They will not go to Nashville until they finish the course at Le Moyne; and the better training we can give, the more will they be likely to desire instruction in other branches than are allowed here.
I will in a short time send you report of our library receipts and expenditures during the year. We did not think one year ago it could be possible to be in possession of so large and excellent an assortment of books as now stands upon our shelves. What more we can accomplish for it remains to be seen.
Auxiliary to the American Missionary Association.
THE NEW CONSTITUTION AND OUR MISSIONARY WORK.
The inquiry is raised with much anxiety by Eastern friends, what will be the effect on our missionary work of the adoption of our new Constitution.
That the spirit and intent of this instrument are intensely hostile to the Chinese is well understood. To find it providing as skilfully and malignantly as possible for forcing them out of the State will create no surprise. It stands alone, I apprehend, among all our State Constitutions in singling out one class among those upon whose industries the State lives, and by whose taxes its treasury is replenished, and making it the object of restrictive and oppressive legislation. One whole Section (XIX.) is devoted to this, and bears as its title “Chinese.” Stigmatizing them as “aliens who are or may become vagrants, paupers, mendicants, criminals or invalids, * * * or otherwise dangerous or detrimental to the State,” it directs the Legislature “to discourage their immigration by all the means within its power;” “to impose conditions upon which such persons may reside in the State, and to provide for their removal from the State” if the conditions are not fulfilled. It forbids any corporation from employing them “directly or indirectly in any capacity;” and requires that cities and towns be empowered by the Legislature to “remove the Chinese beyond their limits, or to locate them within prescribed limits;” and to “make and enforce all such local, police, sanitary and other regulations as are not in conflict with general laws.” These provisions are broad enough to admit any and every cruelty conceivable to be practised under the forms of law, and the Chinese cannot, as heretofore, appeal to our State Supreme Court with any hope of relief from oppressive enactments. The question is, what will the result be, and what can we do about it?