THE BLIGHT OF CHINESE IMMIGRATION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 196, 29 December 1876, Page 14

THE BLIGHT OF CHINESE IMMIGRATION.

Commenting on, and commending- a recent article of the ' Freeman's Journal/ tlie ' Texas Catholic' says : " It cannot be successfully denied that the strongest and most rational opponents of slavery in this country were not of the sentimental Abolition school, and many of them were themselves large slaveholders in the South. They recognised the blighting influences of the institution upon the industry, enterprise, and morals of their country, and earnestly prayed for a means and time of deliverance from it. ' ' All accounts go to convince us that the Chinese are in degree, if not in kind, a subject race, as was the African in slavery. They live on a few cents per day, crowd together hy scores in filthy huts in the most wretched quarters of our cities and towns, and arc addicted to the most revolting of vices. The difference between what they consume, and what is absolutely required to sustain an American laborer, is sufficient to make a large margin of profit to wealthy employers of Chinese labor. The result is the growth in our midst of a class of idlers, who live by the sweat of these Asiatic wretches, and bring into the body politic the same baneful influences that Thomas Jefferson and his compatriots so much dreaded, as the necessary incidents of African slavery. Having gotten rid of the African system at a cost so terrible to contemplate, Aye must stop at the threshold the no less pernicious system of Asiastic serfdom. " To the religious plea that the Chinese -will become Christianised by a residence among us, it is sufficient to answer that there is no good ground for such a hope. They are here, the victims of the avarice, cupidity and oppression of the least Christian elements of our country, which are well calculated to convince these 'Celestials' that not only our Christianity, but our civilisation also, is an arrant fraud and imposture. If the Chinese are to be converted, it must be the work of missions, beyond the influences which, to their minds, give the lie to the claims set up in behalf of Christian civilisation."