Re: Confidence

arguments has any worth when
applied to the slave conditions of California, and therefore the most
serious, baffling obstacles to a removal of the evil are out of the
way. Both pretexts, we maintain, were false. There is no necessity for
furnishing vice to libertines; there was no lawful Chinese custom to
be opposed in opposing brothel slavery. But even if these were claimed
to be sufficient arguments across the water, they have no force in
California. There are women, alas! willing to make a trade of their
virtue for _their own gain_, without forcing Chinese women to make a
trade of their virtue for _the gain of masters_. As to Chinese custom:
America is not setting forth inducements for the Chinese to come and
live in our midst, as did Sir Charles Elliott when he promised the
Chinese the privilege of practicing their own social and religious
rites and customs, "pending Her Majesty's pleasure." If Chinese or any
other class of foreigners come to reside in the United States, it
is with the understanding that they must conform to the laws of the
country, whatever modification or radical alteration it obliges them
to make in their native customs, and if they will not do this they
must take the consequences.

No class of people, taken as a whole, are possessed of a greater
moral sense or can be reached more readily by moral suasion, than
the Chinese. We believe that if a proper condition of public moral
sentiment were maintained, by the enforcement of the laws of the
United States in Chinese communities, no class of peopl