers from Holland set up the Dutch Republic; Pym, Hampden, Sidney, Cromwell and the Puritans gave England civil and religious liberty; Knox, Melville, Henderson and the Covenanters gave Scotland civil and religious liberty. But their principles had been announced at Sinai in the Decalogue, twenty-five hundred years before. The Puritans of England, the Covenanters of Scotland, the Presbyterians of Ireland, the Dutch Reformed from Holland, and the Huguenots from France brought civil and religious liberty to America. This country was settled by Christian men with Christian ends in view. The Pilgrim Fathers, before landing on Plymouth Rock, while yet in the cabin of the Mayflower, drafted a constitution of government. That constitution began: "In the name of God, Amen. For the glory of God and the maintenance of the Christian faith," etc. And Webster said that ought to have been the first sentence of the Constitution of the United States. In all the colonial charters and compacts, and in thirty-four out of thirty-eight State constitutions, a clear and distinct recognition is made of the authority of God