China will receive her own,--if with astonishment, it will be only because nations have so rarely lived according to the Golden Rule.

Such an act cannot be otherwise than honorable to the United States.

It will be a victory in a new field, making us first in a new order of conquerors.

So is justice to others the way to national advantage.

For example, here is the large German population of our country,--is it not right that they should have the means of adding to those innocent recreations that are found in reading?

We shall be doing a real service to them, if we enable them to import books that they lack, cheap,--not merely school-books, but I mean the large class of books outside of school-books.

Now should not those Italians be enabled under our tariff law to import books from their own country, of literature or of science, without paying a tax?

Take Spaniards; take Swedes; take Danes: I know not why their books should be taxed, when they come to them from across the sea.

It seems to me that the tax is inhospitable; it is churlish; and of course it is a tax on knowledge.

To add to their cost by a heavy duty is an outrage, for it is depriving men of small means of the tools whereby they live.

It is a queer kind of protection of home industry which seeks to keep out of the country by taxation the knowledge which makes industry valuable.

Now I put it to Senators whether any injurious consequence can result from allowing these books to come in free.

I have no motive in making this motion, or this succession of motions, except my anxiety for the extension of knowledge in this Republic.

I am for free schools; I am for free knowledge everywhere; and I wish to beat down all the obstructions possible, and one of these is the tax which we impose in our tariff.

That all Acts of Congress relating to naturalization be, and the same are hereby, amended by striking out the word ‘white’ wherever it occurs, so that in naturalization there shall be no distinction of race or color.

I have here on my table letters from different States,--from California, from Florida, from Virginia,--all showing a considerable number of colored persons--shall I say of African blood?--aliens under our laws, who cannot be naturalized on…

Now, Sir, here is a practical grievance which needs a remedy.

You are now revising the naturalization system, and I propose to strike out from that system a requirement disgraceful to this country and to this age.

I propose to bring our system into harmony with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

The word “white” cannot be found in either of these two great title-deeds of this Republic.

It will do more for the character and honor and good name of this Republic than all the rest of the bill.

PRESIDENT,--The Senator from New York has chosen to make an assault on me to-day, because, in the discharge of my duties, I do not see my duty as he sees his duty,--because on this Fourth day of July I choose to stand by the Declaration of…

President, this is not the only bill on the Calendar which concerns the rights of colored persons.

Enjoying a charter from Congress which dedicates them and sets them apart to the cultivation of medical science, they have undertaken to exclude persons otherwise competent simply on account of color.

The evidence is irrefutable; and yet I have been unable to bring the Senate to a vote on that bill; and meanwhile colored physicians in this District are subjected to the indignity of exclusion from the Society, and thus are shut out from…