No. 315.
Mr. Westenberg to Mr. Fish.
Washington, March 17, 1873.
(Received March 19.)
Sir: In the note of February 19 with which I was
honored, and which contained an answer to the claim presented by me for
extension, to the Dutch line of steamers between Rotterdam and New York, of
the exemption from tonnage duties in American ports, recently accorded to
the steamers of the North German Lloyd, your excellency argued that the
treaty of 1782 between the Netherlands and the United States was to be
considered, for political reasons and events, as being no longer in force.
In support of this opinion your excellency referred to a note of April 12,
1815, written by the Hon. James Monroe, Secretary of
State, to. Mr. Changuion, then minister of the
Netherlands in the United States.
In my reply which I had the honor to address to your excellency on March 8th,
last, I explained the reasons why I could not agree to your opinion on these
points—reasons based as well on considerations of international law as on my
consideration of the said note of the Hon. James
Monroe.
My attention has since been called to some questions that arose between the
Netherlands and the United States about claims of various nature, all of
them presented a few years after the note of Hon. James
Monroe had been addressed to Mr.
Changuion; and in the correspondence that took
place, I found confirmed by the official American State Papers the following
assertions from both sides, by which, I hope, it will be evident that,
whatever may have been, in general, the opinions and intentions in 1815,
mentioned by the honorable Secretary of State Monroe, the treaty of 1782 was
still considered as to be and to have remained in full force, dejure as well as de facto. I
take the liberty to present here, inclosed to your excellency, the passages
concerning it. While submitting to you these declarations, declarations the
more to be appreciated, [Page 719] as those
from the American side were given by the United States Government itself by
the Hon. John Quincy Adams, the justly celebrated
statesman, and precisely when the Hon. James Motiroe
was President, I hope, respectfully, that they may contribute to bring your
excellency to the opinion of the permanent and still actual continuance of
said treaty and its basis, and consequently to reconsider favorably the
claim which I had the honor to present.
Accept, &c.,
[Extract.]
American Stale Papers: Documents legislative and
executive of the Congress of the United States, selected and edited
under the authority of Congress. Clay I. Foreign Relations, vol. v,
page 603. Claims against Netherlands No.
7.
Extract of a letter of Mr. Adams to Mr.
Alexander H. Everett, chargé d’affaires at the
Hague:
August 10, 1824.
No principle of international law can be more clearly established than
this, that the rights and the obligations of a nation, in regard to
other states, are independent of its internal revolutions of government.
It extends even to the case of conquest. The conqueror who reduces a
nation to his subjection, receives it subject to all its engagements and
duties toward others, the fulfillment of which then becomes his own
duty. However frequent the instances of departure from this principle
may be in point of fact, it cannot, with any color of reason, be
contested on the ground of right. On what other ground is it, indeed,
that both the governments of the United States and the Netherlands now
admit that they are stUl reciprocally bound by the engagements, and
entitled to claim from each other the benefits of the treaty between the
United States and the United Provinces of 1782. If the nations are
respectively bound to the stipulations of that treaty now, they were
equally bound to them in 1810 when the depredations for which indemnity
is now claimed were committed; and when the present King of the
Netherlands came to the sovereignty of the country, he assumed with it
the obligation of repairing the injustices against other nations, which
had been committed by his predecessors, however free from all
participation in them he had been himself.
Mr. Everett to Baron
de Nagell.
Brussels, February 22,
1819.
Eodem, No. 8, (a,) page 605.
It is regarded by the Government of the United States as a settled and
unquestionable principle of public law, that the rights and obligations
of nations are in no way affected by their internal revolutions in
government. Political forms may be altered, different persons or
families may be called to the administration, but under every change
that occurs, the new government succeeds to all the obligations, as it
does to all the duties, of the old one, or, in other words, the nation,
though it has changed its rulers, continues to be bound by its own acts.
If this were not the case, a nation by changing its rulers, or its form
of government, could at any time release itself from all its
engagements, a supposition too absurd to be refuted.
* * * * *
No act of the nation can discharge it from this duty, except the
fulfillment of it. These principles are recognized by the great writers
on international law, &c.
Eodem, vol. vi, page 380, No.
448.
Extract from a letter of the Chevalier Huygens (minister of the
Netherlands in the United States) to the Secretary of State:
Washington, November 11, 1826.
From the commencement of the relations between the United Provinces of
the Neth erlands and the United States of America, founded and
stipulated by the treaty of 1782, and faithfully maintained until the
war of Europe, and, in fine, the invasion of the United Provinces of the
Netherlands by a foreign power suspended their
happy relations, [Page 720] the American
flag was there treated on an equality with the national flag, which
enjoyed a perfect reciprocity in the United States.
The desire of His Majesty the King of the Netherlands to favor and extend
the navigation and commerce “between his kingdom and the United States
is well known, and of the sincerity of his disposition the President
cannot be in doubt. His Majesty has given unequivocal proofs of it from
his coming to the throne to the time when Belgium was united to the
kingdom of the Netherlands. His Majesty, without knowing the reciprocal
disposition of the Government of the United States, admitted, without
hesitation, the bases of the treaty of 1782, and caused them to be
applied to the navigation and commerce of the United States. The
Americans were placed immediately in the position of the most favored
nation.