Important speech by the sponsor of the resolution to enter negotiations with the Chinese government to "lawfully permit the application of restrictions upon the great influx of Chinese subjects into this country." Sargent rails against "this strange and dangerously unassimilative people, increasing in numbers from year to year." He notes that "the importation of females for immoral purposes is...forbidden by statute... and yet...ninety-nine hundredths of the female immigration is in violation of the... statute." Sargent recounts his "excursions through the Chinese quarters in San Francisco, under protection and guidance of the police," during which "I have penetrated, two stories under the ground, into opium and gambling dens, where the stench was almost unendurable, reached by passages where a man cannot walk erect, between walls dripping with the exhalations of neighboring sewers... Here I found swarms of Chinamen, thick as maggots in cheese, smoking opium, cooking or eating rice..." The sentiments expressed by Sargent in this speech were to lead to the Chinese Exclusion Treaty in 1880, and the Chinese Exclusion Act, May 6, 1882.