File No. 17900/4.
The Panaman Minister to the Secretary of State.
Washington, February 8, 1909.
Excellency: Under instructions from his excellency the secretary of foreign affairs of my Government and pursuant to resolutions unanimously adopted by the National Assembly of the Republic of Panama on the 1st instant, I am directed to call the attention of your excellency’s Government to two public addresses delivered in the House of Representatives of your National Congress by one of its Members on the 26th and 29th days of January last, which addresses constitute a direct attack upon the President of my country, as well as upon the fair name and administration of the Republic of Panama, and to convey to your excellency the solemn and emphatic protest of my Government against said attacks and this violation of international courtesy.
My Government and its people justly and naturally resent the baseless and unwarranted attacks upon their President contained in these public and official speeches of a member of your Government delivered in the National Congress of the United States of America. It is unnecessary for me to say to your excellency that through years of intimacy and association my countrymen have the most implicit faith in the personal integrity, official uprightness, and disinterested patriotism of their present honored President.
My Government and its people also feel that they have additional cause for exception by reason of the publication of the speeches referred to in the official organ of your excellency’s Government, the Congressional Record, by which, in addition to their appearance in [Page 471] the public press, official circulation has been given to these wholly baseless and highly offensive statements, and they have been communicated to the nations of the world with apparently official sanction, to the great humiliation of my Government and its people.
It is with surprise that my Government also notes that measures solely concerning the Republic of Panama and pending before its legislative body were at the same time made the subject of official discussion and opprobrious criticism in a legislative body of your excellency’s Government, and this, too, with the declared purpose of inducing action by the House of Representatives of the United States, designed to influence the action of the National Assembly of my country. My Government further deplores the adverse comments contained in said official addresses of said Member of the House of Representatives upon the treaties pending between the United States, Panama, and Colombia which were concluded on January 9 last, and which criticisms tend to affect their ultimate ratification.
The Republic of Panama is bound to that of your excellency, not only by ties of fraternity and by fervid admiration for its institutions, but also by the inseparable bond of a common interest in the Panama Canal located within its boundaries, and it is a source of profound regret to my Government and myself that occasion has arisen for calling attention to the occurrences to which I have referred, but their character is so extraordinary that even the warm devotion of my country to that of your excellency does not permit my Government to disregard them.
Your excellency will note that I am instructed to include in the protest the counsel of this legation and fiscal commissioner of Panama in this country. I have not referred to him in the foregoing protest, solely in deference to his request that I refrain from so doing, since he, as a citizen of the United States, does not desire that any foreign Government should intervene in his behalf. I should, however, fail in my duty if I did not express the perfect confidence of my Government and people in his personal integrity and official uprightness, and, in the name of my Government, absolutely deny the truth of any of the injurious statements in the addresses to which I have referred, concerning his relations or transactions with my Government or any member of it.
In conclusion, I beg to submit to your excellency, with this letter of protest, extract of a cablegram of instructions from his excellency the minister of foreign affairs of my Government and the text of the resolution before mentioned as adopted by the National Assembly of the Republic of Panama on the 1st instant, and copies of the Congressional Record containing the speeches and remarks to which I have referred, and finally I have the honor to request of your excellency’s Government such disavowal of the offensive remarks, concerning the President of the Republic of Panama, as may be deemed just and commensurate with the deep and unwarranted injury inflicted on His Excellency Sr. José Domingo de Obaldía, President of the Republic of Panama.
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