No. 564.
Mr. Bayard to Sir L. S. Sackville West .

Sir: By your note of the 20th instant, which I had the honor to receive this morning, you refer to your note of the 19th, touching the second meeting of the sugar conference at London, April 5; and further express the request of the Marquis of Salisbury that the documents referred to in the protocol of 19th December, 1887, may be communicated to Her Majesty’s Government as soon as possible.

Supplementing my reply of this date to your note of the 19th instant, I have to say touching the provision of the protocol to which you refer—to the effect that governments contemplating adhesion to the proposed convention should give notice of such intention before March 1, communicating at the same time the system of taxation they may propose for carrying out its provisions, and the method and extent of the employment of saccharometric tests—that as this Government is unprepared at present to accept the convention itself, it is necessarily unprepared to give the detailed statements suggested, especially as the subject is one of pending legislation affecting the revenue.

I have, etc.,

T. F. Bayard.