CHAPTER XX.
SOME CHINESE EPISODES.
Bom.—So have I heard on Afric's burning shore A hungry lion give a grievous roar; The grievous roar echoed along the shore. Artax.—So have I heard on Afric's burning shore Another lion give a grievous roar, And the first lion thought the last a bore.
— Bomhastes Furioso.
In the annals of our coast there is no fouler blot than the outrages perpetrated at various times and places upon Indians, Mexicans, and Chinese. Viewed from any standpoint the aspect is revolting. As a free and forward nation we fling over the walls of a close despotism sentiments which would have disgraced feudalism. As a progressive people we reveal a race prejudice intolerable to civilization; as Christians we are made to blush beside the heathen Asiatic; as just and humane men we slaughter the innocent and vie with red-handed savages in deeds of atrocity.
Let the diabolism rest where it belongs, with unprincipled demagogues and our imported rulers from the lower social strata of Europe; such is surely not the sentiment of true, high-minded American citizens. It is hifamy enough for our people to bear, that such things are permitted in our midst. Since our first occupation of these shores the better class of citizens from the eastern United States have discountenanced impositions upon foreigners. The foreigners themselves, and chief among them the low Irish, are the ones who must bear the blame. To question a right guaranteed by constitution and treaty, to punish the innocent, to prosecute the unoffending, cruelly to en
