The Minister of Foreign Affairs to the French Minister in Washington
Monsieur le Marquis: The American newspapers bring ns extracts from diplomatic documents published in the United States, in which are related some conversations that I have had with Mr. Bigelow on the subject of certain measures adopted by the emperor Maximilian’s government. The observations of the United States minister, and my replies, relate particularly to the decrees of the Mexican government concerning the admission of blacks as colonists, to the suppression of brigandage, and to the position in which the Iturbide family were placed. I have not the official and complete text of the American documents before me, and it is therefore under the reservation of the ulterior reflections which, they may suggest that I deem it expedient to define the sense of the explanations to which the questions I have just mentioned have given rise between Mr. Bigelow and myself. These explanations are, besides, stated in the despatch which I had the honor to address to you on the 29th of November last, and I shall confine myself, in my reference thereto, to reviewing that part of the despatch relative to these questions.
When the United States minister came to acquaint me with the opinions of the Washington cabinet, I had to state that I declined all official controversy upon the acts of a foreign government acting with full independence, and that I could only receive as simple information any communication he might wish to make on the subject.
It would not become us, in fact, to accept the responsibility for resolutions emanating from the free initiative of the Mexican government. To admit such a discussion would justify its being said, contrary to all our declarations and the attitude we have rigorously observed, that we consider ourselves invested in Mexico with sovereign rights. Now, the support we afford to the emperor Maximilian and the Mexican nation is precisely intended to aid them to constitute, according to their wishes, an independent power responsible for its acts. This reservation very clearly established, I observed to Mr. Bigelow, in the course of ordinary conversation, that the measures pointed out to him were of a purely administrative order, and did not appear to me to constitute any of those exceptional derogations from general principles which may sometimes, perhaps, authorize a government to intervene in the interior affairs of a neighboring country. Every State regulates as it thinks fit the admission of emigrants upon its territory, whether black or white, and the conditions of the colonization of its soil. It is evident that these conditions, offered to strangers, only apply to the persons who have freely accepted them. So also the Mexican government has only exercised a right incontestably belonging to it in declaring that in its eyes civil war no longer existed on its territory; and ceasing to recognize in wandering bands the character of belligerents, it has promulgated against them the severe penalties which have been applied in every country for the suppression of brigandage. Still leso, in my opinion, can it be questioned respecting an act assigning in the state a particular rank to a particular family. In any case the effect of these measures did not go beyond the Mexican frontiers, and did not, therefore, appear to me to constitute any grievance of which a foreign government could complain. If, however, an opposite opinion should be entertained at Washington, I can understand that some uncertainty might be felt as to the means of causing the reclamations it might be thought proper to draw up to reach the right quarter. But, definitively, because it does not suit the federal government to recognize the de facto government of the emperor Maximilian as existing by right, and as, upon the other hand, it would seem to it ridiculous to address itself to the power it considers as legal, but which has in fact disappeared, I could not admit as a consequence that there was ground for finding fault with us to escape embarrassment, and for demanding at our hands explanations of acts emanating from the sovereign authority of a foreign government.
Receive, &c.,
Marquis de Montholon, Minister of France at Washington.