File No. 838.51/557
The Minister of Haiti to the Department of State
The Haitian Government thinks that even as provided by the Convention of September 16, 1915, the appointment, as well as the choice, of the Haitian customs employees is exclusively within the province of the President of Haiti, and its opinion is all the more warranted as it imparted it to the American Legation at Port au Prince before the convention was signed. Under the above-mentioned date the Secretary of State for Foreign Relations of Haiti, reminding the Chargé d’Affaires ad interim of the United States of a conference they had the day before, wrote him as follows:—
With the straightforward purpose of avoiding even now any disagreement on some important points, I brought the following to your notice:
- 1st.
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- 2d.
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- 3d.
- As regards the words “collect, receive and apply” in Article II, paragraph 1, etc. * * * the Government understands that what is established by those words is a service for collection (collect, receive) and disbursement “apply”. See Article V. The Receiver General and the assistants and employees who will be appointed by the President of Haiti, on the nomination made by the President of the United States, form a Department for the collection of all customs duties, an office distinct from the customs service properly so-called which has charge of the storage, inspection and assessment of merchandise in accordance with the tariff. As a consequence, the appointment of Haitian employees of that service will be exclusively within the province of the President of Haiti who, however, in response to the views of efficacious assistance entertained by the President of the United States, will make all customs appointments in accord with the Receiver General who, for his part, will have the right to delegate in the customhouses such assistants and employees as he may see fit to select for the supervision of customs business.
The same interpretation was adopted by the Haitian Chamber which appears in the following passage of the interpretative commentary mentioned in the sanctioning decree of November 11, 1915.
The personnel of the customs is Haitian, exclusively and directly appointed by the President of Haiti. The assistants and employees “referred in Article II are the auxiliaries of the Receiver; they do not compose the customs personnel; they are delegated in the customs of the Receivership and supervise customs business. In the Receiver’s office they collect, receive and apply the customs’ duties. They apply them (Apply, to make payments) in the form and manner indicated and set forth in Article V of the convention.”
Nothing is more rational, for what the contracting parties had in mind is cooperation, not supersedence; it is not any upsetting of the administrative and customs laws of Haiti and particularly the doing away with a legal and traditional organization for the advantage of an exceptional institution whose life is limited. It is the institution of a Receiver’s office, including a Receiver General and such assistants and employees as may be deemed necessary to collect, receive and apply all customs duties, the object being not to let those revenues lie “as an incitement for ambitious revolutions to overthrow the Government.”
[Page 363]Such, an institution which rightfully could be considered as being incompatible with the former privilege of the National Bank of the Republic of Haiti could not in any way effect the Haitian customs service whose force never had to collect, receive or apply the said revenues.
That is why Article III of the Convention went no farther than to say: The Government of the Republic of Haiti will provide by law or suitable decree that “payment” of all customs duties shall be made to the Receiver General.
Washington , October 6, 1916.