Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, With the Annual Message of the President, Transmitted to Congress December 2, 1895, Part II

Mr. Hicks to Mr. Blaine.

Legation of the United States,
Lima, Peru , November 14, 1889 . (Received December 4.)

No. 49.]

Sir: In compliance with instructions contained in Department’s No. 14, of September 11, 1889, I have addressed a note to the Peruvian foreign office expressing the hope that the claims of the Hydrographic Commission against the Peruvian Government would be paid without unnecessary delay.

Inclosed herewith I send a copy of my communication on the subject, which I trust will receive the approval of the Department.

I have, etc.,

John Hicks.

[Inclosure in No. 49.]

Mr. Hicks to Mr. Yrigoyen.

Legation of the United States,
Lima, Peru , November 5, 1889.

No. 2.]

Sir: It becomes my duty to call the attention of your excellency to a claim of certain citizens of the United States against the Government of Peru, which has been standing for more than a dozen years, and one which has been duly adjudicated upon and ordered paid by the Government of your excellency, and yet which remains unsettled and unpaid to this day.

On July 6, 1878, in a communication, No. 91, to the department of foreign relations, Mr. Richard Gibbs, then American minister to Peru, presented to your department the claim of certain American citizens who had previously served the Government of Peru as members of the Hydrographic Commission in the survey of the River Amazon and its tributaries. As to the merits of the claim there was evidently no dispute, for on the 17th of the succeeding January, 1879, the minister of foreign affairs, Dr. Don Manuel Yrigoyen, in his dispatch No. 3 to Mr. Gibbs, informed him that “through the minister of war His Excellency the President has ordered the consignees of guano in the United States to pay the members of the late Hydographic Commission of the Amazon the sum of $11,447.63, due to them, in equal monthly payments, and the minister of the treasury has given orders for its fulfillment.”

The money thus ordered paid by your excellency’s Government was never paid to the claimants. Several of them are men in reduced circumstances, some of them have died, and the others are anxiously waiting for the money that is due them.

I am advised by instruction No. 119, of April 13, 1885, from the Department of State at Washington, that the correspondence in this case has been submitted to the law officer of the Department, whose comments on the diplomatic sanction afforded these claims and the singular hardship which their nonpayment involves has been concurred in by the Department.

I am also directed by my Government, under date of September 11, 1889, to express the sincere hope that no considerable delay will now attend the payment of these claims, which was ordered so many years ago.

With, etc.,

John Hicks.