Part 22

Another argument may be found in the extent to which reprisal on persons has been discarded by modern precedents. It is denounced, not only by authority, but also by practice. I have already said that the proposition to suspend commercial relations is without an example in history. The other proposition is without example since the hateful act of the first Napoleon, condemned afterward by himself, when, at the breaking of the short-lived Peace of Amiens, he seized innocent Englishmen who happened to be in France, and detained them as prisoners, precisely as is now proposed under the present bill. Among the numerous victims of this tyrannical decree was Lord Elgin, the father of the late Sir Frederick Bruce, on his return from Constantinople, where he had been ambassador. There was also an ingenious scholar, of feeble health, but exquisite attainments, Joseph Forsyth, author of one of the best books ever written on Italy.[255] He, too, was seized. In the preface to his admirable work his family have recorded the outrage. Read it, if you would know the judgment that awaits such a transaction. There is also another record in the pages of the English historian who has pictured the events of that time.

“This declaration of war was immediately followed by an act as unnecessary as it was barbarous, and which contributed more, perhaps, than any other circumstance to produce that strong feeling of animosity against Napoleon which pervaded all classes of the English during the remainder of the contest. Two French vessels had been captured, under the English letters of marque, in the Bay of Audierne, and the First Consul made it a pretence for ordering the arrest of all the English then travelling in France between the ages of eighteen and sixty years. Under this savage decree, unprecedented in the annals of modern warfare, above ten thousand innocent individuals, who had repaired to France in pursuit of business, science, or amusement, on the faith of the Law of Nations, which never extended hostilities to persons in such circumstances, were at once thrown into prison, from whence great numbers of them were never liberated till the invasion of the Allies in 1814.”[256]

Napoleon himself, at a later day, when reason resumed its sway, condemned the act. In his conversations at St. Helena with Las Cases, he said: “The greater part of these English were wealthy or noble persons, who were travelling for their amusement. The more novel the act was, _the more flagrant its injustice_, the more it answered my purpose.”[257] Here, then, was an admission that the act was at once novel and unjust. The generals that surrounded him at the time most reluctantly enforced it. From the Memoirs of the Duchess D’Abrantès, we learn how poignantly her gallant husband, Junot, took it to heart and protested. He was unwilling to have anything to do with such an infamy. Recovering at last from the stupor caused by the order, the brave soldier said: “My General, you know not only my attachment to your person, but my absolute devotion to everything which concerns you. It is that devotion which induces me to hesitate at obeying your orders, before imploring you to take a few hours to reflect on the measure which you have now commanded.… Demand my blood; demand my life; I will surrender them without hesitation; but to ask a thing which must cover us with---- … I am sure, that, when you come to yourself, and are no longer fascinated by those around you, who compel you to violent measures, you will be of my opinion.”[258] Every word of this earnest expostulation may now be justly addressed to the Senate. You, too, Senators, should you unhappily yield to those who now insist upon violent measures, will regret the surrender. You will grieve that your country has been permitted through you to fall from the great example which it owes to mankind. Save your country; save yourselves.

Suppose the law is passed, and the authority conferred upon the President. Whom shall he seize? What innocent foreigner? What trustful traveller? What honored guest? It may be Mr. Dickens, or Mr. Trollope, or Rev. Newman Hall; or it may be some merchant here on business, guiltless of any wrong and under the constant safeguard of the Public Faith. Permit me to say, Sir, that, the moment you do this, you will cover the country with shame, of which the present bill will be the painful prelude. You will be guilty of a barbarism kindred to that of the Abyssinian king Theodorus. You will degrade the national name, and make it a byword of reproach. Sir, now is the time to arrest this dishonor. See to it by your votes that it is impossible forever.

Sir, it is hard to treat this pretension with composure. Argument, denunciation, and ridicule are insufficient. It must be trampled under foot, so as to become a hissing and a scorn. With all the granting of legislation, it is solemnly proposed that good men shall suffer for acts in which they had no part. Innocence is no excuse against the present pretension. The whole attempt is out of time; it is an anachronism, no better than the revival of the _Prügel-knabe_, who was kept at the German courts of former days to receive the stripes which the prince had merited for his misdeeds. Surely, if anybody is to suffer, let it be the offending Government, or those who represent it and share its responsibilities, instead of private persons, who in no way represent their Government, and may condemn it. Seize the ambassador or minister. You will then audaciously violate the Law of Nations. The absurdity of your act will be lost in its madness. In the seizure which is now proposed there will be absurdity to make the world shake with laughter, if for a moment it can cease to see the flagrant cruelty and meanness of your conduct.

A debate ensued, which ran into the next day, in the course of which Mr. Conness, of California, insisted that the striking out of the reprisals clause would impair the efficiency of the bill, and make it nothing but “air.” At the close of the debate, immediately before the vote on the amendment, Mr. Sumner summed up his objection as follows:--

My objection to the text of the bill which it is proposed to strike out is, that it is a proposal of unutterable barbarism, which, if adopted, would disgrace this country.

The question, being taken by yeas and nays, resulted,--Yeas 30, Nays 7; as follows:--

YEAS,--Messrs. Anthony, Buckalew, Cattell, Chandler, Cole, Conkling, Corbett, Cragin, Davis, Fessenden, Harlan, Harris, Henderson, Howe, Kellogg, McDonald, Morgan, Morrill of Vermont, Osborn, Patterson of New Hampshire, Patterson of Tennessee, Pomeroy, Rice, Sumner, Trumbull, Van Winkle, Vickers, Willey, Williams, and Wilson,--30.

NAYS,--Messrs. Conness, Nye, Sprague, Stewart, Thayer, Tipton, and Whyte,--7.

For the section thus amended, Mr. Williams, of Oregon, moved a substitute; whereupon the debate was resumed, and Mr. Sumner spoke again.

The amendment of the Senator, and the remarks that he has made, it seems to me, go on a mistaken hypothesis. They accept the idea that there has been some failure on the part of our Government with reference to citizens abroad.

MR. WILSON [of Massachusetts]. Is not that true?

MR. SUMNER. I think it is not true; and if time would allow now, I could go into the evidence and show that it is not true. I have the documents here. But we are entering upon this question to-night with an understanding, almost a compact, that there shall be no debate. I do not wish to break that compact. But here are documents lying on my table containing all the facts of record with regard to every American citizen who has been taken into custody abroad. Examine that record, and you will see how strenuous and steadfast our Government has been.

Permit me to say that the argument of the Senator from Oregon [MR. WILLIAMS] proceeds on a misunderstanding of the facts. There is no occasion now for any such legislative prompting to the Government of the United States.

MR. WILLIAMS. I should like to ask the Senator a question.

MR. SUMNER. Certainly.

MR. WILLIAMS. Why is it, if everything has been so smooth and so placid upon this subject, that both of the political parties of this country have seen proper to put in their platforms resolutions in reference to the rights of American citizens abroad?

MR. SUMNER. I have not said that things were placid or smooth; but I have said that our Government has been strenuous and steadfast in the maintenance of the rights of American citizens, whether native-born or naturalized; and the record will show the truth of what I say. Where has there been a failure? Has it been in Germany? Read the correspondence, running now over several years, between the United States and the different powers of Germany, and see the fidelity with which the rights of our naturalized citizens have been maintained there.

I wish to be as brief as possible. If the Senator will take the trouble to read the documents on the table, he will see that among all the numerous applications made by the United States to the Government of Prussia, the leading power of Germany, there is hardly an instance where this power did not meet us kindly and generously. I speak according to the record. I have been over every one of these cases; and I must say, as I read them I felt a new gratification in the power of my country, which made itself felt for the protection of its citizens in those distant places, and also a new sense of the comity of nations. A letter went forth from one of our ministers, and though at that time this difficult question of expatriation was still unsettled, yet, out of regard to our country, or out of regard, it might be, sometimes, to the personal character of our minister, the claim was abandoned. You can hardly find an instance----

MR. CONNESS rose.

MR. SUMNER. Will the Senator let me finish my sentence?

MR. CONNESS. Certainly.

MR. SUMNER. You can hardly find an instance in that voluminous correspondence where the claim has been persisted in on the part of the Prussian Government. The abstract question was left unsettled; but the individual was left free, without claim of allegiance or military service. All this was anterior to the treaty, by which this whole question is happily settled forever.

But it is not my purpose to discuss the conduct of foreign Governments. My simple aim is to show the conduct of our own. That was the point with which I began. I said that it needed no quickening such as the Senator from Oregon proposes to apply. There is no evidence that our Government has not been persistent and earnest for the protection of its citizens abroad, whether native-born or naturalized, and I alluded to Prussia only by way of illustration. Pass that by. We have then the greater and more complex case of England. But I would rather not enter upon this. Here are the documents on my table, the passages all marked, which would illustrate the conduct of the British Government and the British tribunals toward every one of these persons whose names have been brought in question. I do not wish to go into this question. I should be misunderstood; and it is not necessary. I am speaking now of the conduct of our own Government, rather than of the conduct of any other Government. Mark, Sir, my reply to the Senator from Oregon was, that our Government did not need any additional power or any additional impulse to activity in this behalf. Already it has the power to do everything permitted by the Law of Nations, and it ought not to do anything else.

Mr. Conness followed in support of the bill, and to a correction from Mr. Sumner retorted:--

“The honorable Senator would be very quick to demand the interference of all the powers of this Government in behalf of an arrested American citizen, if he were black. But, Sir, those arrested happen to be of another color,--not a color which appeals to his sympathies, but a color that allows him to belittle their arrest and incarceration,--that enables him to say here in the Senate that our Government have done everything that they could do, all that was necessary. It is true in his judgment, I have no doubt; for, if you only write letters, if you only publish and utter productions of the brain, if you only present views, the honorable Senator is satisfied. Those are his means, except when the progress through the thoroughfares of the city or the country of an American citizen of African descent is involved. Then views are at once thrown to the dogs, and he demands the interference of the Government, the police authority; if it be a railroad company, repeal their acts of incorporation! No matter how much capital stands in the way,--it may be $10,000,000 that is affected,--repeal their acts at once! How dare they impiously set up their tyranny over one human being who is stamped with American citizenship?… The law as proposed to be passed under the direction of the honorable Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations amounts to nothing.… I hope, without detaining the Senate any longer, that we shall not add to our too great delay upon these questions the offence and insult that the passage of this Act would be as proposed by the Committee.[259]

To this attack Mr. Sumner replied as follows:--

I hesitate very much to say another word; and yet I think the Senate will pardon me, if I make a brief reply to the charge, so absolutely unjust, of the Senator from California. He throws upon me the reproach of indifference to foreigners. Sir, I deny the imputation, and challenge comparison on this head with any Senator on this floor. Here I know that I am without blame. Sir, you do not forget that more than ten years ago there was a storm that passed over this country which had a name more familiar than polite: I mean Know-nothing-ism. It was everywhere, and enveloped my own State. At that time I had the honor of holding the position which I now hold. Did I yield to this storm, when it was carrying all before it? Sir, at that time I went down to Faneuil Hall, and in the presence of one of the largest audiences ever there assembled, and knowing well the prevailing sentiment, I made a speech vindicating the rights of emigrants to our country and promising them welcome. I have that speech here now, and I will read a few sentences from it. This was on the 2d of November, 1855,--nearly thirteen years ago. Pardon me for reading this record of other days; but I am justified by the attacks to which I have been exposed. If any foreign-born citizen is disposed to hearken to the Senator from California impeaching me, I ask him to bear in mind how I stood for his rights at another time, when there were fewer ready to stand for them than now. I read from this forgotten speech, as reported at that time.

Mr. Sumner read the first two paragraphs on the thirteenth page of the pamphlet edition.[260]

Such was my argument for the rights of the foreign-born among us. To all of them I offered such welcome as I could:--

“There are our broad lands, stretching towards the setting sun; let them come and take them. Ourselves children of the Pilgrims of a former generation, let us not turn from the Pilgrims of the present. Let the home founded by our emigrant fathers continue open in its many mansions to the emigrants of to-day.”[261]

Sir, those were the words which I uttered in Faneuil Hall at a time when the opposition to foreigners was scouring over the whole country. Others yielded to that tempest, but I did not yield. All my votes in this Chamber, from the first day that I entered it down to this moment, have been in the same direction, and for that welcome which I thus early announced. Never have I missed an occasion to vote for their protection; never shall I miss any such occasion. I was the first in the Senate to announce the essential incompatibility between the claim of perpetual allegiance and the license of unlimited emigration which we had witnessed, saying that every Irishman or German leaving with the consent of his Government was a living witness to the hollowness of the original pretension. And now I am most anxious to see expatriation a law as well as a fact. If I do not adopt the expedients proposed, it is because I regard them as less calculated to produce the much-desired result than other means equally at hand, to the end that the rights of our naturalized citizens may find adequate safeguard everywhere. The present bill can do little good, and may do harm. It will not protect a single citizen; but it may be a drag on those pending negotiations by which the rights of all will be secured. Too studious of the Law of Nations, perhaps, to be willing to treat it with distrust or neglect, I look to that prevailing agency rather than to the more limited instrumentality of Municipal Law. It is the province of Municipal Law to determine rights at home,--how a foreign-born person may be naturalized in our country,--how he may be admitted to all the transcendent privileges of American citizenship; but it belongs to another system of law to determine what shall be his privileges, should he return to the country which gave him birth. We may, by our declarations, by our diplomacy, by our power, do much; but it is by our treaties that we shall fix all these rights in adamant. The Senator seems to have no higher idea than to write them in the fleeting passions of party. My vote will never be wanting to elevate them above all such fitful condition, and to place them under the perpetual sanction of International Law,--the only law which can bind two different powers. Sir, the Senator from California shall not go before me; he shall not be more swift than I; he shall not take one single step in advance of me. Be the person Irish or German or African or Chinese, he shall have from me the same equal protection. Can the Senator say as much?

THE CHINESE EMBASSY, AND OUR RELATIONS WITH CHINA.

SPEECH AT THE BANQUET BY THE CITY OF BOSTON TO THE CHINESE EMBASSY, AUGUST 21, 1868.

The year 1868 was memorable for the Chinese Embassy, with Hon. Anson Burlingame at its head, which, arriving first at Washington by the way of San Francisco, negotiated a treaty with the United States, and then visited Europe. The abundant hospitality with which it was received throughout the United States was marked at Boston by a distinguished reception and entertainment on the part of the municipal authorities. August 20th, the Embassy was received by Hon. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, Mayor, and escorted in public procession through the principal streets, and with the customary diplomatic salutes, to the Parker House, where they were lodged as the guests of the city. The next day at noon they were publicly received at Faneuil Hall, which was decorated for the occasion. In the evening they were entertained at a banquet at the St. James Hotel, where were present about two hundred and twenty-five gentlemen, including the City Government.

The company is thus described in the official report:--

“Hon. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, Mayor, presided. On his right were seated Hon. Anson Burlingame, Chief of the Embassy; His Excellency Alexander H. Bullock, Governor of the Commonwealth; Teh Lao-yeh, English Interpreter attached to the Embassy; Hon. Charles Sumner, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate; Hon. Caleb Cushing; Major-General Irwin McDowell, U. S. A.; Commodore John Rodgers, U. S. N.; Charles G. Nazro, Esq., President of the Board of Trade. On the left of the Mayor were seated Chih Ta-jin, Associate Minister; Mr. McLeavy Brown, Secretary to the Embassy; Sun Ta-jin, Associate Minister; M. Émile Dechamps, Secretary to the Embassy; Fung Lao-yeh, English Interpreter; Ralph Waldo Emerson, LL.D.; Rev. George Putnam, D. D.; Mr. Edwin P. Whipple.

“Among the other distinguished guests present were: Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes; Hon. Nathaniel P. Banks, Hon. George S. Boutwell, and Hon. Ginery Twichell, Members of Congress; Rev. Thomas Hill, D. D., President of Harvard College; Hon. George S. Hillard, United States District Attorney; Hon. George O. Brastow, President of the Senate; Hon. Harvey Jewell, Speaker of the House of Representatives; Brevet Major-General H. W. Benham, and Brevet Major-General J. G. Foster, U. S. Engineer Corps; Major-General James H. Carleton, U. S. A.; Brevet Brigadier-General Henry H. Prince, Paymaster U. S. A.; Major-General James A. Cunningham, Adjutant-General; Hon. Henry J. Gardner, Ex-Governor of the Commonwealth; Hon. Josiah Quincy; Hon. Frederic W. Lincoln, Jr.; Dr. Peter Parker, formerly Commissioner to China; Hon. Isaac Livermore; Sr. Frederico Granados, Spanish Consul; Mr. G. M. Finotti, Italian Consul; Mr. Joseph Iasigi, Turkish Consul; Hon. Marshall P. Wilder, President of the Board of Agriculture; Rev. N. G. Clark, D. D., Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions; and many of the leading merchants and professional men of Boston.”

At the banquet speeches were made by the Mayor, Mr. Burlingame, Governor Bullock, Mr. Sumner, Mr. Cushing, Mr. Emerson, General Banks, Mr. Nazro, and Mr. Whipple.

The Mayor announced as the fifth regular toast, “The Supplementary Treaty with China,” and called upon Mr. Sumner to respond. Mr. Burlingame had already said in his speech, while declining any elaborate exposition of the Treaty: “No, Sir,--I leave the exposition of that treaty to the distinguished Senator on my right, who was its champion in the Senate, and who procured for it a unanimous vote.”

Mr. Sumner said:--

MR. MAYOR,--I cannot speak on this interesting occasion without first declaring the happiness I enjoy at meeting my friend of many years in the exalted position he now holds. Besides this personal relation, he was also an honored associate in representing the good people of this community, and in advancing a great cause, which he championed with memorable eloquence and fidelity. Such are no common ties.

The splendid welcome now offered by the municipal authorities of Boston is only a natural expression of prevailing sentiments. Here his labors and triumphs began. In your early applause and approving voices he first tasted of that honor which is now his in such ample measure. He is one of us, who, going forth into a strange country, has come back with its highest trusts and dignities. Once the representative of a single Congressional district, he now represents the most populous nation of the globe. Once the representative of little more than a third part of Boston, he is now the representative of more than a third part of the human race. The population of the globe is estimated at twelve hundred millions; that of China at more than four hundred and sometimes even at five hundred millions.