Ambassador Thompson to the Secretary of State.
Mexico, May 25, 1906.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the department’s instruction No. 30, dated the 17th instant, and of its inclosures, in which reference is made to the department’s instruction No. 97, of February 6 last, directing Mr. McCreery to make informal inquiry as to whether certain bonds issued by the Mexican Empire in 1864 are redeemable by the Mexican treasury. I have been unable to find the latter instruction among the records of the embassy, and therefore my reply shall only treat the matter as presented in your No. 30.
As stated in Mr. Luengas’s letter to Mr. Moeskes (Exhibit A, in the above-mentioned instruction), “the Mexican Government has never recognized the debts of the so-called Empire;” the latter never was recognized either by the Government of the United States, and it is well known that the Government of the Republic, under President Juarez, though weakened and forced to move from one place to the other by the imperial army, never did cease to exist during the whole reign of Maximilian. If the bonds in question are “refund bonds,” issued by the Empire in recognition of a debt of 1851, the same very likely show the date of their redemption. Moreover, if it be true, as stated by Mr. Moeskes in his letter of the 7th instant to Mr. Luengas, that these bonds pertain to a series for which the Government of Mexico issued a series of “3 per cent consolidated bonds of A. D. 1886” it seems to me that the same ought to have been presented in time for their conversion. The information contained in the documents transmitted to me with the department’s instruction is indefinite; therefore I would suggest that the holders of these bonds furnish a better description of the same, giving, if possible, the original loan to which they refer and all the details they may be able to obtain from the document itself (copy of the bond); and if Mr. Luengas has answered Mr. Moeskes’s letter of the 7th instant, I would also like to have a copy of his reply, in order that I may locate the law upon which his decision may be based.
I have, etc.,