No. 132.
Mr. Flores to Mr. Bayard.
Washington, June 26, 1885. (Received June 26.)
Mr. Secretary of State: I yesterday had the honor to verbally inform your excellency, and I confirm it by this note, according to our agreement, that I received night before last an official telegram from [Page 280] Guayaquil informing me that His Excellency the President of Ecuador had decided to ask Congress for a pardon, whereby he would be enabled to release Mr. Santos.
I feel confident that the telegram which I requested your excellency to send to the agents of the United States at Guayaquil instructing them to suspend all proceedings will arrive in time, and will have the effect which we both desire in behalf of the friendly relations between our respective Governments.
The aforesaid dispatch from Guayaquil confirms the statement made in a previous communication to the effect that Mr. Santos was being tried. There was, consequently, no way to settle the matter favorably except a pardon, which can be granted by Congress only when that body is in session.
The said communication, which was dated Guayaquil, May 27, informed me that a copy of the proceedings in the case of Don Julio R. Santos had been sent me. Mr. Santos was, consequently, then on trial, and as Congress was to meet on the 10th of June, it was an act of deference to solicit from it the pardon which the executive alone can grant when Congress is not in session.
This explains the delay of a few days which occurred subsequently to the receipt of my telegram of the 15th, which, as we know, reached Guayaquil on the 21st, although we do not know when it reached Quito, whither the President had returned from Guayaquil on the 16th of that month.
I do not think that it can be doubted that the trial of Mr. Santos was going on in due form of law, because, if the case had been otherwise, the executive would have had no need of asking for a pardon.
The opposition press, moreover, would not have failed to bring the same charges against, the Government that it has brought on previous occasions when it thought that the Government had violated the constitution even in the slightest degree. Besides, as Congress is now in session, it would be very strange, in case anything alleged had been done in the case of Mr. Santos, if the executive had not been called to account, and if no charges had been brought against him. And with all the more reason if the charges against Mr. Santos had not been very clear.
That all doubt as to their clearness may be removed, it will be sufficient to read the report of Col. Modesto Burbaro, whose forces captured Mr. Santos with arms in his hands at the head of a party of twenty-six men who were in rebellion against the Government of their country.
I give below that portion of said report which has reference to the capture of Santos. This report was sent from Esmeraldas on the 8th of January last by the aforesaid colonel to his superior officer:
* * * I dispatched Commander Arijel Maria Valencia and Capt. U. Moran to the parish of Chone, in order that they, in conjunction with Col. Daniel Grarja, might take suitable measures to intercept all communication.
The result was favorable, for at a point called Segua they captured the leader of the band, viz, Julio Santos, with three officers and twenty-six men from various places, from whom they took ten rifles, one thousand percussion caps, three boats, and one canoe.
The term “leader “explains why the general pardon that was granted to the revolutionists by General Reynaldo Flores, the commander-in-chief, on the 26th of January, 1883, did not include Mr. Santos, inasmuch as the terms of the decree exclude “the leaders.”
Whether Mr. Santos was a leader or not, I should have desired his pardon; if I had been aware, however, on the 15th of May, that he was being tried, I should not have asked for his release, since the executive [Page 281] had no power to grant it; because article 91 of the constitution provides that the course of judicial proceedings shall not be arrested, except in case of an amnesty or general pardon.
I asked for his release then because I thought that he was not on trial; and for the same reason I requested your excellency, in my communication of May 15th, “to allow me to state that the trial had already taken place,” and added “therefore Mr. Santos has been tried.” I had the greater reason to believe that Mr. Santos was not on trial, since your excellency yourself, in your communication of May 14, was pleased to say, “The perusal of these documents will give you an opportunity to ask for the trial or release of Mr. Santos.”
At all events, either before the trial which was asked for, or after it had taken place (and I thought that Mr. Santos was in the latter case), but not during the trial, the release of the prisoner by means of an executive order was possible, and I consequently asked for it with the utmost readiness and without any discussion whatever.
I make this explanation in justice to my Government, which, during the trial, was unable to suspend the judicial proceedings simply in order to favor one of the prisoners at the bar.
It is also proper for me to inform your excellency that in addition to the documents which I received with the aforesaid note of May 27 I expect to receive others, the transmission of which was announced to me by an official telegram sent from Guayaquil on the 22d instant. This shows that I was right in telling your excellency, as I did in my note of May 30, that I could not proceed to settle the point in dispute, referring to the case of Mr. Santos, without awaiting the arrival of all the documents which my Government had informed me by several telegrams that it proposed to send me, and that I could not accept the space of a few days for such settlement, especially if I was to be held reponsible for the delay, since the reception within a determined period of the documents, without which it was impossible for me to carry out the instructions of my Government relative to the nationality of Mr. Santos, was a matter over which I had no control.
I leave it to your excellency’s sense of justice to decide whether, before the receipt of the documents announced by my Government, it was possible for me to reach a decision, when, as soon as I arrived in New York, on the 13th of May, I requested your excellency to take no action before you had given us a hearing.
Even if I had in my possession all the documents that could be sent from Ecuador, and even supposing that they left no room for doubt and that they required no explanation whatever, it would not be possible for me to obey the instructions of my Government without having previously ascertained that Mr. Santos had been “duly naturalized” according to the existing treaty, which, as I understand, must be shown by his certificate of naturalization, which I have not seen and which I cannot obtain, and also by proper proof that he “has resided in the United States uninterruptedly during the time fixed by law,” likewise in accordance with the treaty.
Such being the situation, and the proposition of my Government on the subject not having been accepted, I was oblidged to confine myself to informing it of everything, to awaiting its orders, and in the mean time to endeavoring, as I did, to secure the release of Mr. Santos, which was the only urgent matter, inasmuch as the question of his citizenship was reserved until afterwards.
It only remains for me to reiterate to your excellency the assurance, &c.