Mr. Jackson to Mr. Olney.
Berlin, March 21, 1896. (Received April 3.)
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt to day of your instruction No. 561, of the 3d instant, and will inform you that I shall bring the subject to Mr. Uhl’s attention upon his arrival.
The treaty of 1828 with Prussia has always been considered by the German Government as applicable to the whole of the Empire, although it was made with but a single State, and in view of this and of the fact that the several Bancroft treaties are applicable to all the States except Alsace-Lorraine, and of the desire for greater uniformity of procedure which seems to exist at the present time in official quarters, as shown by the efforts to bring about the adoption of an imperial civil code, and in the recent action in regard to interstate changes of allegiance (see note in dispatch No. 505 of the 14th instant), it may be possible either that a single treaty on the subject of naturalization can be concluded with the Empire, or that one of the existing treaties, say that with Baden or Prussia, can be extended to the Reichsland.
The prospect of the incorporation of Alsace-Lorraine as part of the territorial domain of one or more of the present constituents of the Empire, is very vague and distant. The district belongs to the Empire as a whole and not to any particular State, and it will be a long time before the other States will be willing to allow it to become a part of any one of them. At present the governor (statthalter or viceroy) is appointed by the German Emperor, but his powers are similar to those of the sovereigns of the individual States, and he has his own ministry. General legislation is, of course, by the Federal Council (Bundesrath) and Imperial Parliament (Reichstag), but a local legislative body (the “laudesausschuss” or provincial committee) attends, as in other States, to local matters, and there is also a kind of upper house, called the council of state. In 1874 the constitution of the Empire was introduced in the Reichsland.
I have, etc.,