Mr. Foster to Mr. Lincoln.

No. 906.]

Sir: I transmit for your information copies of correspondence that has lately passed between this Department and the Legation of Great Britain in regard to the alleged action of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company in transporting Chinese persons into the United States in violation of existing law.

In my note of August 10, last, to Mr. Herbert, I presented the matter as it was here understood, and referred to the ineffectual negotiations which you were charged to enter into, pursuant to instructions of October 22, 1890, based upon the concurrent resolution of the Senate and House of Representatives, inviting negotiations with Great Britain with a purpose of securing treaty stipulations for the prevention of the entry of Chinese laborers from the Dominion of Canada contrary to our laws.

Mr. Herbert’s note of September 29, in reply, disclaims any act on the part of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company violative of our statutes respecting the introduction of Chinese persons, and with reference to my intimation that the action complained of seemed to show an indifference or lack of friendliness on the part of the Canadian Government it was observed that while the Canadian Government was entirely friendly to the United States in such matters it could not charge itself with executing or enforcing our laws.

To this note I made answer on the 3d instant, expressing the Department’s gratification at this denial of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company and saying that if the reply of the Government of Canada had communicated, with friendly acquiescence, the sentiments and purposes of the railway authorities—the purport of which had previously been made known to me—my acknowledgment thereof would [Page 235] have been an agreeable duty. After commenting upon the statements of the Canadian Privy Council, I referred to the friendly and neighborly interests that prompted the treaty proposal of October, 1890, and substantiated my statements touching the indifference with which it had been treated by Canada.

On the 4th instant I received Mr. Herbert’s note, dated the 2d, supplementing his previous one of September 29 last, by communicating a copy of an approved minute of the Canadian Privy Council further relating to the alleged action of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company.

I replied to this note on the 4th instant, expressing my pleasure at the character of the communications of the vice-president of that railway company, which fully bore out my understanding of the good disposition of the company and of its desire to respect our laws by taking all necessary precautious to prevent the unlawful introduction of Chinese into the United States.

It is my wish that you commnicate copies of these notes to Earl Rosebery and inquire whether the declarations of the Government of Canada, as conveyed in Mr. Herbert’s note of September 29, that “the Government of the Dominion does not charge itself with the duty of enforcing measures of restriction adopted by a foreign government with regard to access to its territories by persons of other nationalities,” is to be taken as a declination by Her Majesty’s Government of the overture of that of the United States for a treaty regulating the border immigration of Chinese persons inhibited by our laws.

I am, etc.,

John W. Foster.