Foreign Office to Otin, October 22, 1873
Foreign Office to Mr. Otin.
[Official caveat of Chinese.]
Prince Kung and the members of the Yamun herewith send a reply.
On the 15th instant, we had the honor to receive a note from your excellency, stating that, as our dispatch of the 13th instant was openly at variance with the agreement arrived at in the Russian legation, you could no longer enter into official transactions with us, and that you had, therefore, requested the dean of the diplomatic body to take charge of Spanish affairs.
On the same day we also received a dispatch from M. de Holleben, German chargé d’affaires, requesting us to address him, until further notice, on any questions regarding Spanish affairs.
As we were, however, inclined to suppose that some misunderstanding on your excellency’s part must be at the bottom of all this, we in the first place addressed to you our letter of the 19th instant. But as we received the next day another letter from the German chargé d’affaires, in which he told us that you had put our dispatch to you into his hands; that he and you had jointly opened and read it, and had then requested him to inform us that the reason why you had handed over the affairs of the Spanish legation to the dean of the diplomatic body was neither because you were in a great hurry to go back to Spain, nor because yon cherished a distrust of us, but simply because you had deemed it to be useless to continue official transactions with us after we, in our dispatch of the 13th instant, had flatly declined the propositions which you had submitted to us.
We now beg to say, with regard to your excellency’s dispatch of the 15th instant, that, though you may choose to make use of such phraseology, we may, on our part, assert that, in all our relations with any foreign power, we have never entertained sentiments of this kind.
Since you began to discharge the duties of acting minister for Spain, we have always treated you with all the respect due to a minister plenipotentiary; and as now M. de Holleben tells us in his note that you do not cherish a distrust of us, this would seem to prove that you are yourself also aware that we have really always treated you with the respect due to a minister plenipotentiary, and that we have never been guilty of any discourtesy toward you.
Referring to our dispatch of the 13th of October, we beg to observe that, just because Spain and China have been on friendly terms for so many years, we thought it to be our duty in this, as in all other matters, to state our candid opinions fully, according to the actual circumstances, and beg you, therefore, to take this into mature consideration.
His Excellency F. Otin, Spanish Chargé d’Affaires.