No. 200.
Mr. Welsh
to Mr. Evarts.
Legation of
the United States,
London, November 22, 1878.
(Received December 4.)
No. 171.]
Sir: Referring to my dispatch No. 169, of the 19th
instant, I have the honor to acquaint you that, agreeably to the appointment
I had made with Lord Salisbury, as indicated in that dispatch, I had an
interview with his lordship yesterday, at one o’clock in the afternoon, at
the foreign office. I handed to him my check on Messrs. Morton, Rose &
Co. for five million five hundred thousand dollars in gold coin, in payment
of the amount awarded by the Halifax Commission, and at the same time I
delivered to him a notice, signed by me, the form of which was inclosed in
your instruction No. 163. I found that form to be identical with the copy
you had sent to me in cipher, the translation of which I forwarded to you in
my No. 169. I now transmit a “press” copy of the notice itself which was
delivered to his lordship.
Upon receiving the check and the notice, Lord Salisbury handed to me a note
acknowledging the receipt of both, a copy of which I herewith inclose.
Immediately after this transaction I prepared and sent to you a full account
of it by cable.
Several hours afterwards I received a telegram conveying to me your wishes in
that respect, which I had thus already anticipated.
I inclose a slip from the Daily News in relation to this payment, which,
[Page 334]
I am happy to say, is fairer in
its tone than many of the extracts I have had occasion to forward.
I have, &c.,
[Inclosure 1 in No. 171.]
Mr. Welsh to Lord
Salisbury.
Legation of the United States,
London, November 21,
1878.
My Lord: I have been instructed by the
President of the United States to tender to Her Majesty’s Government the
sum of five millions five hundred thousand dollars in gold coin, this
being the sum named by the two concurring members of the Fisheries
Commission (lately sitting at Halifax, under authority imparted thereto
by the Treaty of Washington) to be paid by the Government of the United
States to the Government of Her Britannic Majesty.
I am also instructed by the President to say that such payment is made
upon the ground that the Government of the United States desires to
place the maintenance of good faith in treaties and the security and
value of arbitration between nations above all question in its relations
with Her Britannic Majesty’s Government as with all other
governments.
Under this motive the Government of the United States decides to separate
the question of withholding payment from the considerations touching the
obligation of this payment which have been presented to Her Majesty’s
Government in correspondence and which it reserves and insists upon.
I am, besides, instructed by the President to say that the Government of
the United States deems it of the greatest importance to the common and
friendly interests of the two governments in all future treatment of any
questions relating to the North American fisheries that Her Britannic
Majesty’s Government should be distinctly advised that the Government of
the United States cannot accept the result of the Halifax Commission as
furnishing any just measure of the value of a participation by our
citizens in the inshore fisheries of the British provinces, and it
protests against the actual payment now made being considered by Her
Majesty’s Government as in any sense an acquiescence in such measure or
as warranting any inference to that effect.
I have, &c.,
[Inclosure 2 in No. 171.]
Lord Salisbury to
Mr. Welsh.
Foreign
Office, November 21,
1878.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the
receipt of your letter of to-day and of the draft for five millions five
hundred thousand dollars ($5,500,000) in gold, which you have delived to
me in payment of the award pronounced in favor of the Government of Her
Britannic Majesty by the Halifax Fishery Commission on the 23d of
November, 1877, in accordance with the provisions of the twenty-second
article of the treaty between Great Britain and the United States of
America, signed at Washington on the 8th of May, 1871.
I have, &c.,
