Mr. Olney to Mr. Denby.
Washington, September 21, 1895.
Sir: Confirming your telegram of the 19th instant, and my reply thereto of the same date, copies of which are hereto annexed, it is proper to allude even more impressively to the necessity of keeping the especial functions of the United States commissioners for the investigation [Page 142] of injuries to American citizens in China wholly within the line of the distinct purpose of this Government and free from all complication which might ensue by reason of the expansion or diversion of those functions.
Previous instructions of this Department have made it clear that from the outset especial importance has been attached to the effective localization of official responsibility for the nonexecution of the stringent imperial orders whereby the Tartar generals, viceroys, and provincial governors were enjoined to see to it that foreigners within their jurisdiction should suffer no harm. The instruction telegraphed to you on the 12th of August last relative to the cooperation of representatives of this Government with those of Great Britain in the investigation of the murders and injuries at Kutien, showed that the essential aim was to discover and fix any responsibility existing in high places, leaving measures of reparation and indemnity for subsequent consideration; and your own dispatches, as far back as July last, show that you yourself had formed much the same view with regard to official accountability for the looting of the foreign missionary premises in the province of Szechuan. You have yourself adverted to the disposition of the Chinese authorities to cover up the responsibilities of the viceroys and generals in such cases by punishment of obscure individuals upon more or less conclusive appearance of having taken part in the outrages, and your demand for the degradation and punishment of ex-Viceroy Liu rested clearly upon the assumption that effective redress could only be sought in those quarters where effective responsibility existed and where dereliction of duty was manifest.
The proceedings at Kutien, as so far briefly reported by your telegrams and with more or less narrative fullness in the press dispatches, are not clearly understood here. It certainly was not the intention of this Government that its commissioners should go to Kutien as participants in a local proceeding involving judicial or quasi-judicial functions. The real purpose was to furnish this Government with information at first hand, upon which it could base demands for the punishment of any high officials to whom culpable neglect of duty might be imputed by the ascertained facts. It was not intended to make our agents members of a trial court, awarding punishment to the common actors in the tragedy; yet from your telegram of the 19th it would seem that the results, presumably reached through the cooperation of the commissioners, are to be subject to revision by the authorities of Fuhkien and the assent of Consul Hixson to the exercise of clemency by the governor (viceroy?) is invited. How far this apparent association with the functions of provincial administration is compatible with the higher purposes which this Government has steadily endeavored to keep in view, in entering upon these investigations, cannot be distinctly inferred from the information thus far possessed by the Department. It is thought, however, that any association in that direction would impair the attainment of the real purpose in view, and it certainly does not seem either expedient or admissible that the consular representative on that commission should be joined directly or indirectly with the provincial authorities in deciding upon the question of individual clemency. As suggested in my telegram of the 19th, such questions are too important to be deputed to local agencies, and if considered at all, should be dealt with through the direct channels of international intercourse.
This Government has entered upon the pending investigations with no vindictive motives. It does not seek to have its sense of the injuries inflicted upon its citizens measured by the number of decapitations [Page 143] which may ensue, neither could it rest satisfied with the infliction of punishment upon the humble actors in the outrages. While prepared to exact all adequate measures of chastisement and reparation for the actual injuries already sustained by American residents in China upon due proof thereof, it is the chief and higher aim to prevent the recurrence of such injuries by holding the Chinese Government bound, through its responsible delegates of the imperial power, to take all such precautionary measures as are necessary to that end. The imperial proclamation fixes the responsibility of protection and prevention upon the provincial authorities in no uncertain terms, and if they be found culpably remiss and yet escape punishment, the ends of international justice can not be attained, even though a few individual offenders be summarily punished.
Your own comments upon the situation, contained in dispatches recently received from you by mail, indicate that you hold views essentially similar to those of the Department. It is therefore scarcely necessary to instruct you to impress upon the American commissioners now at Kutien and on those about to be dispatched to Chengtu, that their essential function is to investigate and report to their Government, and that under no circumstances are they to participate in the judicial and executive functions of the officers of the provinces, whose guilty connection with the outrages investigated may be the most important outcome of the inquiry.
I am, etc.,