The Australasian Conference on Chinese Immigration has arrived at the
compromise which we pointed out a few weeks since as the one combining justice with expediency. As the Government of Pekin is willing to forbid the emigration of its subjects to America, the delegates ask the Foreign Office to make a treaty forbidding also Chinese emigration to Australia. If this is conceded, the Colonists will repeal all internal laws directed against Chinamen as such, ex- cept the intercolonial passport law, which is valuable for ordinary reasons of police. That is the right solution. As Europeans are forbidden by nature and circumstances to settle in China, it is not unfair to forbid Chinese from settling in European dominions, but it is most unfair to persecute them when they have settled. We hope the Ambassador at Pekin will have no difficulties in his way ; but he will have to act at an unlucky moment, when he is asking China to use its reserved authority in Tibet. The Chinese hate doing anything of the kind, and are not at all unlikely to suggest that if the Australian request is conceded, the Indian one shall be withdrawn. Fortunately, in India we can give orders ; but managing the foreign affairs of two or three continents at once is, when their interests happen to collide, by no means easy work. It is not driving three horses, but an elephant, a camel, and a horse in one break.
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