[Enclosure No. 4.], April 20, 1863.

[Enclosure No. 4.]

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch dated the 18th instant, which reached me at a late hour the same evening.

I hasten in the first place to express the hope that you are recovering from the indisposition from which I was sorry to find you were suffering when you wrote.

Allow me to assure you that I have read with much attention the observations you have addressed to me respecting the serious situation of affairs at present existing between the government of her Britannic Majesty and the government of this country.

Before entering upon the particular points of your despatch, I must beg leave to remind you that in the matters at present at issue, I am acting under explicit instructions which have been furnished to me by my government after due consideration of all the contingent circumstances which might attend a peremptory demand for reparation arising out of unrequited outrages committed upon British subjects.

The execution of those instructions is, therefore, on my part a paramount and imperative duty.

I would next take leave to say that the general tenor of your views regarding the present situation of affairs, though doubtless applicable and just when regarded in the sole light in which you have presented them, namely, that of commercial interests—those views, in my humble opinion, are wholly inapplicable when weighed in the balance against the offended dignity of a great nation.

No nation more frankly, loyally, and assiduously watches over, and administers to, the interests of its subjects abroad and at home than Great Britain; but there is a point when the absolute necessity for punishing the defiant and offensive course often pursued by semi-barbarous states must and should override and suspend all such considerations.

Entertaining these sentiments, which I had hoped were equally participated by yourself, I had come to the conclusion that, had you deemed it to be your duty to take a friendly or intervening part at all in the preliminary stages of the existing differences, you would have joined your remonstrances with my own addressed to the offending government of Japan, with a view of discouraging its unwarantable course of action.

But so far from there existing any perceptible results out of the identity of interests, as you justly observe should exist, between the subjects of her Britannic Majesty and citizens of the United States in Japan, tending to demonstrate to the Japanese especially, in the present critical situation of affairs, a mutual sympathy between the subjects and citizens of two nations having the largest commercial interests in this country, it is, on the contrary, a most regretable and notable fact that in this serious crisis, verging towards a rupture of relations and hostilities, the Japanese government actually derive their supply of arms through the active agency of merchants and traders of the United States established in this country.

Current reports proclaim a still more active agency on the part of United States citizens in behalf of Japanese—preparations for resistance, which, if they were subjected to proof, would ill accord with the spirit of the conjoint action and policy suggested by Mr. Seward to the British representative at Washington in December, 1861, and communicated to her Britannic Majesty’s government, on which occasion he specially proposed that the powers which had treaties with Japan should make a joint demonstration in support of their rights.

The right which her Majesty’s government at present most justly insist upon is that of obtaining reparation and redress for barbarous outrages committed upon British subjects, and all appeals for which have hitherto been treated with indifference and disregard.

In conclusion, permit me, with reference to that part of your despatch in which you refer to the circumstances of my having omitted to request your presence at a meeting which took place at my residence on the 16th instant, to offer to you the following explanations:

In the present condition of affairs, the expediency of inviting the authorities to elicit their views upon some technical points, suddenly arose, and was speedily carried out. The fact of your residence at Yedo would forbid my entertaining the hope that you could respond to such an invitation under two or three days.

Secondly, As I had not had the honor of receiving any acknowledgment or communication from you, consequent upon my first circular communication of the 7th instant, I had no reason to suppose you desired to take a direct part in an incidental discussion of minor importance. And,

Thirdly, That the sole object of the meeting at my house on the 16th instant, and in which I took no part beyond recording the decision arrived at, was to elicit the professional opinion of naval officers as to the means existing for the protection of this settlement. Had, therefore, a ship-of-war of the United States been in port, her commander would unquestionably have been invited to attend.

I trust these reasons for my apparent omission may be deemed by you to be sufficient. And it only remains for me to add that, should it happen in the progress of passing events that a meeting of my colleagues, the diplomatic agents of the treaty powers, appears desirable, I shall not fail to communicate the same to you, although, for the reason first assigned, such may be only a formality.

I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient, humble servant,