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

Lord Rosebery to Count Hatzfeldt.

Foreign Office, September 13, 1892.

Mons. l’Ambassadeur: With reference to my previous note of this date relative to the “real-property ordinance, 1891,” issued by the chief justice of Samoa, I have, etc., to acknowledge the receipt of your communication of the 3d instant respecting the proposed further action of the chief justice in regard to the registration of land titles.

Your excellency states that M. de Cedercrantz contemplates making the registration dependent in each case upon a preliminary survey, to be made at the cost of the party interested, and you explain the reasons which lead the German Government to consider such a survey to be unnecessary in itself, as well as calculated to entail undesirable delay and to throw disproportionate expense on the persons concerned. You add that they propose, under these circumstances, to withhold their sanction from the measure and to instruct the German consul at Apia to that effect.

I have the honor to acquaint your excellency that Her Majesty’s Government concur in these views and that Her Majesty’s consul at Apia will be instructed in a similar sense.

I have, etc.,

Rosebery.