Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/269

 IN BB CAMILLE. ���267 ���tuary 18, 1875, (18 St. 318.) His father was a whiteCana- dian, and his mother an Indian woman of British Columbia, and he ie, tberefore, ofhalf Indian blood. �In re Ah Yup, 5 Sawy. 155, it was held by Mr. Justice Sawyer that the words "white person," as usea in the natu- ralization laws, mean a person of the Caueasian race, and do •not include one who belongs to the Mongolian race. In the course of the opinion he says: "Words in a statute, other than technical ternis, should be taken in their ordinary sense. The words 'white person,' as well argued by petitioner's counsel, taken in a strictly literal sense, constitute a very indefinite description of a class of persons, where none can be said to be literally white, and those called white may be found of every shade from the lightest blonde to the most swarthy brunette. But these words in this country, at least, have undoubtedly acquired a weU-settled meaning in common popular speech, and they are constantly used in the literature of the country, as well as in common parlance. As ordina- rily used everywhere in the United States, one would scarcely fail to understand that the party employing the words ' white person' would intend a person of the Caueasian race." �From the same reasons it appears that the words "white person" do not, and were not intended to, include thered race of America. �Chancellor Kent, in considering this subject, (2 Com. 72,) says that "it may well be doubted" whether "the copper-col- ored natives of America, or the yellow or tawney races of the Asiatic," "are ' white persons ' within the purview of the law." �In ail classifications of mankind hitherto, color bas been a controlling circumstance, and for that reason Indians have never, ethnologically, been considered white persons, or in- cluded in any such designation. �From the first our naturalization laws only applied to the people who had settled the country — the Europeans or white race — and so they remained until in 1870, (16 Stat. 256; § 2169 Eev. St.,) when, under the pro-negro feeling, generated and inflamed by the war with the southern states, and its polit- ical consequences, congress was driven at once to the other �v.6,no.3— 17 ��� �