E. D. Bassett to Monsieur Excellent, June 26, 1875

Mr. Bassett to Mr. Excellent.

Mr. Minister: In response to my note of the 3d ultimo, relative to the surrounding of my official residence by numerous armed men in the service of your government, you wrote me on the 6th ultimo, expressing regret that any lack of the respect due to my official character had been shown to me, or to members of my household, by persons in your government’s employ, and assuring me that all the regard to which I and those connected with me are entitled would be strictly observed. But I have now to represent to you that my official residence is still, and for the past seven weeks and more has been, constantly surrounded by hundreds of armed men; that, in consequence, the free ingress and egress of persons with whom I have a right to maintain freedom of communication are impeded; that I have been, in other words, cut off from my rights of free and customary communication with my friends, citizens, my fellow-countrymen, other foreigners, and even my colleagues in this community; that members of my household are shut out from their rightful freedom; kept under constant apprehension, inquietude, and terror, from the presence, not to say the menaces, of armed men in the service of your government; that I and my household are, and for weeks have been, regularly prevented from repose and quiet at night by the continued shouting of these armed men under government orders; that my own personal freedom within my own official domicile is exercised only under constant apprehension of personal insecurity; and that, in short, Mr. Minister my official privileges and immunities, which I must insist upon and maintain, are infringed upon and jeopardized in many ways by the unfriendly presence of hundreds of armed men, posted under the orders of your government in an unfriendly attitude on the very limit of the official residence of a foreign minister.

I have not disputed, and do not here dispute, the right of your government to exercise its own rightful measures of police within its own jurisdiction; only I venture to say that they ought to be exercised in such a way as not to become a marked trespass upon the rights and immunities of foreign ministers.

When you receive a foreign minister, especially under the treaty guarantees given to the Government of the United States, you give to that minister and to his government a full assurance of all the rights, immunities, privileges, and courtesies accorded by the law of nations to diplomatic representatives everywhere. Your surrounding of my official residence in the manner described has come to be a violation of this assurance, a menace, an infringement upon my rights, immunities, and privileges, since in consequence of it, as already stated, no one with whom I have a right to maintain personal or other relations, is safe from annoyance and danger in coming to or departing from my said residence, and since, also, I and those connected with me are steadily inquieted in our security, and exposed at least to serious accident at any moment therefrom and the American minister is, in fact, almost a prisoner in his official domicile. This state of affairs, the first of like character that has ever been ventured upon in the history of this country, certainly cannot be allowed to continue forever, as you will readily admit.

I will not further enlarge upon the unpleasant subject. I have already sufficiently spoken of it to yourself and your colleagues in conversation with you and them. But I have now the honor to inform you that the matter, unless it be at once alleviated or abated, must be made the subject of unfavorable representation to the Government of the United States, and that your government will in any event be held responsible for any accident or other injurious circumstance which may grow or may already have grown out of the menace now kept up in so disagreeable a manner and for so long a time over the official residence of the American minister. If I have not made to you before this date the foregoing representation, it is not because I have not been aware of the trespass upon my immunities, but because I have steadily hoped that patience on my part and the use of ray friendly good offices, which unfortunately seem to have been quite misunderstood, might save me from the necessity of it.

I am, Mr. Minister, your obedient servant,