From The Extract of October 6.
PONG AH LUNG'S CASE. 436 C.O. 18533 RECO REGO 31/03/1883.
The Chinese Exclusion Act has been the subject of numerous judicial decisions in the brief time since it became a law, the latest and most important of which is that of Justice Field, of the United States Supreme Court in San Francisco, against the admission of Chinese from Hong-Kong. The point made in their behalf was that the treaty and the act of Congress contemplated the exclusion only of subjects of the Power with which the treaty was made, whereas Hong-Kong is a British dependency. A case of this kind arose in Boston some months ago, and Judges Nelson and Lowell, of the United States Circuit Court, taking the view just stated, permitted Ah Shong, a Chinese laborer from Hong-Kong, to land in Massachusetts, in spite of the act of Congress.
This decision naturally caused alarm on the Pacific Coast. Hong-Kong itself is a small island with a Chinese population not much over 100,000 by a census taken ten years ago, but it is still the entrepôt of the custom trade of all nations, and the natural gateway, if not the starting-place, of a large proportion of the emigration from China. Most of the Chinese now in this country are said to have come from that port.
It is obvious that if this decision was to be accepted as the true construction of the act, the stream of Chinese immigration would soon be flowing toward our shores again. Ah Sin from Pekin looks very like Ah Sin from Hong-Kong, and if he takes passage at the latter port, who is to prove that he was not born there, as Pong Ah Lung, the laborer in the San Francisco case, was, after Hong-Kong became a British possession?
Justice Field's decision, the text of which has now been received, takes issue with the Massachusetts view, and, as it is the decision of a Supreme Court Judge, will be regarded as practically overruling it, though both are decisions of Circuit Courts. Justice Field's opinion, we believe, will be accepted as a sound interpretation of the law. He shows, after describing the evils of Chinese immigration, that the law forbids any master of a vessel to bring to this country "any Chinese laborer from any foreign port or place." The exclusion is not of subjects of China, but of "Chinese laborers," and Pong Ah Lung is a laborer, having "all the peculiarities of the subjects of China," Justice Field says, although he claims to be a British subject.
Justice Field is not swerved by the argument that the act of Congress went further in the direction of exclusion than the treaty, which necessarily deals only with Chinese subjects. The act is, like the treaty, a part of the supreme law of the land. Neither has authority over the other. "The courts," Justice Field says, "cannot refuse to give effect to 'the laws of Congress, however much they 'may seem to conflict with the stipulations of 'the treaty. Whether a treaty has been violated by our Government in its legislative department, so as to be the proper occasion of complaint by the foreign Government, is not 'a judicial question. To the courts it is simply 'the case of conflicting laws, the last modifying 'or superseding the former." Justice Field adds his belief that the law was intended to do more than give effect to the treaty, and that his construction renders all its provisions consistent with each other." Any other construction certainly conflicts with the intent of the law and its plain terms.
It is not likely that Great Britain will take offence because Pong Ah Lung cannot land at San Francisco. Chinese immigration was