Mr. Woodford to Mr. Sherman.

No. 147.]

Sir: In addition to my dispatch No. 143, of this date, I inclose herewith copy of my translation of the Spanish note of February 15 instant, relating to Señor Dupuy de Lôme. My dispatch of to-day, translating such note, omitted the formal introduction and conclusion. This inclosed translation embraces both.

Very respectfully, yours,

Stewart L. Woodford.
[Inclosure in No. 147.]

Señor Gullon to Mr. Woodford.

No. 13.]

Excellency:

My Dear Sir: There is, in fact, as your excellency yourself suspects, an error or misunderstanding, little surprising, in truth, in the references to our brief conversation of Thursday, the 10th instant, to which your excellency alludes in the note which I had the honor to receive yesterday.

After your excellency read to me the telegram transmitted by your Government, and an exact copy of which you were kind enough to leave with me, when you asked me to indicate to you the opinions and intentions of the cabinet of Madrid concerning the facts mentioned in the same dispatch I replied solely that the Spanish Government, like that of Washington, and like your excellency, with entire sincerity lamented the incident which was the cause of our interview; but that, while considering it and measuring its real significance, Señor Dupuy de Lome had already solved it by presenting the resignation of his charge, which the council of ministers had just accepted.

To this clear declaration I understood that I should limit my reply, because, in fact, the Spanish ministry, in accepting the resignation of a functionary whose services they had been utilizing and valuing up to that time, left it perfectly well established that they did not share, and rather, on the contrary, disauthorized, the criticisms tending to offend or censure the chief of a friendly State, although such criticisms had been written within the field of personal friendship, and had reached publicity by artful and criminal means.

This meaning which was involved and could not help being embodied in a resolution of the council of ministers adopted before I had the pleasure of receiving your excellency when the Government of Spain only in a general way, by vague telegraphic reports, learned the sentiments alluded to, is naturally the real meaning which the Spanish ministry, with equal or greater reason, gives to the decision referred to, after reading the words which your excellency copies in Spanish in the first of the two paragraphs which your courteous note transmits to me.

As regards the second paragraph which the same communication of your excellency almost literally reproduces, the Government of which I form a part is profoundly surprised that a private letter, dated, as it appears, on a day relatively [Page 1016] distant, and the opinions of which can not properly be formed now, subsequent to recent agreements, can be invoked now merely on account of the significance of the signature as a germ of suspicion and doubts as opposed to the unanswerable testimony of simultaneous and subsequent facts.

The present Spanish Government, before and after the date indicated, with respect to the new colonial regimen and the projected treaty of commerce gave such evident proofs of its real designs and of its innermost convictions that it does not now consider compatible with its prestige to lay stress upon or to demonstrate anew the truth and sincerity of its purposes and the unstained good faith of its intentions.

Publicly and solemnly it contracted, before the metropolis and its colonies, the responsibility of the political and tariff changes which it has inaugurated in both Antilles, and the natural ends of which in the domestic and international spheres it pursues with that perseverance and that firmness to which from the beginning, it adjusted and which in the future must inspire its entire conduct.

I take advantage, etc.,

Pio Gullon.