Mr. Foster to Mr. Herbert.
Washington, August 24, 1892.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the 20th instant, in relation to the question of canal tolls, which has heretofore been the occasion of correspondence and interviews between us.
Upon receiving your assurance of the 6th instant that a further consideration would be given to the question by the Canadian government and the result communicated so soon as certain causes of delay to which you referred should permit, I acquainted the President with the situation. Notwithstanding the mandatory character of the act of July 26, 1892, constraining the President to take action upon ascertaining the existence of the prescribed conditions in the Dominion unfavorable to or discriminatory against the citizens of the United States in their enjoyment of the Canadian canals on an equal footing with British subjects, the President was well disposed to withhold for a reasonable time the issuance of his proclamation, in the hope that the disappearance of those adverse conditions might indefinitely postpone such action on his part. The spirit of neighborly good will which prompted the President to this delay, for which the statute contained no precise warrant, is the more evident when the fact is considered that the season for which the Canadian provisions were prescribed was already far advanced and the movement of grain was at its height, so that each day’s delay diminished the effectiveness of the remedy it was his desire to obtain from the sense of justice of the Dominion government.
On the 15th instant the consul-general of the United States communicated by telegraph the official announcement by the Canadian government that the provisions complained of would be retained until the end of the present season, when they were to cease. I remained, however, without any advices from you.
[Page 302]Being well aware of the circumstances to which you invite my attention, that the obnoxious tolls for the Welland and St. Lawrence canals were of a temporary nature, and, with the regulations for their application, did not in terms extend beyond the present season of canal navigation, it became evident to the President that no present effective relief was to be offered on the part of the Dominion, and that the full measure of the discrimination imposed by the Canadian order of 1892 was to be continued unabated during the full life of that order, and inasmuch as the act of Congress prescribed his duty in view of existing conditions and not of conditions which may or may not exist in future years, no recourse remained open to him but to give immediate effect to the statute by issuing his proclamation, which was done on the 20th instant.
Not until after the issuance of the proclamation, and not until one week after the official announcement at Ottawa of the decision reached by the Canadian authorities, did I receive your present note. The information which you now convey to me is that, “the features of the present tariff giving preferential treatment to certain routes and ports and providing for transshipment at Canadian ports only, will not be readopted after the present season,” and you add:
This undertaking, however, would not be binding on the Canadian government if the President of the United States should in the meanwhile proclaim and enforce the imposition of tolls in the Sault Ste. Marie Canal, as authorized by the recent act of Congress.
I am at a loss to understand why the Canadian government should attach such a condition to its proposition. All that is contemplated by the President’s proclamation is to establish in the American canal named the same conditions as now exist and have existed in the Canadian canals for years past. Besides, I have already given you the assurance, which I now repeat, that the President’s proclamation will remain in force no longer than the discriminations complained of are maintained by the Canadian government.
I may observe that the Canadian proposal embraces two points, the tariff of tolls in the Dominion canals, and the preferential treatment given to certain routes and ports and providing for transshipment at Canadian ports only. With regard to the first point, the declaration is made that it is not intended to reëstablish such tolls “in their present form” after the expiration of the season of 1892, but what future form the tariff of tolls may take is left to conjecture and does not appear to be held subject to any reciprocal understanding. Such an understanding is only suggested with respect to the provisions governing preferential treatment and transshipment, which indeed form our main ground of complaint, and constitute the concrete conditions of disfavor to citizens of the United States, which the President was constrained to examine and act upon.
But this does not constitute our only ground of complaint. The substitution of a more equally balanced arrangement for the present device, whereby 57 per cent of the total American traffic passing through the Welland Canal pays 72 per cent of the tolls, could not fail to give the President unmixed satisfaction.
I lament “that grave difficulties present themselves to an alteration of the tariff of tolls during the present season;” but I beg to remind you that the Government of the United States is not responsible in any degree for these difficulties, and its citizens should not be required to suffer on that account. For several years past the attention of the Canadian government has been called to its violation of article 27 of the treaty [Page 303] of 1871, and earnest remonstrances on the subject have been addressed to the British legation by my predecessors. In 1888, Mr. Bayard brought the matter to the attention of the Canadian government, but received no response from it. In May, 1891, the United States consul general addressed the Ottawa government without eliciting any information. Again, in 1891, your legation was addressed upon the subject, without avail, as no reply was made by the Canadian government. And even when the commissioners of that government, embracing three of the members of its cabinet, visited this city and were confronted by Secretary Blaine with the repetition of the complaint of a violation of the treaty of 1871, this personal remonstrance was without effect, as, within a short time thereafter, the objectionable “order in council” of former years was reissued. In view of these repeated remonstrances and protests, if “contracts and engagements have been entered upon * * * which can not be interfered with without great confusion and detriment, and apparent breach of faith,” as you inform me, I submit that such a consideration should not be addressed to the Government of the United States, nor should its people be expected to pay the penalty for such contracts. If the Canadian government has seen fit, in the face of the earnest remonstrances of the United States, to pursue the unneighborly course indicated, it should find some way to satisfy the claims of unfulfilled contracts and breach of faith, if any such are well founded, without an appeal to the forbearance of the United States.
Immediately after the conclusion of the treaty of 1871, whose beneficent effects in promoting peace between the two nations have been so conspicuous, the United States took steps to carry out the stipulation of article 27, and without unreasonable delay both the canals of the National and State governments, representing a vast system constructed at very great expense, were thrown open to the use of Canadian commerce without any charge whatever. On the other hand, heavy tolls have continued to be exacted on American commerce passing through the Welland and St. Lawrence canals, and although the absence of reciprocity of treatment was marked, it could not be made a cause of complaint under the treaty so long as the tolls were uniformly exacted from all commerce.
Not until the discrimination against American ports and lines of transportation became so oppressive as to call forth earnest protests from the carriers’ associations and boards of trade of the cities of Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Oswego, Ogdensburg, and other lake ports, did the Government of the United States take action. And not until its repeated protests had passed unheeded by the Canadian government was the Congress of the United States appealed to by the President. The unanimity with which Congress clothed the President with power to correct the unjust discrimination must have convinced the Canadian authorities that the complaints of the Government of the United States were regarded by the people of this country as serious and well founded.
In the interview which I had the honor to hold with you on the 1st instant I assured you of the earnest desire of the President to avoid any resort to the powers conferred upon him by the act of Congress, and I exhorted you to exercise your best influence with the Canadian cabinet to bring about a faithful observance of the treaty of 1871 and thus remove the cause of irritation between the two neighboring countries. And when it became known that such desired action was postponed till another season, and the President was thereby constrained to put [Page 304] the law into operation, his spirit of conciliation led him to exercise the minimum powers conferred upon him by Congress, and merely to establish in one of the canals of the United States the same tolls as are en forced in the canals of Canada, and he has coupled with this lenient action the assurances that the tolls in this one canal will be supended concurrently with the removal of the unjust discriminations maintained by Canada.
I have taken pains to set forth at some length the causes which have compelled the recent action of the President, in order that the Canadian government and people may know that there is every disposition on the part of the government of the United States to maintain and extend the most intimate and friendly commercial relations with our Northern neighbors, bound to us by so many ties of race and community of interest, and I yet cherish the hope, which I have already verbally expressed to you, that before the President’s proclamation goes into effect the Canadian government will take such action in the direction of treaty observance as will make the enforcement of that proclamation unnecessary. I am happy to reciprocate, in the name of the President, the desire expressed in your note “to remove any ground which has a tendency to disturb the friendly interchange of trade between the two countries,” but I beg to suggest that a persistent violation of treaty stipulations which were framed with an express view to the promotion of “friendly interchange of trade between the two countries” does not tend to that result. Until the Canadian government is prepared to resume its obligations under the treaty there can be found no safe basis of friendly commercial intercourse.
I have, etc.,