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fied copy of the decree of court by which he was declared to be a citizen. The minister is also required to transmit to the Department at the close of each quarter a statement of the evidence on which all passports were issued.

In addition, the forms now in use require that the applicant shall state when and where he was naturalized, with the words following: "as shown by the accompanying certificate of naturalization."

It thus appears that the certificate of naturalization should accompany the duplicate application for passports.

If this means that the original certificate of naturalization shall accompany each application, it is plainly impracticable.

Such certificate could only thus be once used and would probably reach the applicant again after it had been forwarded to the Department. He should have the right to retain the original in his own possession.

I have therefore instructed Mr. Crowell, the consul at Amoy, who bas a case in point, that he must require the applicant to exhibit to him the original or a certified copy of the decree of naturalization, and must forward to the legation two copies of such decree or certified copy, with his own certificate that the copies so forwarded are full, true, and correct.

The following form of certificate has been sent him for use: CONSULATE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, CHINA. I hereby certify that to me well known to be the identical person that he claims to be, this day exhibited to me the original (or a certified copy) of the decree of court by which he was declared to be a citizen of the United States, and the above and foregoing is a full, true, and correct copy of the said decree, Witness my hand and seal of the said consulate this

day of

Consul.

I renew my recommendation that a circular embodying as full information as possible as to the mode of applying for passports be prepared and sent to all the consuls in China.

In spite of all the instructions that this legation can issue, and in spite of my having been compelled to return many passport applications which were defective, they still frequently come to this legation.

Such a circular is absolutely demanded, owing to the silence of the Consular Regulations as to the peculiarities on the subject existing in China.

I do not issue it myself, because I have no authority to overrule the Department's order that travel certificates shall run a year, instead of running for the proposed trip only, as they ought to do.

This is the first application that I have had from a naturalized Chinaman; but there may be others, and this class will bring nothing but trouble to the United States authorities in China. For these reasons I attach some importance to the subject.

I have, etc.,

CHARLES DENBY.

No. 1068.]

Mr. Denby to Mr. Blaine.

LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, Peking, March 18, 1890. (Received May 5.) SIR: I have the honor to inform you that a Chinese subject, having the English name of Alvin F. Howe, applied to me to-day for information as to the mode by which he can gain access to the United States.

He is a Christian, a physician by profession, and an employé of the Methodist mission at Peking. He desires to complete his medical studies in the United States under the patronage of the Methodist Board of Missions. He speaks English very well, and is in all respects repu table. It is likely that his board will apply to you to facilitate his landing in the United States. To enable you to come to a decision in his case, I make a few observations touching the general subject, as well as this particular case.

I have never made but one application to the yamên for a certificate for a Chinese subject who desired to go to the United States. The yamên's reply to that application will be found at page 223, Foreign Relations of 1887. The yamên therein states that it has never issued such a certificate, and, impliedly, it grants my request as a compliment to me. The question whether the yamên should issue certificates, or whether the local authorities should issue them, is held up for future determination. The law on this subject will be found at page 116, United States Statutes at Large, 1883-1885, vol. 23. It will be seen by reference to it that, taking into consideration the peculiar language of China, its form of government, its immense population, the general ignorance of foreign laws and customs, the requirements of the statute are almost impossible of performance. According to the law, the certificate must be issued by the Chinese Government, must be in English, and must cover an accurate history of the applicant. I presume that no certificate complying with these conditions has ever been issued by the Chinese Government. I have often wondered how, without such certificate, Chinese subjects ever gained the right to land in the United States. I have stated to Dr. Howe and his friends here that I deemed it inadvisable to apply to the Imperial Government for the certificate described in the statute of 1884. Some of the reasons why I do not feel inclined to raise the question now are the following: The danger that since the passage of the "Scott law" the yamên would refuse to act, the liability of precipitating a discussion of the whole Chinese question, a disinclination on my part to embark in such a discussion without instructions from you, and the feasibility, as I conceive, of accomplishing the desired purpose through the local authorities. I take it that the "Government of China" does not necessarily mean the Imperial Government, but may be construed to mean a local official, such as a taotai, who represents the Government in the district where the applicant resides.

It would evidently be impracticable to adopt any other interpretation. I have therefore advised Dr. Howe to proceed to Shanghai, near which place he resides, and secure a certificate from the taotai, and have it viséed, as required by law, by the consul-general. If you construe the law differently, and hold that the certificates provided for by the act of 1884 must be issued by the Imperial Government at Peking, I will have time to so inform Dr. Howe, who will not leave until July. If it is your desire that I shall apply to the yamên to frame definite rules under which Chinese subjects can go to the United States, I will take up that subject.

FR 90-12

While it must be conceded that the whole question is involved in doubt, and that, in the course of events, some definite solution must be arrived at, still I am inclined to favor the policy of "laissez aller," and to go slowly, and to look to precedent rather than to sudden and positive decisions.

I have, etc.,

CHARLES DENBY,

Mr. Blaine to Mr. Denby.

No. 510.]

:

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,
Washington, March 24, 1890.

SIR Referring to your No. 988 of the 31st of October last, in relation to the claim of Louis McCaslin for injuries sustained by him in consequence of the closing of the bridge at Ningpo, on April 29, 1888, I have to inform you that the Department has received from Mr. Pettus, United States consul at that place, a dispatch bearing date the 12th ultimo, in which he transmits copies of his correspondence with yourself and the taotai and a report of the evidence in the case.

The purpose of the new investigation of the matter by Mr. Pettus and the taotai was to take the evidence of the native and the foreign witnesses jointly. Each side had previously examined its own witnesses separately, and for this reason each refused to accept the testimony taken by the other. It thus became necessary, in order to secure a common ground for discussion, to have all the testimony taken jointly by representatives of the United States and China. This point is made clear by the correspondence in the case and by your instructions to Mr. Pettus. The only explanation of his omission to produce his witnesses is found in the response of the taotai to his inquiry whether the foreign witnesses should be called. "If," said Mr. Pettus, in his letter to the taotai of April 15, 1889, "you also wish that the foreign witnesses be called in again and their evidence retaken, I can have them summoned for the date decided upon." In his letter of the 1st of May, 1889, the taotai, replying to Mr. Pettus's inquiry, said: "I beg to state you must suit yourself about the foreign witnesses." From this Mr. Pettus inferred, and seems to have had good ground to infer, that the presence and reëxamination of the foreign witnesses would not be required.

The natural construction of the taotai's language would be that if Mr. Pettus desired to reëxamine his witnesses for the purpose of elicit ing new evidence, he would be at liberty to do so, but that, if he preferred, he might let the claimant's case rest on the evidence already taken. When, however, the taotai had examined the native witnesses, he closed the case, refusing to consider the evidence of the foreign witnesses previously taken, and rendered a decision against the claimant. The first and only object of the reëxamination of the case was thus completely defeated by a misunderstanding, for which the taotai was certainly largely responsible and of which he took advantage. It can not be said that there has been any joint investigation of the case in the sense in which that term was understood by yourself and the imperial authorities when Mr. Pettus and Taotai Nu were respectively instructed to proceed in the reëxamination of the matter.

The Imperial Government should not permit a fair and just consideration of the case to be prevented by such a misunderstanding between

the consul and the taotai as that which has been described, or permit an adverse judgment of so doubtful a character to stand. You are instracted to communicate these views to the Imperial Government.

I am, etc.,

Mr. Blaine to Mr. Denby.

JAMES G. BLAINE.

No. 512.]

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,
Washington, April 12, 1890.

SIR: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your No. 1045 of the 4th of February last, in relation to the Chi-nan-fu land case and transmitting copy of a communication to you from the Presbyterian mission on the same subject of January 10, 1890.

The letter from the mission is a somewhat exhaustive statement of the position of its members on the question of an implied relinquishment by them of their claim to the original suburban house lot bought by Mr. Reid, and as such casts new light upon the general subject. Their understanding appears to have been sufficiently clear that the purchase of the country tract by Dr. Coltman and the ratification of its sale by the Chinese authorities was entirely independent of the original land transaction in the suburbs. The idea that the tract se cured by Dr. Coltman was to be taken in lieu of the lot contracted for by Mr. Reid would appear with some degree of probability to have originated in the minds of the members of the Tsung-li yamên, although the mission admits that several of its members feared or believed personally that such might be the final result of the second nego tiation, as the simplest means at the command of the local authorities of allaying popular excitement.

So far as your misconception of the position of the mission as a body on this question is concerned, it is not at all plain that any blame therefor should attach either to you or to them in view of the fact that Mr. Reid and Dr. Coltman had intervened by personal letters for your information, and in consideration of the lines laid down by the Tsung-li yamên in its communications to you. At the same time, it would be hardly just that the mission should suffer in consequence of the sepa rate and individual acts of one or two of its members not concurred in by all or by a majority.

Popular prejudice at Chi-nan-fu appears to render it impracticable for Mr. Reid to pursue further his claim upon his contract for the original suburban lot; but the claim that another house lot in another part of the suburbs should be procured in lieu of the original lot ought not to be lightly foregone if there seems to be any chance of its being successfully maintained without friction or unpleasant complications.

Your own suggestions, however, that the missionaries surrender the deed of the original lot, recover the purchase money, and undertake to secure another such lot as a movement entirely new and independent of the original contract is deemed preferable, as being in all probability the least open to objection by the local authorities, and provided, of course, the mission can be induced to accept that solution of the difficulty before any attempt is made to obtain an exchange at the hands of the yamên; and provided, further, that assurance can be obtained before the surrender of the old lot that no impediment will be thrown in the way of the acquisition of a new one of equivalent value.

In either event it is desired that you afford the mission such assistance as may be properly in your power to sustain the contention that the first land question is not to be considered as having been settled by the grant of the country tract per se, as assumed by the yamên, and that, using your discretion in the method of treating the matter, you endeavor to bring the views of the mission and your own on this subject into harmony, in order that you may proceed to a just termination of the existing differences between the mission and the authorities, under the provisions of the treaty of 1844 with China, as adverted to by text in my number 495 of January 31 last.

I am, etc.,

Mr. Blaine to Mr. Denby.

JAMES G. BLAINE.

No. 517.]

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,
Washington, April 18, 1890.

SIR: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your No. 1049, of February 9 last, with inclosures, reporting action by you in the case of the claim of Louis McCaslin on account of injuries suffered by him in consequence of the closing of the bridge at Ningpo, on April 29, 1888, and from which it appears that you have in the main anticipated the Depart ment's instruction No. 510 on the subject.

Reiterating the views expressed in that instruction, it is desired that you present the case to the Imperial Chinese Government de novo and request a reopening thereof as by explicit direction of this Government, upon the ground that the course of Mr. Pettus in the so-called joint investigation before the taotai of Ningpo was, in the opinion of this Government, justified by the ambiguity of that officer's answer to the consul's question as to the necessity for the presence of the plaintiff's witnesses in court for the purpose of giving oral testimony for Mr. McCaslin. The advantage promptly taken of that ambiguity by the taotai, notwithstanding the fact that he was alone responsible for it, in his reception of the evidence previously given in the plaintiff's behalf, is deemed by this Government to fully sustain its claim that the case shall receive, in fact, the joint hearing which was agreed upon.

The facts in the case seem to have been fully reported to the Department by yourself and Mr. Pettus, and it does not appear from anything submitted here that blame can attach to Mr. Pettus in any degree for the apparently total miscarriage of justice, or that any reason can be assigned to him for the failure to hold a joint investigation as ordered by the yamên.

The point should be insisted upon that this Government can not regard the last hearing of the case by the taotai as a "joint investigation" even by implication, and that the consul can not be permitted to be called to account for his most natural construction of the taotai's language: "I beg to state you must suit yourself about the foreign wit nesses." Unless that sentence was intended to convey the idea that the presence and oral repetition of the testimony of the foreign witnesses already on file in writing would not be required by the taotai, it is not clear what idea it was meant to express.

After considerable correspondence between yourself and the yamên, a joint investigation was ordered as an admission by the Imperial Government that the separate hearings already had were found incapable

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