No. 27.
Mr. Kasson
to Mr. Evarts.
Vienna, February 16, 1879. (Received March. 5.)
Sir: Mr. Balatshano, the envoy and minister of Roumania, who is accredited to this court and has already been received, yesterday verbally communicated to me the wish of his government to enter into diplomatic relations with the Government of the United States. Whether the representative of the American Government should be an envoy of the first rank or of any inferior diplomatic grade, his royal highness Prince Charles would commission one of the same grade to represent his government at Washington. He wished this communication to be considered as “official.”
So accepting it, I have now the honor to advise you of the same, and to await instructions from you touching the fitting response to be made.
In the course of conversation, I alluded to the preliminary requirements of the Berlin treaty in respect to the Jews. He replied that the necessary changes would be made in their laws to give satisfaction on this point, and to establish for the Jews the basis of absolute equality with other races. He estimated the number of Jews in Roumania at 600,000, of whom less than one-tenth were native-born, and he thought Roumania had a right to protect her own native race from being overwhelmed by a foreign incursion of this character which did not wish to submit to the duties and responsibilities which are borne by natives of the Roumanian race. He referred with politeness, and not without a point which I appreciated, to the law just passed by one House of our Congress for the suppression of Chinese immigration to the United States, although the proportion of that race present in the United States to the native population is minute in comparison with that of the Jewish immigrants to native Roumanians. He, however, repeated the assurance that they would be placed on a basis of equality before the law.
I have, &c.,