Bassett to L. Ethéart, August 22, 1872

Mr. Bassett to Mr. Ethéart.

E.

Sir: Your dispatch of the 8th instant, relative to the case of Mr. Charles F. Teel, United States consular agent at Miragoâne, was handed to me on the 10th instant. I have delayed until now a formal acknowledgment of its reception, because I hoped that the more direct method of personal communication with you would result in an early favorable settlement of that case. I regretted, however, to learn from your friendly personal note of Saturday’s date, as well as from the verbal message which you were good enough to send me day before yesterday, that no knowledge of any such settlement had up to that time reached your government. Nevertheless I have received from other sources direct and reliable information that Mr. Teel, because of the insufficiency of the evidence against him, was released from custody by the authorities at Anse-à-Veau, on the 8th instant, after an imprisonment of eighteen days.

There are, however, some facts and principles involved in this case, and some statements in your dispatch, which seem to require thoughtful consideration.

Permit me to observe that if the first paragraph in your dispatch was evoked by any expression in my dispatches to you on this subject, I must have been unfortunate in the language which I employed to convey my meaning. It is certainly in the interest of all governments that offenses against the well-being of society should be everywhere checked, and the United States do not deny the right of every other government to adopt and enforce its own laws in this regard within its own territory. But all civilized states are under the high obligations enjoined, as well as the high benefits conferred, by the law of nations. And every such state has the right to insist that its citizens or subjects sojourning or domiciled in any other state, shall not, in the eye of that high law, be unjustly dealt with. These principles, Mr. Minister, were intended to be kept fully in view in the dispatches which have been addressed to you by this legation in regard to Mr. Teel’s case.

What strikes us unfavorably in the action taken with Mr. Teel is, that his premises were searched; he was himself deprived of his liberty, and subjected to the humiliation of imprisonment on insufficient evidence, without a compliance with the forms required by Haytian law, and with no apparent regard to his official position as a consular officer of the United States.

And first you will allow me to allude to the evidence. You are pleased to admit in your dispatch that “every person who has in hand large sums in (Haytian) paper currency runs the risk of having some bad bills,” and the common notoriety of the assertion that it is not possible to distinguish between the false and the genuine notes of the Haytian currency. But if it is correct, as you inform me, that there are certain sure indices by which the false and the true bills can be distinguished, I think it is to be regretted that this information has not been placed within reach of persons whose legitimate business brings on their hands large sums which may entail upon them the risk of having some bad bills. Mr. Teel ran this risk, and has sadly suffered for it. He had in this currency on his premises at Miragoâne, when they were searched by the authorities there on the 22d ultimo, about $400,000 in his safe, and about $175,000 in a sealed bag, which had just been returned to him from Port au Prince. Now, out of this $575,000 the authorities at Miragoâne pronounced about $25,000, or a little less than 4£ per centum false money. The bag of $175,000, containing the alleged false notes, was, I am reliably informed, examined again at Anse-à-Veau by the authorities there, and only about $11,000, or about 2 per cent, of the whole amount found, in Mr. Teel’s possession, and about 6 per centum of the $175,000, were declared false.

It would thus appear that even the government authorities who scrutinize the curreney are, after all, very much like the rest of us in their liability to misjudge between the false and the true bills, else how out of the same bag of money could $25,000 be pronounced false by one set of officials, and only $11,000 so pronounced by another set of officials? The question might also here arise whether, if one have of false notes 2, or 4, or 6 per centum in a large amount of this currency, he would pass the “reasonable limit” to which you refer. Besides all this, Mr. Teel offered to show by his books the legitimate sources from which he had received in course of regular trade all moneys found in his possession.

Indeed I should certainly be quite willing to leave it to any jury of impartial merchants or other competent persons here, who are accustomed to receiving and giving out in legitimate trade large sums of this currency, to say whether there is in these statements anything to warrant the proceedings taken against Mr. Teel, and I presume it would be of interest to all such persons to know whether it is to be considered that Mr. Teel’s case ought to become a precedent. For my own part, I insist that, in view of all the peculiar circumstances, the proceedings against Mr. Teel were taken without justifiable or probable cause.

Permit me to inquire also whether these proceedings were altogether within the forms and requirements of Haytian law.

Article 16 of the constitution of the Haytian republic expressly declares that an act for the arrest of a person is not valid unless it expresses formally the cause of arrest and the law in execution of which the arrest is ordered, and further, that it is not valid’ unless a copy of the warrant ordering the person’s arrest be left with him. Article 18 of the same instrument declares that no domiciliary visit shall be made except in virtue of the law and in the forms that it prescribes. But in spite of Mr. Teel’s demands in this regard, no warrant for his arrest was shown either to him or to any person connected with him; there was no law cited to him, and no copy of any warrant was left with him. His private dwelling and his store were searched, but no authority was shown for this proceeding. Were there then, Mr. Minister, no infringements upon the fundamental law of Hayti, no violations of it, in the action of the authorities of your government against Mr. Teel?

Again, Mr. Teel’s official position clearly entitles him, under the law of nations, to some special consideration, which was, I am sorry to say, in no way shown him. I venture the opinion that in no well-established country in the world can one who is at the same time a citizen and consular officer of a foreign state be, as Mr. Teel was, summarily arrested and taken to prison. No notice of his arrest and imprisonment was sent to this legation. That is to say, a consular officer of the United States was, upon an inadequate cause, summarily taken from his official functions, and actually confined in prison, without the knowledge of his government. A consular officer of the United States in prison! Is there no apparent disrespect to the good name and good friendship of his Government in such a proceeding as this? I am sure, however, that your government in these proceedings certainly intended no actual disrespect to us.

You inform me that in such a case as Mr. Teel’s the executive could not interfere to secure his release. We have in the United States the same three independent divisions of the Government as those which, you inform, me, exist in Hayti, namely, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. But in all criminal cases the Government is a party, and it seems to me that this must be so everywhere, because crime is everywhere a public offense. If therefore the executive, from international or other considerations, desires proceedings to be discontinued in a criminal case, it can at any proper stage order to be entered a nolle prosequi. It is indeed singular if such a process is unknown here.

It is, perhaps, to be regretted that the great safeguards thrown around personal security and individual liberty by American and English law, the writ of habeas corpus and the system of recognizance or bail, are not incorporated in your judicial system. One result of a judicial system without these great safeguards is, that summary “precautionary arrests” and the “making sure of the person,” in the sense in which you use these terms in your dispatch, may occur to the very great injury of innocent parties. But to regulate all such questions is the unquestioned concern of every independent state. We claim no right whatever, and certainly do not propose, to interfere with it in Hayti.

It only remains for me to say that, in my opinion, a very grave wrong has been committed in the proceedings of the authorities of your government against Mr. Teel, and that duty obliges me to reiterate to you that I hold your government responsible for all damage and injury done to him by these proceedings.

I avail myself, Mr. Minister, of this occasion to renew to you the assurance of my very high consideration.