Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward
Sir: On Saturday last, the 15th instant, I had a favorable opportunity of meeting Lord Stanley and of communicating to him the substance of your dispatch No. 2118, of the 13th of January. The chief portions of it I gave to him in your own words, especially the closing paragraph, precluding any inference that the suggestion that preceded was to be considered a proposal to reopen a negotiation.
His lordship said that his desire, as I must know, had always been so strong to arrive at some terms of agreement with us, that if he could see a way to it he should not stand upon ceremony in the order of initiating it. With respect to one of the subjects referred to in the dispatch, that of allegiance, he believed the feeling was universal in England that some change of the law was necessary to meet the change of circumstances. If there were inconvenience to us likely to spring from it on this side, it was not less true that equal inconvenience might result in certain cases to them on the other. Some had actually been experienced during the late war. In the instructions that had been given to Mr. Thornton, the new minister, he had included a proposal, in a friendly spirit, to engage in any consultation that might have for its object the arrangement of all existing difficulties on this head.
I said I was very glad to learn this; for just at the present moment there was a more pressing need of removing uneasiness on this score than on any other. We then went into some general conversation upon the difficulties in the way of a definite settlement of this right of expatriation among the great nations of the world, in the course of which his lordship started the idea of some commission of eminent legal representatives of the four powers most interested in the question to devise and recommend some common system for all. I expressed my own willingness to favor this notion, and the more that our difficulties were even more serious with Germany on this subject than with England. Passing from this, however, his lordship expressed his doubts whether it would be found more easy to come to an understanding by accumulating all the different topics recited in your dispatch in one heap than by treating each separately. The term “conference,” too, was so general that he could not yet quite affix a practical measure to it. He should be very glad to learn more fully what idea it was intended to convey. I said that I would, if he pleased, communicate this wish to you, it being understood that thereby no implication could be raised adverse to the observance of the precautionary final paragraph in your dispatch.
His lordship assented to this reserve. So it was understood between [Page 156] us that, saving all notion of the presentation of any overture thereby, I was to ask if you would be willing to convey to his mind more fully an idea of what was intended under the term “conference.”
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.