No. 76.
Mr. Fish to General Schenck.
As stated in a previous dispatch which you communicated to Her Majesty’s Government, unless a treaty be signed and ratified by this Government this day, so as to be transmitted to London by to-morrow’s steamer, for ratification by Her Majesty, it will not be possible that it become operative in time to be laid before the Arbitrators at Geneva on 15th June, on which day the existing Treaty requires that the arguments be presented.
Your telegram reached me this morning within thirteen hours of the departure of the last conveyance by which a copy of a treaty can leave here to take the steamer of to-morrow.
It would be impossible for the Senate, within that time, to consider the important change proposed of the form and terms in which, after long deliberation, they have agreed to advise the President to negotiate the proposed Article.
Her Majesty’s ministry has already been apprised of this.
To propose a change of language, involving a change of object and of effect, at this late period, is therefore practically to defeat any agreement.
Lord Granville admits that the language of the Article first proposed by Her Majesty’s Government might be improved. The President [Page 542] thinks that the same may be said of that now proposed by Lord Granville; it appears to him to leave a large class of very probable cases unprovided for, and he holds that the result of bad faith, or of willful misconduct toward either of these two Governments, will never be the subject of pecuniary compensation.
I have suggested to Sir Edward Thornton that we sign the Article as-recommended by the Senate, and thus put it in operation, and allow the arbitration to proceed.
It is not believed that there is any such difference of object between the two Governments in the definition and limitation which each desires to place upon the liability of a neutral, as to prevent an agreement on the language in which to express it, if time be allowed for an exchange of views by some other means than the telegraph.
There is no probability of a practical question on the extent of that liability arising immediately.
This Government is willing at once to enter upon negotiations for the purpose of ascertaining whether language can be employed which shall more clearly express the views which it is believed are entertained by both parties.