Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams
Sir: I have just now received your dispatch of the 18th of February No. 1539. I entirely approve of your proceeding in submitting the substance of my No. 2118 to Lord Stanley. I have also taken the President’s directions concerning the suggestions which his lordship has made to you with a view to the adjustment of existing differences between the United States and Great Britain.
You were wise, as you always are, in saying to his lordship that it is the naturalization question which causes an uneasiness that more urgently needs removal than any other. While that uneasiness shall remain unrelieved, it would seem almost hopeless to attempt an adjustment of the other differences. This one will admit of no delay, compatibly with the preservation of harmony between our two countries. For this reason I cannot approve of his lordship’s suggestion for a commission of eminent legal representatives of the four powers most interested in the question of naturalization.
There now exists, it seems to me, a possibility of our being able to adjust this question promptly and satisfactorily. It could have been only a very few days after your conversation was held with Lord Stanley that Mr. Bancroft made a treaty with the North German government for adjusting the question of naturalization between the United States and that great and friendly power. That treaty has not, as yet, been received here. It is expected, however, to come by the very next mail. Its stipulations are believed to be tolerably well understood here. It is supposed also that they would be unobjectionable in principle to the [Page 159] British government. A single supplemental stipulation would render a treaty with Great Britain similar to that we are making with North Germany equally acceptable and satisfactory to the United States. That supplemental article would be that the naturalized citizen of one country should have and enjoy in the other all the rights, immunities, and privileges which, by the law of nations, treaties, or municipal law, are allowed in that latter country to the native citizen of the country to which the naturalized citizen belongs.
I am in communication now with Mr. Thornton upon the subject. So soon as I shall have received the Berlin treaty, I shall furnish him with a projet of a treaty, which, if he approves, I shall be ready to execute immediately. I shall suggest to him to-day that he ask by telegraph for the necessary special power and directions.
If we can make such a treaty, only two things more will be necessary to relieve the now existing uneasiness which has resulted from the naturalization question. These are, first, that pardons be granted to Lynch and McMahon, two prisoners in Canada, believed by this government to be morally guiltless, and whose further punishment wears an aspect of unnecessary severity towards them and unkindness towards the United States; secondly, that her Majesty’s government shall in some way provide for a discontinuance or termination of the cases of Colonels Warren and Nagle, which cases have been needlessly and blindly complicated by judicial persistence in the dogma of the indefeasibility of native British allegiance, which, it is expected, will be relinquished in the proposed treaty.
With the good hope of adjusting the naturalization question promptly and in the manner indicated, I reserve, for the present, the consideration of Lord Stanley’s suggestions relating to a mode of proceeding to arrange the Alabama and other questions, because the views I shall have occasion to submit on those subjects will be greatly influenced by the result of the anticipated proceedings in regard to naturalization.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Clarles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.