The Acting Secretary of State to Minister Leishman.
Washington, April 27, 1905.
Sir: The Department has received your very interesting dispatch, No. 1031, of the 6th instant, touching the proposed increase in the Turkish customs rate from 8 to 11 per cent.
You are correct in your impression that the Department would not under ordinary circumstances object to a reasonable increase in the import duties into Turkey. In view, however, of the fact which you report that in the negotiations with the European powers they have all demanded concessions of one kind or another as the price of their consent to the proposed increase, it would seem that the United States may also properly demand adequate compensation for its assent to the measure in question.
In response to your suggestion that you might possibly be able to facilitate the execution of the school settlement and other pending questions by temporarily withholding consent to the proposed measure if this government were willing to accept the increase and if the matter were left entirely in the hands of the legation, the Department authorizes you to give your consent thereto upon condition of the adjustment along the lines indicated, and in the largest measure that may be found practicable, of the pending just claims of the United States against the Ottoman Government.
[Page 878]The Department has not been approached upon this subject by the Turkish minister at this capital.
I am, etc.,