SEWARD, Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to the Foreign Office, October 2, 1876

Mr. Seward to the Foreign Office.

The undersigned has the honor to acknowledge receipt of your imperial highness and your excellencies’ dispatches of the 26th and 28th September, in which, referring to several clauses of the agreement signed at Chefoo by the plenipotentiaries of China and Great Britain, you wrote me, as well as my colleagues, the representatives of the foreign powers, to consider conjointly the questions referred to, and to inform you of the results of our deliberations.

While thanking your imperial highness and your excellencies for the above communications, I beg leave to inform you that it is in my opinion advisable, as it would be also conformable with the established custom of diplomatic intercourse, that we should, first of all, consider and decide what questions require a settlement and are to be brought under discussion.

I have consulted with my colleagues on this point, and, as a complete understanding exists between us regarding this way of procedure, I beg leave to inform your imperial highness and your excellencies that I shall be ready, whenever you may find it convenient, to confer with you in view of the object above stated, and, having once determined the points to be discussed, to come with you to an understanding on the various questions that may become the subject of our deliberations.

In regard, however, to likin taxes and proposed reference to the several governments, I must at once remark that negotiations should be pursued in the usual manner, and that, pending the result, I cannot consent to the abridgment of existing treaty stipulations.

I take this occasion to renew to your imperial highness and your excellencies the expression of my consideration.