SKETCHES NEW AND OLD
by Mark Twain
Part 3.
CONTENTS:
In San Francisco, the other day, "A well-dressed boy, on his way toSunday-school, was arrested and thrown into the city prison for stoningChinamen."
What a commentary is this upon human justice! What sad prominence itgives to our human disposition to tyrannize over the weak! San Franciscohas little right to take credit to herself for her treatment of this poorboy. What had the child's education been? How should he suppose it waswrong to stone a Chinaman? Before we side against him, along withoutraged San Francisco, let us give him a chance—let us hear thetestimony for the defense.
He was a "well-dressed" boy, and a Sunday-school scholar, and thereforethe chances are that his parents were intelligent, well-to-do people,with just enough natural villainy in their composition to make them yearnafter the daily papers, and enjoy them; and so this boy had opportunitiesto learn all through the week how to do right, as well as on Sunday.
It was in this way that he found out that the great commonwealth ofCalifornia imposes an unlawful mining-tax upon John the foreigner, andallows Patrick the foreigner to dig gold for nothing—probably becausethe degraded Mongol is at no expense for whisky, and the refined Celtcannot exist without it.
It was in this way that he found out that a respectable number of thetax-gatherers—it would be unkind to say all of them—collect the taxtwice, instead of once; and that, inasmuch as they do it solely todiscourage Chinese immigration into the mines, it is a thing that is muchapplauded, and likewise regarded as being singularly facetious.
It was in this way that he found out that when a white man robs asluice-box (by the term white man is meant Spaniards, Mexicans, Portuguese,Irish, Hondurans, Peruvians, Chileans, etc.,