No. 440.
Mr. Smyth
to Mr. Evarts.
Monrovia, November 18, 1879. (Received December 27.)
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your instruction, No. 35, dated September 8, 1879, as to the overtures reported to have been made through the Liberian consul-general to the Liberian Government looking to the extension of French protection to that government and to the declination of the French Government to entertain any scheme looking to such a result, and beg to submit in respect thereto the following remarks:
The department has received my No. 30, dated May 30, 1879, diplomatic series, and by this time should have received my No. 30, dated August 21, 1879, consular series. From the latter it will appear that Mr. Leopold Carrance, Liberian consul-general at Bordeaux, has led the Liberian Government to believe that France desires to take the republic within its protecting embrace.
Mr. Carrance is on record to this effect. The address of the dispatch from which I make quotation in my No. 30, dated August 21, 1879, is Bordeaux, and was written in the handwriting of the consul-general and received by the secretary of state of Liberia through due course of mail, and the presumption is in favor of its authenticity, so far as the Liberian Government is informed.
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Within the present year Mr. Adolph Houard, consul of the Republic of Liberia in Paris, and Mr. Eugéne de Vignaux, in Havre, have presented a convention setting forth a mining project to the President for ratification by his official signature.
The text of this proffered contract briefly is, the granting to them all mines now in known existence, and all that may be discovered by the [Page 693] concessionaries, with exclusive control for a period of fifty years, with reservation to said concessionaries of renewal of lease, unless the government shall “denounce” the first lease within a year of its termination by limitation.
The consideration of the grant to be the payment to Liberia of 10 per cent. of the net profits on gold mined, and 1 per cent. on all other metals. Protection, full and ample, to be guaranteed the concessionaries, their agents, and employés.
This convention was not entered into by the President, because its provisions were found to be in conflict with the mining laws of Liberia passed 1868–’69.
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Is it surprising that France should desire to possess Liberia, in view of the projected railway from Algeria through Soudan and Senegal to the Niger, mentioned in my No. 27, dated August 7, 1879, consular series; the recent troubles between the colonial government of Sierra Leone and France as to the island of Matacong, and the present complications in the Scarces River and other tributaries between Senegal and Sierra Leone; disagreement brought about by the desire of France to extend her African trade? Trade in the products of Liberia offers valuable inducements to the commercial enterprise of France. Liberia’s 600 miles of coast, her rich, highly productive soil, and the absence of formidable interior nations between the sea-board and the valley of the historic Niger, would seem to make her a desirable annexation to any nation ambitious of African possessions.
I am, &c.,