Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress with the Annual Message of the President, December 2, 1872, Part II, Volume II

No. 57.
Sir E. Thornton to Earl Granville.¹

(Extract.)

Washington, May 20, 1872. (Received June 2.)

[From British Blue Book “North America,” No. 9, (1872,) p. 22.]

On Sunday I called upon Mr. Fish at his own house, and having previously heard that the Committee on Foreign Relations had agreed by a majority of 4 to 3, or, as some said, of 5 to 2, upon its report on the Article, and had actually made it to the Senate in secret session, I asked Mr. Fish whether he could tell me what the amendments were which had been made to the Article. He replied, that he was not in possession of the words of the Article, as it had been reported by the Committee to the Senate, but would endeavor to describe them to me.

He said that the first paragraph of the Article, down to the words “Great Britain,” would remain the same; but that, with regard to the next paragraph, the Committee had objected that Her Majesty’s Government had not yet declared, but was only now going to declare, by the present article, that the principle involved in the second contention would guide its conduct for the future.

The Committee also thought it better that the “Government” should be substituted for the “President” in the third paragraph, and as it seemed to have an objection to the phrase, “adhering to its contention,” it had been proposed that it should be altered, and that both Governments should then agree that their conduct in future, and in their relations with each other, should be guided by the above-mentioned principle. Mr. Fish said that the committee supposed that neither Government wished to bind itself in this Article as to its relations with any other Power.

If Mr. Fish’s description is correct, it would not seem that any alteration has been made in the substance of the Draft Article.

Your Lordship will have perceived that, in sending the Draft Article to the Senate for its advice, the President quoted the precedent of the Treaty of 1846 on the Northwest Boundary. If the Draft Article should be now approved, and if the same precedent is still to be followed, the Article will have to be signed, and again submitted to the Senate for its sanction. This must either be done before the 29th instant, the day now fixed for the final adjournment of the session, or the President will have to summon an extraordinary session of the Senate, for the purpose of submitting to it the signed Article.

1. The substance of this dispatch was received by telegraph on the 20th of May.