Mr. Sperry to Mr. Gresham.

No. 74.]

Sir: I have the honor to send to you herewith a copy of my note to the Persian prime minister, announcing to him your decision in regard to the civil status of Hajie Seyyah, who claimed to be a United States citizen under naturalization papers issued to him by a U. S. court in San Francisco in 1875. No reply to my note has yet reached this legation, probably because the prime minister is away in the mountains with the Shah, and during these annual summer journeys only the most necessary business is usually attended to.

I have, etc.,

Watson R. Sperry.
[Inclosure in No. 74.]

Mr. Sperry to the prime minister.

Your Highness: I have the honor to state to you that the Government of the United States has decided that Hajie Seyyah is not a citizen of the United States. The Hon. Walter Q. Gresham, Secretary of State, in the course of his decision on the subject, writes to me as follows:

“The effect of naturalization under the laws of the United States is in no wise dependent upon or affected by the laws of the alien’s country. So far as we are concerned, it is perfectly immaterial whether Hajie Seyyah had or had not permission to emigrate, if he be lawfully admitted to American citizenship; and his rights would be effectively respected in the United States and protected in a third country. But when he voluntarily returns to his native country, presumably knowing the law thereof in this regard, he becomes the subject of a conflict of laws. The legality of his naturalization in the United States is not to be questioned except by allegation of fraud in its procurement, which does not enter into the present case.

“The claim of the Persian minister that the naturalization here is not valid because lacking the prior consent of Persia, can not be admitted, but on the other hand, and [Page 501] in the absence of a treaty of naturalization, its validity may not be practically enforceable in Persia against the counterclaim of that Government that under its law the man has not lost his original allegiance. The emigration treaty of July 3, 1814, between Russia and Persia, which the minister invokes, has no relation whatever to the naturalization of Persians according to the laws of the United States, for the widest expansion of the most-favored-nation doctrine could not make a treaty between two foreign states the measure of the validity of a judicial act done in the United States in conformity to our municipal law. To sum up, I have no hesitancy in regarding as unworthy the claim of Hajie Seyyah to be protected as a person who has bona fide conserved the rights and discharged the reciprocal duties of American citizenship, however lawful be the act of his naturalization.”

Your Highness will observe that my Government sustains me in the position which I took during my friendly discussion of this subject with his excellency and your representative, the Moandes-el-Mamalek, and that as to the point which I expressly avoided, as to whether or not Hajie Seyyah was in law a citizen of the United States—I saying in this respect that I would not and did not assert that Hajie Seyyah was a citizen of the United States—my Government decides that Hajie Seyyah is not a citizen of the United States, on the ground that the rights which he acquired by receiving a certificate of naturalization from a court of the United States have been lost because he never made any use of these rights. The rights acquired by him in the United States would be good if he had used them, hut not having used them, he has lost them, and therefore he is now as much a subject of His Imperial Majesty as he would have been if he had never stepped across the Persian frontier. Permit me to acknowledge in this formal manner the uniform personal courtesy and friendliness for the United States with which your highness and your representatives conducted the discussion in regard to the civil status of Hajie Seyyah. Persia and the United States have so long been good friends that nothing, I am sure, will be permitted to weaken their friendly regard for each other. This is certainly my hope.

Please to accept, etc.,

Watson R. Sperry.