No. 23., May 1, 1871.

No. 23.

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 24th ultimo, in reference to the Dolores Ugarte. I should have responded to it immediately, but serious indisposition entirely prevented my doing so.

You will please convey my thanks to his excellency the governor for accepting my letter No. 18 as official, notwithstanding I have not an exequatur to the colonial government of Macao and Timor. I had anticipated this courtesy, considering the cordial relations happily subsisting between Portugal and the United States.

You inform me that his excellency has been pleased to call a syndicancia to make inquiry as to the facts charged against the Dolores Ugarte, and you ask me to furnish you with “documents or declarations” to serve as a “legal basis” to warrant inquiry. His excellency is aware that acts of state, on international questions, are not conducted as proceedings in courts of judicature, but acting on the broader and simpler principle of common repute, one nation, through its agents, may notify another of a breach of international law without thereby assuming to produce evidence in detail to sustain its allegations. His excellency must well know that the crimes on board the Dolores Ugarte having come to light at Honolulu, I could not have “documents or declarations” in my possession at present, but if the man who was then captain of the ship will give competent hail to answer for his acts, I will forward, his excellency’s request to the State Department of my Government, and I doubt not that in the interest of humanity our consul at Honolulu will be directed to obtain and forward such evidence as may, at this distance of time, he procurable.

If I am not misinformed, his excellency has received from Portugal a remonstrance on the cooly trade addressed to her by a power entitled to the highest consideration. I have reason to know that it was the atrocities on board the Dolores Ugarte, as discovered at Honolulu and detailed in the Advertiser, reprinted in the Overland China Mail, November 15, 1870, a copy of which I inclose, that occasioned that remonstrance.

The purpose of my official No. 18 was not to ask for the legal trial, conviction, and judicial punishment of the criminals. My object was internationally to ask his excellency the governor and council, as the executive at Macao, as an act of state, to adhere to the spirit of treaties, and (not now insisting that the coolie traffic as conducted from every port in China is always in breach of treaties abolishing the slave trade) to submit that when coolies are taken from Macao, as elsewhere, under such circumstances as are judicially proved on behalf of the French consul in the Hong-Kong courts to have existed in the case of the Nouvelle Penelope, and also where such cruelties as were perpetrated on board the Dolores Ugarte are shown to exist by the only evidence immediately available, i e., the newspaper reports, that then treaty obligations arise internationally, and that in such cases his excellency, in his own jurisdiction, unless on his own responsibility he denies the facts, is, under treaty stipulations, bound to prevent the possibility of the recurrence of the breach of treaty obligations on board such ships, unless he is restrained by positive law in force in Macao, obliging him to allow any and all ships to take in a cargo of coolies.

The atrocities on board the Frederic gave rise to a law in Hong-Kong, giving the entire uncontrolled discretion to the governor, to allow or disallow coolie emigration on board every ship.

This has been, as I understand, always the law at Macao, under which, as I learn, his excellency at one time prohibited all coolie emigration from that colony.

In your letter you state that, under the orders of your government, ships under the San Salvador flag are prohibited from carrying coolies. If I rightly understand that letter, the Dolores Ugarte being under that flag, will not be permitted to carry coolies. You notice two other grounds for such prohibition, viz, that San Salvador has no treaty with China, and that she is not a country to which coolies emigrate. I shall feel obliged, therefore, by your informing me that his excellency has the power, by local law, to prohibit the Dolores Ugarte from loading coolies at Macao, and that, in fact, on the two other grounds she comes within the prohibition.

Assuming that I shall receive such assurance, I will make no further remarks on this subject.

Concerning the system of Chinese emigration as conducted at Macao, I am free to say the evidence given in the Nouvelle Penelope case compels me to regard it with very great distrust; but inasmuch as I am to make a report on Chinese coolie emigration to my Government, and having a desire only for the truth, I cordially accept the invitation of his excellency, and, in my private character, I will visit Macao and carefully inspect the proceedings.

I purpose forwarding my official No. 18, together with your answer and this letter, to my Government by the American mail that will leave this port on the 12th instant. I shall be glad to forward at the same time such an assurance as I have herein asked for concerning the Dolores Ugarte.

With sentiments of high regard and consideration, I have the honor to be, sir, your most obedient servant,