No. 269.
General Schenck to Mr. Fish.
London, April 24, 1875. (Received May 7.)
Sir: In conformity with the instruction in your No. 711, I yesterday, in a personal interview with Lord Derby, brought to his notice the 5th section of the recent act of Congress in relation to immigration. Also I left with his lordship the printed copy of the act which yon inclosed to me. In explaining the object and necessity of this legislation, I called his lordship’s attention to some of the correspondence on the subject of the deportation of convicts to the United States, which has been published by our Government, and particularly to my dispatches to and from you, and my notes to Lord Granville, relating to the matter in 1873. I did not pretend that any part of the act which provided against the importation of lewd women for purposes of prostitution had reference to or was founded on any complaint against Great Britain. Lord Derby thought that Her Majesty’s government were giving no aid or countenance to the sending of convicts whose terms of imprisonment had not expired, or who were released on condition of their emigration. I referred him to what I had already written to you on that point on the 12th of August, 1873:
That the practice of sending to our shores, under any direct or official sanction of the British government, such disreputable additions to our population does not now, I believe, exist; but that, while Her Majesty’s government may not be disposed to forget, in this particular, what is due to our country by the comity of nations, some of the local authorities in England and Ireland are not disinclined, if an opportunity occurs, to make of the United States a cheap place of banishment for the inmates of their jails.
His lordship, while not prepared to admit that there was any occasion now for the new act of Congress, so far as persons emigrating from this kingdom were concerned, yet assented readily to the soundness of the principle on which such legislation was founded, and said he would bring the law and the penalties it prescribed to the notice of Her Majesty’s home department.
I have, &c.,