Foreign Relations of the United States, 1894, Appendix I, Chinese-Japanese War, Enforcement of Regulation Respective to Fur Seals, Mosquito Territory, Affairs at Bluefields, Claim of Antonio Maximo Mora, Import Duties on Certain Products of Colombia, Haiti, and Venezuela, Affairs in the Samoan Islands

Mr. Taylor to Mr. Gresham.

[Extract.]

No. 147.]

Legation of the United States,
Madrid, March 22, 1894. (Received April 2.)

Sir: Yesterday I had the honor to receive your cipher telegram concerning the Mora memorandum. * * * I immediately addressed a note to the minister of the state, a copy of which is inclosed herein. I then sent you a telegram. * * * The two documents last named will explain to you my action after the receipt of the minister of state’s memorandum of the 26th ultimo in reply to your No. 16 of the 14th of July last. A day or two after the receipt of the memorandum I received your No. 95 of the 14th ultimo, in which you saw fit to approve the four propositions in which I had restated your conclusions. Thus armed with your approval I thought it far wiser to simply read to the minister your No. 95 in answer to his memorandum, rather than to enter into a fresh discussion of its contents, prior to your perusal of it. As soon, however, as your telegram was received, I at once embodied its contents in the note which I inclose, and sent the same to the minister in order to emphasize what I had said already. In that way, I think your views upon the vital question have now received all the emphasis which language can give them. * * *

I am, etc.,

Hannis Taylor.

[Inclosure in No. 147.]

Mr. Taylor to Señor Moret.

Legation of the United States.
Madrid, March 21, 1894.

Excellency: I duly transmitted to Washington the memorandum of the 26th ultimo, which I had the honor to receive from you as your formal answer to the note of 14th of July last from the Secretary of State, defining the position of the Government of the United States as to the payment of the Mora claim. You will remember that in our last interview of the 15th instant, I first read to you, and then, at your request, delivered to you—as a rejoinder to your memorandum—a copy of the dispatch addressed to me by the Secretary of State on the 14th ultimo. In that dispatch the four propositions carefully defining the position of my Government as to the payment of the Mora claim, previously submitted by me to you, are expressly approved.

The reading of the third proposition—“that my Government will not consent that payment shall depend upon the willingness of the Cortes to make the appropriation”—was intended as a succinct yet emphatic reiteration of its original position in answer to your contention that the unqualified promise to pay the Mora claim, made by your Government in your note of November 29, 1886, was subject to the implied condition that the Cortes would make the appropriation. In order that no possible ambiguity shall exist upon that point, my Government, since the receipt of your memorandum of the 26th ultimo, has sent me the following telegram: “Your dispatch transmitting the answer of the minister of state (February 26, 1894) to my note (No. 16, of the 14th of July, 1893) received. The minister says Spain’s agreement to pay the Mora claim was conditional; that the consent of the Cortes was implied; that its refusal to appropriate money necessitated a new agreement; and that the Cortes will make an appropriation to pay the claim, provided such payment coincides with the payment of Spanish claims against the United States. It is no answer to my instruction to you to say that one department of the Spanish Government does not recognize the force of an obligation binding equally upon all.”

I transmit to you at once the substance of this telegram in order to give additional emphasis to the statements contained in the Secretary of State’s note of the 14th ultimo, which I first read and then delivered to you on the 15th instant in reply to your memorandum of the 26th ultimo. I hope you will understand that while my Government has submitted to you, in accordance with your request, the draft of a treaty looking to the adjudication of Spanish claims against the United States, it has done so in a formal note which denies, with all possible emphasis, your contention that the positive agreement to pay the Mora claim, made by the Government of Spain on the 29th day of November, 1886, was made subject to the implied condition that the Cortes would make the appropriation.

I seize, etc.,

Hannis Taylor.