No. 212.
Mr. Bayard
to Mr. Denby.
Washington, June 6, 1888.
Sir: Your No. 621, of the 13th of April last, relating to the missionary troubles at Chinanfu, has been received and read with much attention and interest. Your course in the matter appears to have been judicious, and your estimate of the legal and practical aspects of the case to be correct, so that it does not seem to the Department advisable to fetter your action by any absolute instructions. Your knowledge of [Page 310] the feelings and character of the parties to the dispute will doubtless enable you to balance the arguments on either side and bring the question to a mutually advantageous issue.
Should another tract of land satisfactory to the missionaries be found it would seem wiser to accept it and for Mr. Reid to waive any claim for damages, inasmuch as the actual base of all his actions falls through, as you state, under the circumstances as admitted by him and which appear to have been the cause of the resistance of the Chinese to Mr. Reid’s entry on the premises.
It is hoped that the rights of missionaries, if not too aggressively asserted by them, will, with time and patience, gradually grow in scope, and acquire somewhat of the stability of consuetudinary privilege; but the religious and local prejudices of the inhabitants, as, for instance, the one in question of geomantic influences, should be borne in mind, and as far as possible such arrangements made by the missionaries as will avoid an appeal to treaty rights which might lead the Chinese to insist officially on the strict letter of the treaties. Experience shows that by a moderate amount of conciliation and good will the rights of foreigners will be gradually extended and interpreted by the Chinese in a more liberal spirit and beyond the limits of the treaty ports.
I shall hope soon to receive from you a report of the amicable and satisfactory settlement of these troubles.
I am, etc.,