Señor Benitez to Mr. Washburn.
Before having had time to reply to the note of your excellency bearing date 20th instant, as I had offered in mine of the 21st, I have received the reply which you have given to this last, and I proceed to reply to both.
First of all, I must explain the apparent haste, of which you accuse me with so little politeness in your reply of yesterday. Since my haste was not apparent, but real, and moved by the friendly interest of preventing a complication by a new abuse of your confidence, by the criminals whom you protect, I have considered that confidence real and noble, and not apparent, as you classify my haste, and that is the explanation of my conduct in respect to that note.
I have not forgotten in it, as you think, that you had just given me [Page 753] your reasons, declaring that you would not give up Masterman and Bliss for their trial by the authorities of the country, considering them as members of your legation. I only wished to point out to you a traitorous possibility, hastening to forewarn your excessive confidence towards the criminals of your house, while I proposed to offer to you a detailed reply upon the points on which you appear to base your resistance in your note of the 20th.
I have not permitted myself to request of you to keep as close prisoners in your legation Porter Cornelius Bliss and George F. Masterman, and it belongs exclusively to you to do what is most befitting the internal service of your house.
I have fulfilled a duty which I judged to be one of courtesy. It is now my duty to express to you that from your own house correspondences from the enemy’s generals are received and replied to, treating of the details of the plot; and when you insist withal in the terms employed, and do not wish to believe in an ingratitude, I am obliged to fear that the same conduct is still observed in your house, in which they have been before shut up as well as now, I suppose, since they have not appeared on the street.
It is not I, Mr. Minister, who have said to you that the complot had been combined to break out to-morrow, but I thank you for the intelligence.
I should have much to say concerning the account which you have received from Bliss, respecting his contract with the government, and its fulfillment on each side, but that is not the question of the moment, and your excellency knows that my government makes no question of interest, nor can it recognize you as its judge in the matter.
Your excellency says that, in fact, the only person formally recognized in an official note, as a member of the legation, is Porter Cornelius Bliss, referring to the note from the department of the 23d of February; but I cannot attribute this assertion, except to some painful mistake on the part of your excellency, since I have before me that note, and I find nothing which authorizes me to believe so. On the contrary, the third paragraph of that note expressly and virtually disclaims the quality of members of your legation in the citizens Bliss and Manlove; and if the condition of not appearing upon the street was imposed upon them, it was assimilating them to the refugees in your hotel, without its appearing that they were considered in any other capacity.
In corroboration of this assertion I will remind you that in my note of the 29th of March last I had the honor to say to you that the said Bliss and Manlove could not go out of the legation, and that only on that condition were they tolerated in the house of your excellency.
Besides, as you know, the specialty of the case, the circumstances of the country, and the residence of your excellency in a purely military post, showed the necessity of the express consent of the government, in order that individuals proposed for members of that legation might be recognized in that capacity.
For the rest, if I have reminded you that Porter Cornelius Bliss has not lived up to the conditions recommended in the note of the 23d of February, it was only to remind you that more than the three months of which you spoke in your note of the 14th instant, and that that recommendation had not been so scrupulously fulfilled. If there were any words badly translated in the notes exchanged at that time, the responsibility of the error falls upon you for not having rectified it at the time.
I will not trespass on you by undertaking the task of persuading you still that your confidence has been abused by the criminals demanded. [Page 754] since my official declarations have for you less importance than their own statements.
As little do I wish to weary you with a long series of transcriptions from international law to satisfy your scruples, for fear that you might accuse me of not wishing it to be enforced in favor of your “protegés,” Porter Cornelius Bliss and George F. Masterman, and also because I do not consider this to be the place.
Nor shall I give you more specified details concerning the accusations against the said criminals, since I am notified beforehand that you will not permit them to be tried by the authorities of this country, but Porter Cornelius Bliss only in the United States, and George F. Masterman in England, as members of the American legation.
Nevertheless, I will observe that your excellency appears completely to confound the condition of the country in fall and exterminating war, with an absolute blockade and a horrible and atrocious crime, with a normal and not very pressing situation, and an ordinary crime of less danger and less immediate consequence. Could you, who are so familiar with the great authors, cite me a case analogous to that which you sustain? Does it not seem to you that if the immunities of a minister were to reach such an extreme as that to which you pretend to carry yours, there would be no nation in the world which would wish to accept an embassy?
Since the national justice does not seek the suffering of any man, but the investigation and chastisement of the crime, in order to put an end to the fatal development of a plot as wicked as inhuman, does it not seem to you probable that when the republic shall be saved the government will excuse itself from sending its attorneys, (fiscales,) one to the United States and another to England, to substantiate an accusation, and call for the chastisement of Porter Cornelius Bliss and George F. Masterman, who, without any character whatever, and begging their bread, have arrived at the shores of this country to constitute themselves later the agents of the enemy and instruments of commotion and intestine revolt, and who had not appeared before the tribunal, because, after having become criminals, they had obtained access to the legation of a friendly power, in order to continue thence with impunity so iniquitous a work?
Does your excellency think that the minister who shelters such criminals under his flag and his immunities is in the perfect exercise of international-law privileges? The exercise of that law thus understood, for the safeguard of such individuals, can it be considered as an act of obliging friendship?
Let your excellency add to this that Porter Cornelius Bliss has signed in a secret committee of reciprocal obligation, swearing the treacherous assassination of the President of the republic.
I cannot but declare categorically to you that this ministry does not recognize, nor has it ever recognized, Porter Cornelius Bliss, American citizen, and George F. Masterman, British subject, as members of your legation, and consequently I cannot accept a discussion with your excellency upon that basis. I regret, Mr. Minister, that my friendly representations in previous notes have not been able to avoid the present statement, and I am under the unavoidable obligation of again requesting the expulsion of these criminals from your hotel before sunset on the 25th instant, in doing which you will not only act with justice, but according to the law of nations.
I also regret to see that your excellency has so little hope of being personally useful by remaining longer in the country. I thought that [Page 755] the representative of a friendly nation would take pleasure in seeing frustrated a great conspiracy formed to facilitate the triumph of the enemies of my country, whose cause has merited the sympathetic interest of the government of the American Union.
I will not conclude without thanking your excellency for the mention you have made concerning the American fleet forcing a passage, as well as for your opinion that, rather than provoke a war with the United States, the gunboat will be allowed to pass without molestation, and, above all, the security given that your excellency has no desire to spare the allies another humiliation such as that experienced upon the occasion of your last arrival in this country.
I improve this occasion, &c.
His Excellency Charles Washburn, Minister Resident of the United States.