THE CHINESE QUESTION.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3069, 28 April 1881, Page 2

THE CHINESE QUESTION.

|"To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph.] Sib, —I had thought that the foolish ; prejudice manifested in the neighboring colonies against my countrymen had no hold on the people of this enlightened -. country. I had thought that yonr 7^ English motto, " Live and let live," wag applied with the generosity of your national freedom to all races of the human family. lam sorry to discover that amongst you there are some who would restrict the liberty of life to those whom they might select for such a.

privilege. Thus, from the morning journal, I have had translated to me the following passages :-." Tbe Ohinaman is in no sense a settler * * * He is bo abstinent, so self-denying, and so simple M his desires, that he is hardly touched by the. Customs tariff * * His very ->...•*■ virtues tend to make him an undesirable addition to our population." Now, Sir, what is the difference between the Chinaman who comes here, and, working hard, reaps his! reward, and then returns to the land of his birth, "and- the Englishman who does, precisely the same? The morning journal answers this question by implying that tbe difference is to be found in the virtues of the Chinaman and the vices of the Englishman. Upon the vices of the populace your Government thrives, while it sickens and droops under the depressing influences of temperance and of thrift! Sir, an argument that tells much more forcibly with your countrymen ;than the false reasoning of tbe morning paper is this, namely, that the Chinaman, by bis natural habits of life, being able to live where an Englishman would starve, can undersell him in tbe labor market. You English do not love to dwell on this face of the picture. You like to think that you are the finest people on the surface of the globe, and that what J'ou cannot do no one can perform. In ate years, however, you ; have found to your alarm that the Chinese can do what you fail in. You do not like to admit your failure, and your inferiority to an V acknowledged inferior race I I have been ' told that in the days of your fathers, when mechanical skill first began to develop the industries of your nation, that your agricultural laborers went from r farm to farm and destroyed the newlyinvented labor-saving machinery. These enlightened country folks Baw in the threshing machine an enemy; they thought that this engine would drive them from the fields. While this destruction of property was going on in the country, in the cities similar scenes were to be observed in the smashing up of the spinning jennies. The English workman will congent to nothing that he thinks interferes with his old modes of life. He is the true _ Conservative. But his senseless opposition to tbe inevitable only hurt himself, while the tide of invention, , knowledge, and national progress, went irresistibly onward. As with-machinery so it will be with the Chinese. There will be opposition, but it will be of no avail. In the end the Chinese must triumph, though this generation may not live .to see the day. " For Peoples, as for individuals, life is a struggle, and the survival of tbe fittest is an inevitable law of nature.", I have extracted the above sentence'from an English paper. In his pride the Englishman will say, " I accept the law of the survival of the fittest: I am the fittest, therefore I Bball survive." Why then this senseless opposition to the Chinaman ? The Chinaman cannot hurt you if you are more fitted than he to survive'the'struggle for existence. But in bis heart the Englishman does not believe, in hie superiority, and he fears, aye, he trembles at tbe approach of the struggle that will determine whether the Chinaman or the Englishman shall live.—l am, &c, Ah Sin. Napier, April 28,1881.