But the bill was so drawn that in practice it would have caused great confusion in the clearing of vessels and would have led to an impossible situation.

It was not the intention of the bill to do what the President found its language to require, and the defects were due simply to maladroit phrasing, which frequently occurs in congressional enactments, thereby giving support to the theory of John Stuart Mill that a representative assembly is by its very nature unfit to prepare legislative measures.
The clumsy machinery of legislation kept bungling on, irresponsive to the principal needs and interests of the times.

An ineffectual start was made on two subjects presenting simple issues on which there was an energetic pressure of popular sentiment--Chinese immigration and polygamy among the Mormons.

Anti-Chinese legislation had to contend with a traditional sentiment in favor of maintaining the United States as an asylum for all peoples.

But the demand from the workers of the Pacific slope for protection against Asiatic competition in the home labor market was so fierce and so determined that Congress yielded.