No. 483.
Mr. Morgan
to Mr. Evarts.
Mexico, July 27, 1880. (Received August 12.)
Sir: The Diario Oficial of the 19th instant contains a decree from the President by which, acting under the authority vested in him by the act of Congress of the 25th May last, he has approved a contract made between the secretary of public works and the governor of the State of Guerrero for the construction of a railroad and telegraph line from the port of Acapulco to the city of Mexico. A copy of the paper containing the contract I inclose.
The governor is authorized, for his own account as well as for the account of the company or companies which shall be organized to that effect, to construct and operate a railroad and telegraph line, during a period of ninety-nine years, from Acapulco to the city of Mexico. The line of the road is to be that which surveys may determine as most convenient; the surveys to be commenced immediately.
During twenty years the company will be authorized to import into the country, free of duty (federal or local), all the wire, telegraph apparatus, coal, carriages, nails, sleepers, locomotives, platforms, rails, and other materials which the minister of public works, in limited, quantities, may consider necessary for the construction, repairs to, and the operating, of the railroad and telegraph line. The domicile of the company is to be at the city of Mexico.
In the board of directors the government is to be represented by two-sixths or three-tenths of the number thereof.
[Page 767]The company is to be always a Mexican company, even though the members thereof should be foreigners, and are to be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the tribunals of the republic, and any conveyance of its rights or hypothecation of its property, either as regards the road or the telegraph line, to any foreign government, is declared null and of no effect. Neither can the company admit any foreign government as a member thereof, under penalty of forfeiture of their charter.
The subsidy granted by the government is $8,000 per kilometer, to be paid out of the general treasury upon the completion of one or more kilometers of road, subject to any more favorable mode of payment which may be ordered by Congress and accepted by the company.
The prompt payment of the subvention would not seem to be well secured, the condition of the treasury considered.
A large portion of the line would pass through a populous and cultivated region, but towards the west terminus of the road the country is mountainous and difficult to operate.
The present concessionaries, I am reliably informed, may have to look elsewhere for the means to construct the road.
I am, &c.,