Chinese Place: 0050.0504

PRESS COMMENT – Rossland World.

            In a recent debate in the British House of Commons, a letter was produced from the Bishop of Columbia, Bishop Perrin of Victoria, saying nice things of the Chinese, using the same as an argument that as the Celestial was so well liked in British Columbia, he could not do much harm in the Transvaal.  This letter of the Bishop of British Columbia has provoked much invidious comment in the Coast press, and his lordship has been driven to defend himself in the columns of the Victoria Colonist.  The Bishop thinks that the Chinese are a strong race, and is in earnest over their conversion to Christianity.  He points out that they are punctual in business, scrupulously honest in their business engagements, and not addicted to drink.  Now all this is very true, and if the question were merely this, there would be nothing further to be said.  But implicitly behind the Bishop’s argument is implied that this country is ready to welcome the Chinaman as a settler and an equal.  For such a country as this must be either white or hybrid.  Now the Chinaman will not [sic] with the white man.  No white woman cares to marry a Chinaman whose sexual relations are unnameable.  Any resident in the Far East where Chinamen are employed knows this of them.  For plainer English the Bishop may refer to the Pentateuch.  The Chinaman too is an inveterate gambler and is generally addicted to opium.  He is inclined to create an imperium in imperio and be a law unto himself.  Special police are necessary to cope with him.  Their sanitary life is much at fault and their general health more or less serofulous.  Such people are not welcome and when they prevent white men coming to the province, it is unsupportable.  They have their virtues, many of them, but their virtues are not such when coupled with their faults, to invite their being co-laborers with the white.  If British Columbia is to be a white man’s country the Chinaman must go.  The people will not mix.  And the world, with no desire of impertinence, might remind his lordship that if he is here as a missionary, it is as a missionary to the whites.  The Chinese are here an accident, and an unfortunate one at that.

0050.0504: Chinese Place

Newspaper excerpt Rossland World - recent debate in B.C. House of Commons had a letter produced by Bishop Perrin saying nice things of the Chinese.

Medium:  Newspaper - Text
Date:  April 2, 1904
Pages:  2
Publisher:  The Nelson Economist
Collection:  Columbia Basin Institute (0050)

Keywords:

debate house of commons letter celestial chinese gambler opium

Subjects:

People arrow Perrinarrow
Social arrow Racism arrow Chinesearrow
Social arrow Criminal Activity arrow Drugsarrow
Social arrow Criminal Activity arrow Gamblingarrow

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