Gosheki to Henderson, August 11, 1874

Gosheki to Mr. Henderson.

Sir: I have been informed that the Hon. Charles W. Le Gendre, a citizen of the United States, who was engaged by the Japanese government, through the United States minister in Japan, in December, 1872, in conformity with the terms of article 10 of the treaty of 1858 between Japan and the United States, and now His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s special commissioner in China, was, on the 6th day of August, 1874, forcibly taken before your court by United States marines, landed for that purpose from the United States steamship Yantic, upon unknown charges, and in virtue of a warrant issued by you while he was in Amoy on his way to Foo-Chow and Shanghai on business connected with his mission; that on the day following the Hon. Charles W. Le Gendre was against his will again brought before your conrt; that he is now forcibly detained by you at this port and rendered unable to discharge the duties intrusted to him by His Imperial Japanese Majesty; that he has already notified you that he yielded only to force, which he was unable to resist, in suffering the violence and detention to which he is now being subjected in Amoy; and that he has strongly protested against these proceedings:

Now, therefore, I, Gosheki, His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s acting consul at Amoy, find it my duty to myself to protest, which I hereby do, in the most formal and solemn manner, against this act of violence toward His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s special commissioner as being a manifest infraction of the rights of nations, and contrary to the privileges and immunities which public commissioners enjoy in civilized countries.

I have, &c.,