[Inclosure.—Translation.]
Mr. Dupuy de
Lome to Mr. Sickles.
Ministry of
State,
Palace, August 16,
1899.
My Dear Sir: Your note No. 32, of the 9th
instant, transmitting the contents of a dispatch from the Government
of the United States relating to the debt arising from the agreement
of February 17, 1834, has been duly received by this ministry.
In reply thereto I have the pleasure to state to you that the
Government of His Majesty has already given its attention to this
matter, carrying its prevision and good faith to the point of
providing the necessary sum for the payment of the interest of this
debt in the budget lately presented to the Cortes of the
Kingdom.
It is my duty, however, to remind you, that you may do likewise to
your Government, that, this debt arising out of a treaty which was
suspended in virtue of the late war, this matter can not be resolved
until the important point of the renovation of the agreements
celebrated between the two countries has been decided by the
Governments of Spain and the United States.
It is plain that in the protocol of the conference held in Paris on
December 8, 1898, between the Spanish and the North American
commissioners the latter proposed the inclusion of an article in the
treaty of peace renovating all the former treaties, to which
proposition the Spaniards objected, because according to them, “some
of the treaties were already obsolete or referred to conditions no
longer existing, for which reason it was necessary to make a more
careful study of each one of them than could be done by the
commission.”
The Secretary of State of the United States asked very recently if
the Government of His Majesty preferred to treat of the matter of
the renovation of the treaties in Washington or in Madrid, and, upon
having given the preference to Madrid, it was decided that it should
be so.
From all that precedes it follows that the Government of His Majesty
will resolve as to the payment of the debt of 1834 at the same time
that the subject of the renovation of the treaties is
considered.
The Government of His Majesty, wishing to give a proof of its
constant good
[Page 710]
faith, has
already taken the proper steps in order to completely guarantee the
interests of the holders of the debt of 1834, without this
resolution prejudicing in the least the matter which must be
resolved by common agreement between the two Governments
concerned.
I avail, etc.,
