File No. 5869/224.
The French Chargé to the Secretary of State.
Manchester, Mass., August 10, 1909.
Mr. Secretary of State: In a letter under date of August 7 Your Excellency kindly informed me under what conditions the Federal [Page 250] Congress had decided to terminate the commercial conventions concluded by the United States with various powers. According to what Your Excellency was pleased to announce to me, the agreements existing between our two countries, and which were signed on May 28, 1898, August 20, 1902, and January 28, 1908, are to terminate on October 31 next.
The French Government having learned of this decision at the same time that it received knowledge of those concerning other countries with which the United States were likewise bound by commercial conventions, the minister of foreign affairs has asked me to make the following representations to Your Excellency:
Mr. St. Pichon can not explain the reason of the differential treatment which is being imposed on France.
Mr. Jusserand represented to the Federal Government that as our conventions did not contain any dissolving clause they were of a permanent nature, and that in order to break them at any time an understanding at least was necessary.
Your Excellency replied to the French ambassador that none of the conventions of this class could survive the law by virtue of which it had been concluded, and that if by a decision which a vote of Congress would have to render legal an extension were granted it would be the same for all.
Your Excellency added that the periods of six months or one year prescribed in several conventions could not at any rate by themselves have the effect of prolonging these acts beyond the Dingley law, and that these periods could only refer to denunciations of conventions during the then undetermined continuance of said law.
Your Excellency moreover gave it to be understood on several occasion that no differential treatment should be applied to any one in any event. It is really impossible to understand how, when extensions were recognized as possible, an arbitrarily curtailed one should be granted in the case of the Franco-American convention, while longer ones were granted to others.
There was nothing to lead the negotiators of 1898, 1902, and 1908 to believe that in signing agreements in which they reserved no right to abrogate them, at least as long as the Dingley law should last, they would place their country in a worse situation than by reserving such right. I have received orders to dwell most particularly on this point, which is considered very important by the French Government.
On the other hand, the American Government can not but be aware that in thus abrogating of its own accord and without any understanding with the French Government a system which was the result of conferences and a formal understanding, it not only strikes a blow at French products, but also replaces American goods under the action of the laws from which these conventions had removed them. It does not seem that American commerce has any more interest than ours in making such a hasty change.
In view of the intense excitement which so grave a decision can not fail to cause in France, since it subjects our commerce to the most disadvantageous differential treatment of those that have been provided by the new measures, the minister of foreign affairs requests me to ask Your Excellency, and I should be obliged to you to let me [Page 251] know, what are the reasons that may explain an attitude so different from that which you yourself have repeatedly manifested so plainly.
Please accept, etc.,