Mr. Romero to Mr. Hunter
Mr. Acting Secretary: In my note of the 27th of October, 1865, to your department, relative to grants made by the Austrian ex-Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, to citizens of this country, to create some interest, among other objects in favor of usurpation, in the United States, and specially to the so-called “Imperial Mexican Express Company,” formed in New York, by virtue of one of those pretended grants, I transmitted (No. 4) the copy of a letter addressed by Mr. de Courcillon, president of the said company, to the New York press on the 23d of October, and printed the next day, of which he sent me a copy, with his letter to me of the same date, and which I transmitted to the department, as No. 3. In the first of these letters Mr. de Courcillon, in order to induce citizens of this country to take part in his speculation, assured them it was sanctioned by President Juarez, and he used the following language:
“After the granting of this decree, (that of the usurper,) I had an interview with President Juarez in Chihuahua, in which I stated to him with entire frankness that I had obtained a decree from Maximilian for the purpose of forming an express company to transact business between Mexico and the United States, and elsewhere, and that I proposed to interest therein American citizens and American capital.
“President Juarez advised me that he had no objection to the formation of such a company as I proposed, and that it was then, and always had been, his desire, knowing, as he supposed, the wishes and desires of the American people in regard to the form of government to prevail in Mexico, to have American citizens and American capital permanently transferred to Mexico.
“He remarked that this was the common-sense view of the matter, and that certainly there could be no objection to having American capital invested in Mexico for the purpose of conducting an express business.”
It immediately occurred to me that what Mr. de Courcillon had asserted could not be true, and I told him so in the letter I addressed to him on the 24th of October, a copy of which I sent to your department, No. 6, with my note above referred to. I communicated these facts to my government in due time, as was my duty, and to-day I received an answer from the President of the Mexican republic, dated El Paso, December 22, 1865, and enclose you a copy of it. You will see by it that President Juarez informs me that he has never sanctioned that project of Mr. de Courcillon, or anybody else, founded on the usurper’s grants, nor could he do anything so contrary to the law and dignity [Page 574] of the Mexican nation, and that he never before heard of Mr. de Courcillon and his project.
I think proper to make yon acquainted with this circumstance at the present time, as a future reference to this and similar affairs, intending at the same time to transmit the official answer of Mr. Lerdo de Tejada, Mexican minister of foreign affairs, to my communications of last October, as soon as it comes to hand.
I embrace this opportunity to renew to you, sir, the assurance of my distinguished consideration.
Hon. William Hunter, &c., &c., &c.