No. 261.
Mr. Evarts
to Mr. Langston.
Washington, August 6, 1879.
Sir: Your No. 179, of the 17th ultimo, has been received. You therein report the correspondence which had recently taken place between yourself and Mr. Ethéart, the minister for foreign affairs under the government of President Canal, concerning asylum and the communication of refugee insurgents with those still in arms. The same mail which brings your No. 179 brings the later intelligence that the insurrectionary movement had compelled the resignation and departure of President Canal and his cabinet. This renders it unnecessary to give you special instructions concerning the case reported by you, further than to observe that if the socalled “right of asylum” (which this government has never been tenacious in claiming for its officers abroad) is to continue to exist as a quasi rule of public law, in communities where the conspirators of to-day may be the government of to-morrow, it should at least be so exercised as to afford no ground of complaint on the score of aiding and comforting rebellion by conniving at communication between the refugees in asylum and their associates who are, it may be, engaged in hostilities against the existing government. It is evident that asylum would be as intolerable as reprehensible, were not the refugees supposed to be kept out of mischief as well as out of danger.
I am, &c.,