Mr. Curry to Mr. Moret.
Madrid, October 19, 1886.
Sir: Your note of 17th, received yesterday, I have read with great interest and with a predisposition to see matters as you see them, for I must bear cheerful and grateful testimony to the fact that in all our personal and official intercourse I have found you actuated by the loftiest principles of right and justice and most anxious to do what your sense of right and loyalty to Spain would allow in meeting the wishes of the Government of the United States.
The two propositions contained in your note are identical with those kindly furnished by your Excellency on the 16th instant and with the important exception of the omission of the item equalizing tonnage fees. From my point of view the propositions are not fairly susceptible of the construction which your Excellency gives and on which, in arguendo, you claim that Spain would thereby place herself within the conditions which authorized the President to suspend the collection of the 10 per cent, retaliatory duty. The law of the United States, obligatory upon the President (Revised Statutes of the United States, p. 819, sec. 4228) gives him the discretionary power to suspend or discontinue the foreign discriminating duties of tonnage and of impost within the United States, so far as respects the vessels of such foreign nation and the produce, manufactures, or merchandise imported into the United States from such foreign nation when the Government of any such foreign nation shall cease to impose or levy in its ports discriminating duties of tonnage or imposts upon vessels belonging to citizens of the United States, or upon the produce, manufactures, or merchandise imported in the same from the United States or from any foreign country. So long as such reciprocal exemption of vessels belonging to citizens of the United. States and their cargoes shall continue the suspension shall continue “and no longer.”
The object of the United States, in assenting to the agreement of 13th of February, 1884, was to obtain the suppression of the differential flag duties which existed in the ports of the Spanish Antilles against American vessels and their cargoes. The proclamation of President Arthur, to which your excellency refers, was based upon the supposition that vessels of the United States and their cargoes, whether those cargoes were of products of the United States or of foreign products, in the trade [Page 823] between the ports of the United States and the ports of Cuba and Porto Rico, were to be placed on the basis of absolute equality with Spanish vessels and their cargoes in the same trade and to have equally applied to the vessels of both nations and their cargoes “the duties of the third column of the customs tariffs of Cuba and Porto Rico.” When it transpired, beyond a doubt, that foreign goods or products, transshipped in vessels of the United States, in ports of the United States, for Cuba and Porto Rico, were not allowed the benefit of the third column for which the Government of the United States had paid a full equivalent price or benefit, the “reciprocal exemption,” which the statute required as a condition precedent to executive suspension, did not exist, and the President, having no alternative, was constrained reluctantly to revoke the proclamation of 14th February, 1884. While the discrimination exists there is no option resting with the President.
The proposals of your Excellency, in your memorandum of the 12th, and in your note of the 17th, embody a discrimination against produce or manufactures or merchandise not exclusively American, and practically prohibit competition by American vessels with Spanish in Cuban trade as well as the intermediate use of American ports.
In the note of 17th instant, if I rightly comprehend the meaning, your Excellency says that “the principle “of the agreement of February, 1884, “is that of a most absolute equality of flags,” and that, if at the time of the application of the royal order of 22d June, the claims of the United States had been formulated as they now appear before the Spanish Goverment, the “inequality would not have been maintained for a single clay.” Your Excellency further says, if I do not misinterpret the language, that if foreign goods, transported in American bottoms from American to Antillean ports, pay under fourth column, while such goods, carried in Spanish vessels, would pay only under third column, such a discrimination is a differential duty and, therefore, an erroneous interpretation of Articles I and II of the agreement of 1884.
No good result can come of a discussion as to the origin of the unfortunate misapprehension. When both Governments are actuated alike by high considerations of honor and loyalty to compacts, it is better to “let bygones be bygones,” and to proceed either to the issuance of new orders or to the framing of a new agreement. In the light of existing facts and opinions the latter course seems preferable and easily attainable. I suggest therefore, that with a brief and explanatory preamble we can agree on the following terms:
- I.
- The duties of the third column of the customs tariffs of Cuba and Porto Rico shall ho applied to produce, manufactures, or merchandise imported into said islands from ports of the United States in vessels belonging to citizens of the United States. Any change hereafter made in the customs tariffs of said islands shall not be construed so as to create any flag duty discriminating against the flag of the United States.
- II.
- All tonnage fees or dues imposed or levied in the ports of the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico shall be the same on Spanish vessels and vessels belonging to citizens of the United States.
- III.
- The Government of the United States, in consideration of Articles I and II of this agreement, containing concessions by the Government of Spain, shall remove the extra duty of 10 per centum ad valorem which it has imposed on the products, manufactures, or merchandise proceeding from Cuba and Porto Rico under the Spanish flag, and shall equalize the tonnage dues, so that, in that respect, the vessels of Spain and of the United States shall, in the trade between the United States and the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico, stand on the same footing.
If your Excellency, acting in the name of your Government, can authorize me to cable these propositions to the Government of the United States, I am persuaded that the two nations can go on with increasing good will and prosperity.
I gladly avail myself, &c.,