Morgan to Ignacio Mariscal, April 11, 1883

Mr. Morgan to Mr. Mariscal.

Sir: I duly communicated to the Department of State at Washington my note to your excellency of the 15th February last and your excellency’s note to me of the 3d March, relating to the claim for compensation presented against your excellency’s Government by the owners of the American schooner Daylight, for the sinking of that vessel in the port of Tampico by the Mexican gunboat Independencia.

Your excellency declined, as you will remember, to consider the claim on two grounds—

• Because if the captain of the schooner thinks that the responsibility of the collision rests upon the Mexican Government, he should apply directly to the department of war and marine for redress.
• If that department denies its responsibility, you (I) know that in cases of maritime disaster, giving rise to controversies between parties, it is for the tribunals of the country having jurisdiction over the waters where the disaster occurred to declare whether the disaster occurred through neglect or not, and upon whom the responsibility falls, and therefore the claim cannot, at the present stage thereof, be considered diplomatically.

My Government is. at a loss to understand the first point assumed by your excellency, as, by the custom of nations, a complaint of an alien, when not cognizable by the courts of law, can only be presented in the mode recognized by diplomatic usage, through the proper officers of his own Government, and he is not permitted to appeal directly to any of the political departments of the Government against whom the complaint is made.

The propriety and the reasons for this course are so apparent and are so well known to your excellency that my Government presumes that there is some peculiar feature in the administrative powers of the Mexican department of war and marine of which my Government is ignorant which caused your excellency’s suggestion, which, on its face, does not seem to be in harmony with diplomatic usage and precedents.

If your excellency’s second point is intended to intimate that an alien may proceed in the courts of Mexico against a national vessel in the usual form prescribed for suits against private vessels owned by individuals, not used for the national protection but in the peaceful operations of commerce, my Government may be disposed to concede that the owner of the Daylight must in this, as in other cases of collision, first exhaust his judicial remedy, after which the case might, or might not, become a proper one for diplomatic representations. My Government, however, considers that your excellency’s statement is not so explicit as to leave the subject entirely without doubt, and as such a power in an individual to proceed at law against a national vessel of war does not exist in the United States, nor, so far as is known, elsewhere, unless in Mexico, my Government would be glad to receive further information on the subject, and this information I have been instructed to ask from your excellency.

I renew, &c.,