The Legal Quandary of Chinese Exclusion

Judge James G. Swan, of Port Townsend, was at the Occidental hotel yesterday, having come to the city on a brief business trip. Judge Swan, who is United States commissioner at Port Townsend, has had an interesting question come before him regarding the enforcement of the new law for the exclusion of the Chinese. Under the former law a United States commissioner could order the deportation of a Chinaman after proper proof had been given that the Chinaman had unlawfully entered the country. According to the new law the Chinaman is not only to be deported, but is first to be imprisoned for a year at hard labor. The first arrests under the new law came before Judge Swan a few days ago, and he was naturally in a quandary as to the proper course to pursue. According to law a United States commissioner cannot sentence a man to imprisonment except for the sake of holding him for trial by the United States court. Consequently, the commissioner could not, without exceeding his authority, do more than order the deportation of the Chinaman. Another point to be considered was that a man is imprisoned at hard labor only for crimes, and in a trial for a crime he cannot be forced to give testimony against himself. So to indict the full penalty of the law all smuggled Chinamen would have to be tried in regular form before the United States court, and much time and money would necessarily be spent in procuring the evidence against them. Since the new law expressly superseded the old one, Judge Swan decided to follow the latter, and he ordered the Chinese to be deported. At the same time he wrote to Senator John B. Allen and laid the matter before Judge Hanford. Senator Allen replied that after examining the law he fully appreciated the difficulty, but imprisonment was meant, he thought, only for cases where a Chinaman was an old offender, and had made veteran attempts to get into the country; and Judge Hanford gave direction to proceed in Chinese cases the same as under the original law, except where the Chinaman was an old offender, or had smuggled other Chinamen in. Then the cases were to be bound to appear before the district judge.