No. 172.
Mr. Fish to Baron Gerolt.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 19th instant, communicating to this Government the text of a dispatch from Count Bismarck, to the effect that private property on the high seas will be exempt from seizure by the ships of his Majesty the King of Prussia, without regard to reciprocity.
In compliance with the request further contained in your note, that communication has been officially made public from this Department.
It is now nearly a century since the United States, through Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams, their plenipotentiaries, and Prussia, under the guidance of the great Frederick, entered into a treaty of amity and commerce, to be in force for ten years from its date, whereby it was agreed that if war should unhappily arise between the two contracting parties, “all merchant and trading vessels employed in exchanging the products of different places, and thereby rendering the necessaries, conveniences, and comforts of human life more easy to be obtained, and more general, should be allowed to pass free and unmolested; and that neither of the contracting powers should grant or issue any commission to any private armed vessels, empowering them to take or destroy such trading vessels, or interrupt such commerce.”
The Government of the United States receives with great pleasure the renewed adherence of a great and enlightened German government to the principle temporarily established by the treaty of 1785, and since then advocated by this Government whenever opportunity has offered. In 1854, President Pierce, in his annual message to Congress, said: “Should the leading powers of Europe concur in proposing, as a rule of international law, to exempt private property upon the ocean from seizure by public armed cruisers, as well as by privateers, the United States will readily meet them on that broad ground.” In 1856, this Government was invited to give its adhesion to the declaration of Paris. Mr. Marcy, the then Secretary of State, replied: “The President proposes to add to the first proposition in the declaration of the Congress at Paris the following words: ‘And that the private property of the subjects or citizens of a belligerent on the high seas shall be exempted from seizure by public armed vessels of the other belligerent, unless it be contraband. Thus amended, the Government of the United States will adopt it, together with the other three principles contained in that [Page 218] declaration.’” And again, in 1861, Mr. Seward renewed the offer to give the adhesion of the United States to the declaration of the congress of Paris, and expressed a preference that the same amendment should be retained.
Count Bismarck’s dispatch, communicated in your letter of the 19th instant, shows that North Germany is willing to recognize this principle (even without reciprocity) in the war which has now unhappily broken out between that country and France. This gives reason to hope that the Government and the people of the United States may soon be gratified by seeing it universally recognized as another restraining and harmonizing influence imposed by modern civilization upon the art of war.
Accept, sir, the renewed assurance of my very high consideration,