To the Hon. William M. Evarts to John Welsh, July 29, 1879

No. 202. Mr. Evarts to Mr. Welsh.

Sir: Referring to my instruction No. 328, of the 11th instant, in relation to the case of John Anderson, alias Alfred Hussey, and the claim of jurisdiction advanced and exercised in relation thereto by the high court of Calcutta, a British tribunal, notwithstanding that the accused was a seaman upon the American bark C. O. Whitmore, and the crime for which he was tried was committed on the high seas, I have now to transmit for your further information, and as material to the intelligent discussion of the points involved, should Her Majesty’s Government provoke argument thereon, copy of an additional dispatch, dated the 10th ultimo, received from Consul-General Litchfield, in which the later proceedings of the high court, comprising further assertion and exercise of jurisdictional power in the premises, are so fully set forth that it is found unnecessary to your understanding of the case to send you transcript of the voluminous appendices transmitted by the consul-general.

Pending the reply of Her Majesty’s Government to the dispassionate representations you have already been directed to make, I have no further observations to add to those of the consul-general than to remark that, while the verdict of the jury, convicting the man of manslaughter, seems to have been technically right as to the degree of the crime committed, the partiality and unfairness of the proceedings, which this government had confidently hoped would be marked by the most signal impartiality and fairness, cannot but be deduced from the result of the trial. I refer especially to the keeping back of the testimony of witnesses who would have shown aggravating circumstances of guilt; in the notably strong recommendation to mercy and, more than all, in the character of the sentence, a purely nominal punishment, such as would be usually inflicted for a slight contempt of court, and unheard of before in any British court as a measure of the penalty for manslaughter, the conviction for which rested on the verdict of a jury, the prisoner having been set free within forty-eight hours, without even the form of executive clemency. These facts are here thought to justify what might otherwise seem to be the heated and indignant comments of Mr. Litchfield on the affair and should the assumption of British jurisdiction in the case be defended by Her Majesty’s Government, the circumstances adverted to would seem proper to be brought to Lord Salisbury’s attention, with all the temperance of representation permitted by the facts themselves, and as justifying the ground taken, with respect to such assumption of jurisdiction, in my previous instruction No. 328.

I am, &c.,