The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 12, December 1879Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 12, December 1879
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
A minor but very much to be noted result of the affair has been
_the disclosure of the actual state of things in California_.
It has shown how and where the anti-Chinese movement started,
how low its origin was and how it grew, by what means, by what
management it drew into it such respectable elements as it did;
that it was fomented by the press operating in the field of
State politics—that it was mainly a worked-up irrational furor
kindling by contagion, and did not really signify what it seemed
to. It was shown that much of the best part of California was not
in it. Why, the evidence for the defence on which the country,
balancing it with the other evidence heard, found its verdict
aforesaid, was, all of it, the evidence of California men—men
from the first rank of citizenship. It transpired that there was
in California a not inconsiderable party on the poor Chinaman’s
side, not forbearing to denounce and oppose the violation of his
rights, and to testify in his favor, that much as had been said
and done there against him, a good deal in the name of Christian
benevolence and humanity and justice had been said and done for
him. And so in the upshot of the public trial of the case it has
come about that the offence of California is mitigated by it.
And to the affront perpetrated in the halls of Congress in
addition to the offset furnished by the public attitude, there
has been a special one, too remarkable not to be mentioned.
It was a most lamentable spectacle to see a man like James G.
Blaine, of New England, in the eminence of his position, his
great gifts and his reputation, stand up in the United States
Senate, and before the world turn the power of his rare eloquence
against the cause of the weak. It was too bad. It cannot be
excused. But not only did his utterances call out replies from
the most capable and influential sources, notably from Dr.
S. Wells Williams, long resident in China, but now of Yale
College, than whom there is no higher authority on China and
Chinese affairs living; from Henry Ward Beecher, in a splendid
address given in Philadelphia on the 3d of last March; and
from William Lloyd Garrison, in a noble letter of protest, his
dying deliverance, the last shot the old warrior for humanity
fired;—not only, I say, did Mr. Blaine provoke these replies by
which he was convicted of ignorance and fallacy and his argument
throughout annihilated; but it happened that almost at the same
time he was misrepresenting both China and us at the Capitol,
another citizen of this country, in the eminence of a still
more illustrious fame, was in the far East, in the audience of
China herself, speaking our true mind for us; for it was to
a delegation of the Chinese merchants of Penang that, in the
month of April of the present year, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, in
that felicity of well-chosen and straightforward simple speech
that is characteristic of him, said, “The hostility of which
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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