No. 93.
Mr. Fish to General Schenck.
Your telegrams of yesterday received last evening. I have been quite ill and unable to reply sooner or fuller.
The first criticism on the language of the Senate amendment to the proposed Article is regarded as hypercritical and strained. It is so regarded here generally, and a discussion upon it in the Senate or in the press would be inexpedient and would not tend to advance a settlement.
The Senate is very impatient for adjournment; and the Senate, the public, and the press are impatient over the delays, and what they regard as either captious or dilatory objections and proposals to amend or explain what has been intended and proposed in the most perfect good faith.
The new Article can be ratified, as I said in a recent telegam; but if amendments be proposed or explanatory notes requiring the Senate’s approval are submitted, it will be impossible to obtain ratification. To insist upon any such course is to defeat the Article.
This Government cannot adopt the argument of Lord Granville respecting the putting in of the arguments of both Governments on the 15th. We think the Treaty requires it to be done, and that the requirements can be dispensed with only by a treaty.
The Senate will adjourn on Monday. I see no possibility of an agreement upon anything else than the Article as agreed to by the Senate.
* * * * * * *