Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 3, 1888, Part II

No. 837.
Mr. Bayard to Mr. Romero.

Department of State,
Washington, November 21, 1887.

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the 16th instant, in which with reference to your previous note of 22 October, ultimo, touching the establishment by the Territorial authorities of Arizona of ninety days’ quarantine against importations of Mexican cattle, you intimate that the proceeding is not apparently so justifiable as to exclude the possibility of retaliatory measures.

A copy of your note will be sent, as was the former one, to my colleague the Secretary of the Interior, with the request that investigation and report of the facts be made by the Territorial authorities of Arizona, to enable full consideration to be here given to the matter.

I observe that you refer to the measure in question as not according with the spirit of the resolution of the Senate of the United States of March 5, 1886, which recommended to the President the conclusion of an arrangement with Mexico in regard to the passage of cattle from either country to the territory of the other. That resolution, the date of which was May 5, 1886, was made the occasion of instructions to the legation of the United States in Mexico, in May, 1886, proposing a negotiation in the suggested direction, and the suggestion was favorably received by Señor Mariscal, who, on the 5th day of July following, desired further information of the plans proposed. There the matter appears to have rested.

I inclose for your information a copy of the resolution in question, from which you will see that it deals only with the avoidance of the vexatious questions continually arising on the frontier by reason of the formal difficulties interposed to the restoration of grazing horses and cattle straying at will across the boundary, and does not relate to the expansion or regulation of commercial importation or exportation of live-stock, or the prevention of infectious diseases among them.

Accept, etc.,

T. F. Bayard.

[Inclosure.]

Resolution.

Whereas the boundary line between the Republics of the United States and Mexico in much of its length divides a graziug and stock-growing country, which lies on each side thereof; and

Whereas horses and cattle may and do cross said line at will, the same interposing no obstruction thereto; and

Whereas, in the absence of some treaty provision between the two countries for the reclamation of stock thus crossing said boundary line, the citizens of the two countries are liable to become embroiled:

Therefore, for the purpose of averting such complications as in consequence thereof may ensue between the two countries—

Resolved, as the judgment of the Senate, That it is desirable that some arrangements be made with the Government of Mexico on the subject adequate to the repression of the evil aforesaid, and promotive of peace and good will between the two countries.

Resolved, That a copy of the foregoing resolution be respectfully transmitted to the President of the United States.