No. 438.
Mr. Frelinghuysen to Mr. Cayetano
Romero.
Washington, September 15, 1883.
Sir: The feasibility of adopting specific measures for the prevention of lawless incursions upon either side of the Rio Grande is a subject, I beg to assure you, which has not failed of earnest attention by this Government as well as by the authorities of the State of Texas and the adjacent Territories; and while any proposition for summary Government action which contemplates individual restraint for precautionary rather than penal cause must encounter objections of serious weight, such objections have no place in the established or suggested systems, which, aiming at regular defined and ascertained offenses, seek indirectly to deter from other and more grievous crime.
Hence, upon the presentation of the subject by Mr. Romero’s note of January 20 and April 11 last, the Department took means to ascertain more accurately the extent to which the purpose of preventing these too frequent expeditions was represented in the enactments governing the districts upon this side of the border, and I am gratified now to be able to communicate the general character of the information obtained.
It has long been manifest that plunder was a principal motive for the excursions which have emanated either from Mexico or the United States, and, recognizing the impracticability of restraining completely the departure or return of evil-minded persons across a border of such considerable extent, the efforts of the legislature have been to so increase the difficulties of realizing profits from unlawfully acquired property that the attempts to obtain such property would lessen.
Accordingly, and auxiliary to proceedings against the actual offender, the legislatures of the two Territories have made ample and exceptional provisions affecting the receivers or sellers of stolen property. In Arizona these withdraw from the possessor, though innocent, any security of title against the original owner, and if the latter follows his property with reasonable proof he can thus always recover it by judicial assistance. So, too, these statutes are particularly considerate of the safety of all live property, which is peculiarly a subject of plunder, and by heavy penalties require the branding system and guard against any but notable and formal alteration of the marks; and by many severe restrictions tend to render difficult and improbable any but open and lawful dealings in this important species of property.
In New Mexico the larceny of a branded animal is a felony, without reference to its value, and in Arizona such offense is grand larceny, as may be that of the receivers. In neither is it considered that these and other provisions would be inapplicable in the case of property stolen in Mexico and brought across the border.
I am uninformed as to whether the neighboring States of Mexico have enactments of equal extent, but presume that the similarity of occupations, interests, and necessity have prompted measures in this direction, and while existing facilities in this country may prove not entirely adequate to preventing the evils in question, they seem a vigorous attempt, and if individual instances under these laws were resolutely prosecuted, with the aid of those wronged, the hazard of theft should constantly increase and in that proportion would its attempts be avoided. As illustrating the readiness and desire of the people of this country to make use of any new expedient seemingly adapted to the repression of this [Page 699] organized plundering, I beg to refer to a letter recently submitted here from the acting governor of Arizona.
In counseling upon the subject he remarks: “I think a mounted police or military force should be posted in such manner as to guard the passes between the mountains on the border through which stolen cattle are driven and through which smugglers and raiding Indian bands pass to and from Mexico,” and adds that this opinion, which is shared by all intelligent men of the Territory, had expression in a bill introduced at the late session of the legislature, but too late for final action.
Should it prove possible for the frontier States to supplement their existing laws with direct measures of the above nature, it might confidently be expected, in conjunction with a similar system in Mexico, that conditions which have so long and persistently threatened the population of both countries would be speedily and favorably affected.
I have, &c.,