able to control the report of the committee, he would at least have so restrained the legislation of Congress as to have prevented the radical action taken by that body. He had prepared material which he designed to have incorporated in the report of the joint committee. These papers were submitted to the Senate after his death as embodying his views, and constituted a minority report.
He called attention to the "great and eternal doctrines of the equality and natural rights of man," which were the foundation-stone of the political system of the United States. Believing "that God has given to all men the same rights, without regard to race or color," it became a cardinal principle of the government, "proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, in the Articles of Confederation, and recognized by our Constitution, that our country was open to immigrants from all parts of the world;" and that this invitation could not and ought not to be limited or controlled by race or color, by the character of the civilization, nor by the religious faith of the immigrants.
He referred to the great objections which had been urged to the Chinese and Japanese—their exclusiveness, their refusal to permit the people of other nations to settle in or travel through their countries and acquire a knowledge of their institutions. Now when the doors of China and Japan were thrown open, and Americans had the right to live there, to do business, and had complete protection, it was proposed to take a step backward by the adoption of their cast-off policy of exclusion. The argument set up in favor of this was
