The Acting Secretary of State to Minister Rockhill.

No. 135.]

Sir: I inclose herewith a copy of a dispatch from the consul general at Hankowa reporting that the magistrate at Siang-tan, Honan, refuses to register a deed of land acquired by the mission of the United Evangelical Church, unless all reference to the nationality of the mission is kept out of the deed.

[Page 279]

Inasmuch as the concluding paragraph of Article XIV of the treaty of October 8, 1903, by which the right to rent and lease, as their own property, buildings and lands in all parts of the Empire, is expressly stipulated in favor of missionary societies of the United States, necessarily implies the establishment of the national and corporate character of those societies as a condition precedent to the stamping of their title deeds by the local authorities, the strange requirement of the magistrate at Siang-tan, that the evidence of the treaty right of such a missionary society to acquire and hold property shall be excluded from the title deeds, becomes in fact a denial of the treaty right, and the substitution of an invalid for a valid act of registration.

It is probable that this point of view may already have occurred to you and been acted upon, but if the case now reported by the consul-general at Hankow should not have been brought to your attention, you will bring the matter to the attention of the Chinese Government, and demand that deeds for American mission property, properly drawn up and valid under our treaties with China, be registered.

I am, sir, etc.,

Robert Bacon.
  1. Not printed.