Robert C. Schenck to Granville Leveson-Gower, March 21, 1872

General Schenck to Earl Granville.

My Lord: At a very late hour last night I received your Lordship’s note of the date of yesterday, informing me that you had laid before your colleagues the copy of Mr. Fish’s dispatch to me of the 27th ultimo, of which I furnished you a copy on the 14th instant.

I have also received, at half past four o’clock to-day, a printed copy of a memorandum, which you refer to in the note as being inclosed, and which you request to have read and considered as part of that communication, being intended, as you inform me, to explain to the United States, more fully than can be done in the form of a letter, and as Her Majesty’s Government is anxious to do, the considerations which caused them to hold the belief at the time of the ratification of the Treaty that a waiver had been made of the claims for indirect damages.

Having informed me that. Her Majesty’s Government, recognizing with pleasure the assurance of the President that he sincerely desires to promote a firm and abiding friendship between the two countries, and being animated by the same spirit, gladly avail themselves of the invitation which you say my Government appears to have given, that they should state the reasons which induce them to make the declaration contained in your note of the 3d ultimo, you add that those reasons were purposely omitted at that time in the hope of obtaining, without any controversial discussion, the assent thereto of the Government of the United States.

Your Lordship then proceeds, in reply to Mr. Fish’s note, to discuss the whole question of the right of the United States, under the provisions of the Treaty, to put forward in their Case presented at Geneva their claims for indirect losses and damages, and to state the grounds for your denial of such right and the arguments by which that denial is sought to be sustained.

And your Lordship closes this full and long statement of views and arguments by expressing the confident feeling of Her Majesty’s Government that they have laid before the President ample proof that the conclusion which was announced in your note of the 3d of February, and by which you think it is hardly necessary to say they adhere, cannot be shaken.

This conclusion I understand to be that “Her Majesty’s Government hold that it is not within the province of the Tribunal of Arbitration at Geneva to decide upon the claims for indirect losses and injuries put forward by the United States.”

Almost every moment of available time since the receipt of your Lordship’s note has been occupied with the copying of it, in order that I may be able to transmit it in time to overtake at Queenstown the mail steamer which leaves Liverpool to-day. I therefore make my acknowledgment of the delivery of your communication brief, and hasten to forward it to my Government at home, that it may have, with the least possible delay, the attention and answer from there which it may be thought to require. I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,