_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:
I transmit herewith a letter from the Secretary of the Interior and the accompanying report, submitted by the governor of Alaska in compliance with section 5 of the act of May 17, 1884, entitled "An act providing a civil government for Alaska."
_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:
I transmit herewith a report of the Secretary of State, in relation to the claim of the representatives of the late Hon. James Crooks, a British subject, against this Government for the seizure of the schooner _Lord Nelson_ in 1812.
The matter is commended to the favorable consideration of Congress.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:
I transmit herewith, for the consideration of Congress with a view to appropriate legislation in the premises, a report of the Secretary of State, with certain correspondence touching the treaty right of Chinese subjects other than laborers "to go and come of their own free will and accord,"
In my annual message of the 8th of December last I said:
In the application of the acts lately passed to execute the treaty of 1880, restrictive of the immigration of Chinese laborers into the United States, individual cases of hardship have occurred beyond the power of the Executive to remedy, and calling for judicial determination.
These cases of individual hardship are due to the ambiguous and defective provisions of the acts of Congress approved respectively on the 6th May, 1882, and 5th July, 1884. The hardship has in some cases been remedied by the action of the courts. In other cases, however, where the phraseology of the statutes has appeared to be conclusive against any discretion on the part of the officers charged with the execution of the law, Chinese persons expressly entitled to free admission under the treaty have been refused a landing and sent back to the country whence they came without being afforded any opportunity to show in the courts or otherwise their right to the privilege of free ingress and egress which it was the purpose of the treaty to secure.
In the language of one of the judicial determinations of the Supreme Court of the United States to which I have referred--