Legation of
the United States,
Teheran,
Persia, November 9, 1893.
(Received Dec. 15, 1893.)
No. 36.]
[Inclosure in No. 36.]
Mr. McDonald to the
prime minister.
Legation of the United States,
Teheran, Persia, November 6, 1893.
Your Highness: I am instructed by the
Department of State to inform you that a copy of Mr. Sperry’s note
addressed to you on the 21st of July last with reference to the case of
Hajie Seyyah has been received.
In Mr. Sperry’s communication to your highness he refers to instructions
which he had just received from the Department relative to this subject;
but from a careful consideration of the terms of the dispatch of the
Secretary of State, and the light thrown on it by the letter which I
have just received, there can be no doubt that Mr. Sperry misunderstood
the instructions addressed to him on the 17th of May.
The Department did not decide whether Hajie Seyyah had lost his United
States citizenship, still less whether he had reverted to his original
nationality. Furthermore, in the absence of evidence that Hajie Seyyah
had bona fide conserved American citizenship he
could not be regarded as entitled to the protection of the United States
while continuing to dwell in the land of his origin. Naturalization
being a judicial act the executive branch is not competent to annul a
decree of naturalization, and can not declare forfeiture of citizenship
in the absence of legislation to that end. In view of this circumstance
it will be evident to your highness that Mr. Sperry is in error when he
asserts, as in the first paragraph of his note, “that the Government of
the United States has decided that Hajie Seyyah is not a citizen of the
United States;” and also further on, where he concludes, after a
quotation from the dispatch in question, that “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 those rights. The rights acquired by him in the
United States would be good if he had used them, but 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.”
Your highness will, I am sure, readily admit that the quotation in
question hardly justifies Mr. Sperry’s interpretation, and at the utmost
can only be construed as an exposition of the law and situation, and
that there is no abrogation by the Government of the naturalization of
Hajie Seyyah. When the Secretary of State remarks that he has “no
hesitancy in regarding as unworthy the claim of Hajie Seyyah to be
protected as a person who has bona fide
discharged the reciprocal duties of American citizenship, however lawful
be the act of his naturalization,” from which Mr. Sperry probably drew
his conclusion, his excellency does not decree that Hajie Seyyah had
forfeited his citizenship, which would have been an assumption of power
that the laws of the United States have not delegated to him; but that
Hajie Seyyah’s claim to protection in Persia could not under the
circumstances be entertained.
Your highness will, therefore, be pleased to observe that the Secretary
of State does not decide whether Hajie Seyyah is or is not a citizen of
the United States, but merely that my predecessor was not justified in
giving to him the protection of the legation.
Notwithstanding its being my duty to point out the error into which my
predecessor has fallen in this matter, yet it is the utmost satisfaction
to me to feel that I can join with him in the belief that the close
friendship which has existed so long between Persia and the United
States will be ever increased and perpetuated.
I take, etc.,
