Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 4, 1876
No. 279.
Mr. Cushing to Mr. Fish.
San Ildefonso, August 25, 1875. (Received September 13.)
Sir: I had hoped to be able to transmit to yon, with my note of the 18th, the reply of the minister of state; but the latter did not come in at the expected time.
[Page 517]I now inclose copy and translation of Mr. Castro’s note, with my rejoinder, in the purpose of keeping you punctually advised of all the successive steps of the pending negotiation, especially in the new aspect it has assumed.
I anticipate interview with Mr. Castro this evening or to-morrow morning.
I am, &c.,
Mr. Castro to Mr. Cushing.
The Palace, August 23, 1875. (Received August 25.)
Most Excellent Sir: I have acquainted myself fully with the note your excellency has been pleased to address to me on the 18th of the present month in consequence of the promotion to the rank of mariscal de campo obtained by the brigadier of the Spanish army, Don Juan Burriel. Your excellency lays down, and recognizes as a general rule, that neither your excellency, nor your Government, may interfere in the changes and promotions which the government of which I have the honor to form part may deem it convenient to order and carry into effect with respect to the military or civil functionaries dependent upon it, and in obedience to this incontrovertible principle you give assurance that your Government might have hesitated to go beyond the limits of some purely friendly indication in the case of the concession of military honors on the part of a foreign government to subjects who might have attracted attention to themselves by reason of acts of exceptional cruelty or violence. But referring thereupon to the case of Don Juan Burriel, which gives motive to your communication, and with reference to the executions ordered by the same in Santiago de Cuba, and of the reclamations of which they were the object, you recall the compromises contracted by the Spanish government to submit to a formal investigation the conduct of the authorities who, in those melancholy occurrences, might have infringed the laws of the land or the obligations of treaties, imposing upon them the punishments to which they might have rendered themselves amenable, if in effect they were proved to be culpable.
The government of His Majesty, which voluntarily contracted the compromises which your excellency justly invokes, recalls them likewise, in its turn, and finds itself firmly resolved to fulfill them, without the higher grade to which General Burriel has been elevated exempting him from the responsibility he may have contracted, or either augmenting or diminishing his means of defense.
In effect, if the necessities of the war and of army organization on the one hand, and, on the other, the consideration that it was not allowable to the government to anticipate in a certain sense the result of the pending judgment, counseled it to promote to the next higher grade a general officer, neither with reference to that has it been possible to take into account the memories evoked by your excellency, nor can the act to which you refer have the least influence on the consequences of the investition, which continues pending, or on the juicio de residencia to which it may give occasion.
Both matters are following, and will follow, their due course, without other delays than those inevitable in this class of proceedings. Justice will pronounce its judgment, and be this what it may, the government of His Majesty will enforce its execution without other considerations than those imposed upon it by its own dignity and the rigorous fulfillment of its pact.
I believe, Mr. Minister, that these frank explanations will be sufficient to demonstrate to your excellency the true and only character of the step to which you have deemed it convenient to call my attention; and as for the urgency of bringing to the most speedy termination possible the affair, of which the fact which now occupies us is only a mere, although important, incident, the government of His Majesty shares fully in this opinion, and will omit none of the means within its reach, to the end that your desires may remain speedily satisfied. With this object it has already incited the zeal of the high consultative body, to whose elevated and impartial criterion are already submitted the acts which have originally given origin to the present controversy.
I improve this opportunity to repeat to your excellency the assurances of my most distinguished consideration.
The Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States.
Mr. Cushing to Mr. Castro.
San Ildefonso, August 25, 1875.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the reception of your excellency’s note of the 23d instant, in response to mine of the 18th, on the subject of D. Juan Burriel.
The tenor and general spirit of its contents afford me a great satisfaction, and they will, I am sure, be regarded in the same light by my Government.
It is particularly satisfactory to learn that the government of His Majesty, by its own voluntary act, has participated in the compromises referred to in my note, and that it is resolved to comply therewith, without the fact of the promotion of General Burriel having been designed or being allowed to exercise any influence to the prejudice of the pending preliminary investigation in this behalf, or, to that of the juicio de residencia to which that investigation may give occasion, or of the judgment which may ensue. I had confided in the manifestations of good faith heretofore exhibited by His Majesty’s government in its negotiations with the United States so far as to be prepared to expect from your excellency the assurances now with such honorable frankness expressly given to this effect.
Indeed, investigations of this class have been so frequent in the history of Spain, as applied, not only to subordinate governors, but also to the highest functionaries of her possessions of ultramar, and they constitute a peculiar feature of public administration so creditable to her national policy, that it seems to me impossible to suppose that His Majesty’s government could accord to D. Juan Burriel exemption from inquiries to which a Cortes, a Mendoza, or a Revilla-gigedo had been subjected, especially when ample cause therefor existed in complaints to that end on the part of a friendly government. I can well conceive, also, that in the unhappy civil war which to my own deep regret now afflicts Spain, His Majesty’s government should feel that every officer of the army owes a paramount debt of patriotism to his country, which he might be called upon to discharge according to his capacity, notwithstanding the pendency of charges respecting his administrative conduct in another field of action. Nevertheless, your excellency, accustomed as you are to responsibilities of public trusts, and conscientiously punctilious as you are in the performance of them, cannot fail to perceive how incumbent on me it was to call attention to the subject, in view not merely of the promotion of D. Juan Burriel, but of circumstances attending it which are susceptible of the construction of implying favorable prejudgment of his acts at Santiago de Cuba.
Finally, I assure your excellency of the hearty co-operation which it will be my great pleasure to render in a concurrent endeavor on our part to adjust, once for all, the outstanding points of controversy between our respective governments, in the confident belief that it is in our power thus to be of commendable service to both of them, and in the earnest personal aspiration of being able to resign my present official functions in due time without leaving a shade to remain on the friendly intelligence of Spain and the United States.
I avail myself of this opportunity to repeat to your excellency the assurance of my most distinguished consideration.
His Excellency the Minister of State.