The California Anti-Chinese Act (January, 1859)

Source: The Pacific Commercial Advertiser. Honolulu: January 6, 1859. 

Several months ago we called public attention to this act, passed by the California Legislature at its last session, pointing out its in justice and maintaining that it was impolitic for a great and Christian state to exclude the Chinese from the entrance within her ports, at the same moment that the United States, England, France, and Russia were compelling China, at the point of the bayonet, to aborgate this very same law of exclusion of barbarians. 

In order that our readers may see what the law is we give below the two most important sections:

SEC. 1.-On and after the first day of October, A.D., one thousand eight hundred and fifty-eight,  any person or persons of the Chinese or Mongolian races shall not be permitted to enter the State, or land therein, and at any part or portion thereof; and it shall be unlawful for any man or person, whether captain or commander, or other person in charge of or interested in, or employing on board of, or passenger upon any vessel or vessels, of any nature or description whatsoever, to knowingly allow or permit any Chinese or Mongolian, on and after such time to enter any of the ports of this State, to land therein, or at any place or places within the borders of this State. 

The penalties incurred by a violation of this Act are very severe, being,

A fine in any sum not less than four hundred dollars nor more than six hundred dollars, for each and every offense, or imprisonment in the country jail of the country in which the said offense was committed, for a period of not less than three months nor more than one year, or by both such fine and imprisonment.  

The object of the law was to check the immigration of the hordes of Chinese and Lascars which have been pouring into San Francisco for several years. There is no question that in many parts of the state of California the Chinese are very troublesome; but are they any more so than immigrants from South America or portions of Europe? 

The law, however, excludes not merely coolies or Chinese immigrants but also respectable Chinese merchants. We have here on these islands, perhaps a hundred Chinese merchants of good standing, and it is a well-known fact that at least one fourth of the trade between the support and San Francisco, and vice versa is transected on account of Chinese. Now the question arises, can these Chinese merchants visit San Francisco to purchase their stocks? The law most emphatically says no, and imposes a fine of $600 on the Captain who takes such passengers. 

Here is the manifest injustice of the law. Some six or eight resident Chinese merchants most of whom are naturalized Hawaiian subjects, have a four applied for a passage to San Francisco in the bark Yankee, for the purpose of purchasing goods there, intending to return in the same vessel. They are all respectable men, some of them doing a business of fifty to a hundred thousand dollars per annum. Capt. Smith of avers that the law forbids is taking them over, and we think he is correct. 

The Chinese Act is a manifest imposition on commerce and trade, and a disgrace to the State of California. While attempting to check an evil, it overshoots the mark it was intended to hit and injures legitimate travel and trade. We trust that some steps will be taken by our authorities to call the attention of the California state officers to the injustice of the law as it now stands, and if possible open some way by which our Chinese merchants can visit California.