Mr. Seward to Mr. Johnson
Sir: It is a truism that commercial and industrial interests continually exert a powerful influence in favor of peace and friendship between the government and people of the United States and Great Britain. Intimate consanguinity, together with a nearly entire community of language and a very considerable community of political and religious principles, ideas, and sentiments, work in the same direction. On all occasions when the moral sentiment of mankind is moved in favor of national regeneration or other political reform in any part of the world, [Page 329] a very cordial sympathy and regard to such advances in civilization is found to exist between the two countries. This mutual, friendly disposition between the two nations manifests itself more strongly now than at any former period. Nevertheless, there are some controversies which have heretofore unavoidably arisen out of difference of administration in the two governments—controversies which are of lasting importance, and which have become chronic in their character. An urgent necessity exists for the settlement of one or more of them. A reference to the records of the legation in London will disclose them, and explain the circumstances which have hitherto prevented their adjustment, notwithstanding the great zeal and efficiency with which your distinguished predecessor, Mr. Adams, has carried out the instructions of this department.
The so-called naturalization question is the one which first and most urgently requires attention. The political institutions of the United States may in one sense be said to have for their foundation the principle of the right of individual men in any country, who are neither accused nor convicted of crime, to change their homes and allegiance according to the dictates of their own judgments and consciences and the inspiration of their individual desires for liberty and happiness.
On the contrary, the British government have always held in theory, and still adhere to the principle, that native allegiance to the British Crown is indefeasible without the express consent of the sovereign. A practical application of this ancient theory in cases of belligerent right of search was, as you are well aware, one of the principal causes of the war of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain. Without reaching a formal decision in the treaty of peace, the question was suffered to fall into abeyance, and, until quite recently, it seemed to have become obsolete.
Chronic political disaffection in Ireland has survived all the pacifying efforts of administration in Great Britain, of whatever kind. It frequently manifests itself there in turbulence and insurrection. Recently those discontents have been so great that Parliament has made new penal enactments, and has kept the habeas corpus suspended in Ireland for a period which has now reached the duration of two years and five months. On the other hand, a great and continuous emigration, which has removed large masses of its population to the United States, has seemed to abate the forces of popular resistance to the authority of Great Britain in that country. The large masses of population thus received into the United States from Ireland, with their descendants, constitute no inconsiderable part of our own population in every State and Territory of the American republic. Most of the Irish immigrants and their descendants have availed themselves of our naturalization laws, and have thus become citizens. While the new interests which they have thus acquired as citizens of the United States are paramount, they retain strong feelings and sentiments of attachment to their native country, or at least of sympathy in its interest and welfare—so true it is that those who remove from one country to another do not, with a change of skies, altogether change their native dispositions. It happens, therefore, that every considerable surge of popular discontent that disturbs the peace of Great Britain affects that portion of our people who have derived their descent from Ireland, and this emotion, in no inconsiderable degree, affects by sympathy the whole population of the United States.
Great Britain is understood to acknowledge that this government maintains its neutrality in this trial with due decision and energy. The [Page 330] maintenance of this neutrality, however, is attended with so much difficulty and inconvenience as to entitle us to the exercise of a corresponding justice and liberality on the part of Great Britain. As naturalized citizens of the United States, Irishmen and their descendants have a right to visit Great Britain, and to be safe in their persons and property there so long as they practice due submission to the authority of Great Britain, the same as native citizens of the United States. When, however, a naturalized citizen of Irish birth or descent, transiently visiting Great Britain, is arrested or questioned under the acts suspending the habeas corpus, or by warrant or other form of complaint in judicial proceedings, and thereupon claims the rights of citizens of the United States, he is met in the courts of that country with a denial of the validity of his naturalization, and with the assertion that his allegiance to the sovereign of Great Britain continues unbroken. This theory is especially maintained in judicial tribunals in that country, first, as a ground for denying to the naturalized citizen of Irish birth or extraction a trial by jury de mediatate linguœ, which is extended by statute to all foreigners; and also by the pretense that he is especially amenable in British courts for political opinions and conduct maintained or pursued while in the United States, the land of his adoption.
It ought not to have been at any time a matter of surprise to her Majesty’s government that these invidious discriminations in British tribunals between two classes of citizens of the United States, who stand upon one common platform under our own laws, continually engenders suspicion of predjudice and injustice. If these suspicions are suffered to continue and increase with the progress of political agitation in Great Britain, it must sooner or later result in an extensive and profound, aleniation of the two countries.
The President has frequently and urgently appealed to the British government to remove the cause of embarrassment which I have described —an embarrassment which, on the one hand, is productive of no conceivable benefit to the British nation, while, on the other, it hinders all attempts to retain in the United States sentiments of cordiality and friendship towards Great Britain.
The British government announces to us that it is disposed to remove this embarrassment by accepting the principle of the validity of our laws of naturalization in regard to British subjects. This announcement is gratifying to the United States; but the delay which the British government makes in carrying the purpose into effect leaves our relations even in a worse condition than before. It is manifest that the purpose can be carried into effect only by some act of Parliament or by a negotiation between the two countries. Parliament does not enact the necessary law, nor has the executive government, on the other hand, thus far been willing to negotiate the necessary treaty. Her Majesty’s government is understood to be diligently engaged in examining the subject, with a view to determine the proper details for an enactment or treaty. While the United States cannot object that such an examination is necessary, they are embarrassed by the procrastination with which it is conducted.
You will address yourself to this as the most important question requiring attention on your arrival in London. You will frankly state to Lord Stanley that, until this difficulty shall be removed, it is believed by the President that any attempt to settle any of the existing controversies between the two countries would be unavailing, and therefore inexpedient.
If her Majesty’s government should conclude to negotiate a naturalization [Page 331] treaty, the treaties which have been recently celebrated between the United States and North Germany, the United States and Bavaria, and the United States and Wurtemberg, furnish the basis upon which this government would be ready to adjust the controversy.
Secondly. In case her Majesty’s government shall adopt the required measures to adjust the naturalization question, you will next be expected to give your attention to the adjustment of the northwest boundary controversy, which involves the right of national dominion and property over the island of San Juan, on the frontier line between the United States and British Columbia. It is understood that on the breaking out of the recent civil war in the United States this boundary question was on the eve of being arranged, by referring it to an impartial and friendly arbiter. The question is increasing in urgency with the growing settlement and population of the northwest, and with the multiplication of causes of litigation within the disputed territory. The United States still remain in a disposition favorable to the process of adjustment originally contemplated.
Thirdly. If you shall find reason to expect that the British government will be prepared to adjust the two questions already mentioned in some such manner as has been proposed, and satisfactory to both parties, you will then be expected to advert to the subject of mutual claims of citizens and subjects of the two countries against the government of each other respectively.
The difficulty in this respect has arisen out of our claims which are known and described in general terms as the Alabama claims. In the first place, her Majesty’s government not only denied all national obligation to indemnity citizens of the United States for these claims, but even refused to entertain them for discussion. Subsequently her Majesty’s government, upon reconsideration, proposed to entertain them for the purpose of referring them to arbitration, but insisted upon making them the subject of special reference, excluding, from the arbitrator’s consideration certain grounds which the United States deem material to a just and fair determination of the merits of the claims. The United States declined this special exception and exclusion, and thus the proposed arbitration has failed.
It seems to the President that an adjustment might now be reached without formally reviewing former discussions. A joint commission might be agreed upon for the adjustment of all claims of citizens of the United States against the British government, and of all claims of subjects of Great Britain against the United States, upon the model of the joint commission of February 8, 1853, which commission was conducted with so much fairness and settled so satisfactorily all the controversies which had arisen between the United States and Great Britain, from the peace of Ghent, 1814, until the date of the sitting of the convention.
While you are not authorized to commit this government distinctly by such a proposition, you may sound Lord Stanley upon the subject after you shall have obtained satisfactory assurances that the two more urgent controversies previously mentioned can be put under process of adjustment in the manner which I have indicated.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Reverdy Johnson, Esq., &c., &c., &c.