No. 89.
Mr. Bayard
to Mr. Gresham.
London, August 10, 1894. (Received August 20, 1894.)
Sir: To-day, in a personal interview at the foreign office with Lord Kimberley, his lordship, referring to the presence of the two armed ships of the United States and Great Britain at Bluefields, said there would be no difficulty in their keeping order, and he deprecated very positively the use of the name of the Mosquito Indians as a shield under which foreign residents sought to wage war in opposition to Nicaragua, and said that the presence of the British vessel and armed forces had no other object or purpose than to protect the lives and property of British residents during a period of lawlessness and strife, and that the only desire of his Government beyond that was to induce the Nicaraguans to treat the Indians with forbearance and moderation, and not shoot them down, as they were very apt to do.
I took the opportunity to repeat what I had stated to his lordship on a former occasion—that the United States were wholly opposed to the employment of the fiction of a Mosquito government to organize an opposition to the Government of Nicaragua, which had no connection whatever with the customs and domestic usages of the Mosquito Indians, and that American citizens would not be allowed to set up any such government under any pretext.
I can but confirm, and need not here repeat, the views heretofore expressed to you in my dispatch of the 28th of May last, in relation to the attitude and purposes of Great Britain toward Nicaragua and the Mosquito Reservation.
What Lord John Russell wrote to Mr. Crampton in 1853 about Mosquito Indians who, instead of governing their own tribe according to their own laws and customs, were lending their name and title to a medley of Europeans and Americans to trade at Grey Town and Bluefields, not according to Indian usages and customs, but wholly in opposition to such usages, was true when his lordship so expressed it, and in the passage of events has been emphasized, and is to-day absolutely undeniable.
I am quite clear, however, that the easiest and most complete and satisfactory solution of any difficulty lies wholly in the power of the rulers of Nicaragua, who can, by the exercise of a wise and humane policy of treatment of the Indians of Mosquito, deprive the British Government of all possible pretext to interfere in any way with the practical and unqualified exercise of sovereignty by Nicaragua over the entire region.
[Page 155]Satisfied, as Nicaragua must be, that the United States have not the slightest desire to impair its full control over the Mosquito coast and will discourage all attempts from any quarter to impose conditions upon Nicaragua in the conduct of her domestic affairs—asking only that the legitimate rights of American residents may receive the just protection of equal laws—it is wholly within her power to give the treaty of Managua its full force and intent, and secure an unquestioned and unqualified sovereignty for Nicaragua over the whole territory by establishing such a condition of law and order that no pretext for interference can be set up in any quarter.
Such a course will insure to capital that safety that is essential to its voluntary presence and employment and promote the great work of joining the waters of the two great oceans, together with the infinite commerce that would necessarily stream across Nicaraguan territory, bringing her inhabitants into the closest and most profitable relations with the world’s wealth and higher civilization.
The obvious wisdom of such a course is indubitable, for peace at home must be accompanied with prosperity, and a final abandonment of all attempts to subject Nicaragua to an interpretation of the Managua treaty by a foreign imperial Government (Austria), to which she most imprudently assented in 1879, without notification or consultation with the United States.
It is not the treaty of Managua, but the Austrian construction of that convention, which has given Great Britain the only possible ground of argument in favor of an interference, which is inconsistent with the sovereignty of Nicaragua over the Mosquito coast, and would involve in its acceptance an infraction, in letter and in spirit, of the stipulations of Great Britain with the United States in the Clayton-Bui wer treaty.
Undefined obligations are always the most embarrassing, and the trace of responsibility for the personal safety of a feeble remnant of an inferior and deteriorating race who were once under her protection in some degree survives, and creates hesitation on the part of Great Britain formally and finally to abandon her obligation to interfere when her former protégés are threatened with gross injustice and oppression.
This is made apparent by Lord Salisbury’s note to Mr. Edwardes March 7, 1889, and has been accentuated in Lord Kimberley’s conversations with me. Nor can there be any doubt that the condition of affairs in Nicaragua and in the Mosquito Reservation has undergone an entire transformation within the last thirty-four years, and is now more than ever rapidly progressing into a state in which no feature existing in 1850 can be traced.
I am fully persuaded that, with good temper and judicious and just treatment of her citizens inhabiting the Mosquito region, Nicaragua will be wholly undisturbed by interference by the United States or Great Britain, and assuredly by this time her rulers and people should be satisfied with the disinterestedness and friendly good faith which actuates the Government of the United States in all their relations with Nicaragua.
I am, etc.,