No. 204.
Mr. Frelinghuysen to Mr. Sargent.
Washington, July 25, 1883.
Sir: I inclose herewith for your information a copy of a note addressed to this Department by Mr. Yon Eisendecher, dated May 2,* in which he communicates by instruction of his Government, the reply to your note to Count Hatzfeldt of February 23 last. Previous instructions from this Department, No. 88, of February 21, 1883, and No. 108, of April 11 last, have already put you in possession of the views of the President on this subject. A perusal of Mr. Yon Eisendecher’s note will immediately suggest to one so familiar as yourself with this particular question, as well as with the distinction between general and discriminating internal measures, certain points wherein it is open to valid answer.
It will be observed that the note contains in substance, although not in terms, a rejection of the President’s proposal that a commission of German experts be appointed to examine into the raising and packing [Page 388] of hogs and hog products for food, because Germany by its laws affords its people protection against danger from German cattle and hogs, and cannot treat the foreign producers better than its own, and therefore an investigation of the American methods of hog raising and preparation would not effect a material change. With the sanitary legislation of Germany thus alluded to this Department is not familiar, but it might well have occurred that a careful investigation of the processes in the United States would have shown that strict legislation of this character is unnecessary here, because of the different situation of the two countries, and the different methods followed in the United States by reason of their large area of thinly settled land, the cheapness of corn and grain, and other incidents peculiar to the occupation of hog or cattle raising in a large and sparsely populated country.
The appointment of the commission suggested would at least have prejudiced nothing, and might have resulted in removing the fears of the Government of His Majesty, and thus aided in securing the revocation of a decree which seriously impaired an important trade between the two countries.
The parallel sought to be drawn between the protective tariff system of the United States and this prohibition of the importation of American pork and pork products does not seem to be well founded. Our tariff is a measure of general application: it applies to German exports to the United States no more and no less than to French, Austrian, or English exports; it is distinctly an internal measure of general and universal application, and as such no more open to objection than any other well-considered and fair system of taxation or custom tolls. Were our tariff to prohibit the importation of certain articles because they come from Germany, permitting the importation of the same articles coming from other countries, or were it to impose a higher duty upon German exports as such than upon the same exports from other countries, then the parallel to the decree now alluded to would become apparent. Nowhere in the tariff, however, is such a discrimination found.
The objection to the decree is not that it excludes unhealthy or diseased pork, or pork products, for such a decree would be a praiseworthy sanitary measure, but that it excludes American pork, healthy or unhealthy, good or bad; the test is not the condition of the food, but the place it comes from. In certain exceptional cases even discrimination in this form would be unobjectionable, as during the prevalence of an epidemic. On this principle, all vessels coming from certain infected ports are quarantined regardless of the actual health of the passengers, and crew, but such measures are at the most only temporary, and should be based upon good cause; whereas in the present case there is nothing to show the decree to be of temporary application, and this Government has offered to that of Germany an opportunity to examine into the facts, for the purpose of discovering whether the alleged cause actually exists, which offer has not been accepted.
The fact that certain exceptional legislation in Germany as to Austro-Hungarian cattle has not met with objection from that Government may arise from the geographical situation of the countries requiring peculiar and strict regulations not so properly applicable to the products of a nation over 3,000 miles distant, and which can only reach Germany by well-known channels through ascertained ports, where they may be easily examined and inspected. * * *
I am, &c.,
- See correspondence with the German legation in Washington, post.↩