Cairns Post, Saturday, July 2, 1887.
The visit of the Chinese Commissioners to Australia is pregnant with the gravest importance to the millions who have made Australia their home. The ostensible reason for their tour was to observe the condition of their countrymen who have migrated from the Flowery Land and settled in our midst. No one, however, will be found, we think, credulous enough to believe that is was for this purpose that the wily representatives of the "Brother of the Sun, Moon, and Stars," left their home at his bidding to come to this land of Foreign Devils, but will be more disposed to attribute their somewhat unexpected advent to a desire to spy out the fatness of the land, and to ascertain how far the several Governments of the Australian colonies may be disposed to tolerate the arrival of large crowds of the inhabitants of that much over-populated country, the Chinese empire.
General Wong Yung Ho and Consul-General U Tsing with unidentified man in Sydney during official visit in 1887.
"John," in small numbers, is a disirable acquisition in a climate like ours, where the white man does not take kindly to market gardening, or his better half to the cleanly but laborious occupation of washing linen. He is not above doing menial work of any kind, and were it not for his simple and child-like presence we should be very badly off in the matter of vegetables, fish, oysters, etc.
Kept under control, he is respectful and reliable in his dealings, and though very often a perfect monster of immorality, he does not flaunt his iniquities in the public thoroughfares, and the whites are not greatly annoyed thereby. But here comes the point. He must be kept under control, and the only means by which this can be done is to stem the tide of Chinese immigration, and refuse to allow them to exceed a certain proportion of the population.
The introduction of a poll tax will not necessarily do much towards keeping back the hordes that, if assisted by their Government, would pour upon our shores. Of the nearly 500,000,000 who comprise the Mongolian race, it can easily be believed that the Government would be only too glad to assist a vast number away, and unless a firm stand is made by the colonial authorities it is more than probable that on the arrival of the Commissioners at Hong Kong, and their report being made known, an exodus will commence, which would not be easily stopped.
The working man of Australia has got nearly as much of the Chinese element amongst him as he cares to have, and if many more are allowed to come to our Tom Tidlers ground, a repetition of the anti-Chinese riots which occurred in America may be expected to take place in our own peaceful land.