Why Should the Chinese Go?

If this be true - and I believe I can demonstrate it even to your satisfaction - the truth is an important one. It concerns every element of the future social life of California; it lies at the basis of your industries; it is bound to subvert that demagogism by which your politics, as you call it, have been degraded to a level scarcely higher than incendiarism, pillage and murder.

Before I begin, let me describe the spirit in which I propose to discuss this subject. In the first place I intend to be just; to differ fiom you honestly; to be in?uenced by neither prejudice, hatred nor resentment; to employ no specious arguments; to set up no weak Issue, the easier to demolish it; to employ respectful language; to advance no facts which are not either well known to history or established in the course of the discussion itself.

Clothed in this dignity of discourse, I enter the lists without fear. I am upon your soil; I am surrounded at the best by unsympathetic spectators; my only buckler is the truth; my only weapon you1 language, the peculiarities of which can never be wholly mastered by a foreigner. Far from complaining of any disadvantage in these respects, I am free to own that no soil is freer, no assemblage more noble, no regulations more just than those which claim the proud title of American.

And now let the heralds be heard and my grievance stated. Hear, oh, ye just and valiant men, ye beauteous and compassionate women, the plaint of Kwang Chang Ling, a literate of the first class, a warrior and noble, a leader of the Chinese and a representa tive by authority.

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