No. 234.
Mr. Noyes
to Mr. Evarts.
Paris, May 13, 1880. (Received May 26.)
Sir: * * * As to the general subject of a French protectorate over Liberia, I am able to communicate to the Department very emphatic and satisfactory assurances. My dispatch No. 256, of date August 20, 1879, was based upon information obtained in the French foreign office, from the official having such matters in charge. From him we learned that Mr. Carrance, the consul-general, had pressed upon the foreign office the desirability of establishing a French protectorate over Liberia (during the existence of the Waddington cabinet), but that he had met with no encouragement whatever; that he had been informed that any such movement would be attended with many embarrassments, not only in relation to the Government of the United States, whose susceptibilities the French Government would always desire to respect, but also with the Government of Great Britain. Mr. Carrance was told distinctly that his proposition could not be entertained.
About one week since, having occasion to see the minister of foreign affairs upon other matters, I incidentally suggested that I had recently seen in one of the French papers, and also in the New York Herald, statements that negotiations were pending between the French and Liberian Governments for the establishment of a protectorate over Liberia. I said to him that I had no confidence in such reports, but had [Page 363] thought it not improper to suggest the matter to him. The minister said he had never heard of the proposition, and that there was positively no foundation for the report. He called in the chef de cabinet, and in my presence inquired of him if any papers had been filed, or if any proposition had been made. This official asserted decidedly that there was nothing of the kind; that the only possible basis for the reports alluded to was the fact that the jurisdiction of the French vice-consul at Whydah Dahomey had been extended to Liberia and other points on the African coast, his residence, however, still remaining at Whydah.
Subsequently to this interview with the minister of foreign affairs, Mr. Consul-General Carrance called on me at the legation and requested that in the absence of any diplomatic representative of Liberia at Paris I would forward to the minister of foreign affairs two commissions of Liberian consuls appointed for Bordeaux and Paris. I readily consented to do so, and transmitted them accordingly, with request that exequatur be granted. This afforded me an opportunity to have a full conversation with Mr. Carrance as to what had actually been done with regard to the protectorate. He informed me that he had never been authorized by the Liberian Government to make any proposition on this subject to the French authorities, but that everything which he had done and said had been upon his own personal responsibility. He said that the Liberian Government had greatly desired to have a small war vessel, mounting two or three guns, to be used in connection with the collection of customs dues; that the government had no funds at command with which to purchase such a vessel, with its armament, and so the consul-general urged the French Government to furnish it, and in return to avail itself of a sort of protectorate over Liberia, which would be greatly to the commercial advantage of France.
The consul-general, however, said that he had received no encouragement whatever from the French authorities, but on the contrary had been met with many objections, and, at last, with a positive refusal; and that he had not communicated his action to the Liberian Government.
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I informed him that the Government of the United States could not look with favor or complacency upon such a movement as he had proposed, and I expressed my surprise that he should have taken the responsibility of such action without positive authority. He assured me frankly that he was not aware of the interest taken by the United States Government in the colony of Liberia, and that he would never mention the subject to the French Government again, but would abandon the proposition forever. He assured me that I could rely upon this implicitly, and expressed a desire that I should so inform the State Department at Washington.
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I therefore feel at liberty to reaffirm the substance of my former dispatches to the Department upon this subject. In the mean time I shall lose no opportunity to keep myself advised of any new facts relating to affairs in Liberia and on the African coast in that vicinity.
I have, &c.,
EDWAED F. NOYES.