ART. VI. Citizens of the United States visiting or residing in China
shall enjoy the same privileges, immunities, or exemptions in respect
to travel or residence as may there be enjoyed by the citizens or
subjects of the most favored nation, and, reciprocally, Chinese
subjects visiting or residing in the United States shall enjoy the
same privileges, immunities, and exemptions in respect to travel or
residence as may there be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the
most favored nation. But nothing herein contained shall be held to
confer naturalization upon citizens of the United States in China,
nor upon the subjects of China in the United States.
An examination of these two articles in the light of the experience
then influential in suggesting their "necessity" will show that the
fifth article was framed in hostility to what seemed the principal
mischief to be guarded against, to wit, the introduction of Chinese
laborers by methods which should have the character of a forced and
servile importation, and not of a voluntary emigration of freemen
seeking our shores upon motives and in a manner consonant with the
system of our institutions and approved by the experience of the
nation. Unquestionably the adhesion of the Government of China to
these liberal principles of freedom in emigration, with which we were
so familiar and with which we were so well satisfied, was a great
advance toward opening that Empire to our civilization and religion,
and gave promise in the future of greater and greater practical
results in the diffusion throughout that great population of our arts
and industries, our manufactures, our material improvements, and the
sentiments of government and religion which seem to us so important to
the welfare of mankind.
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