Earl Russel to Mr. Scarlett.
9 “Sir: I have received your dispatch No. 29, of the 23d of March, requesting to be furnished with instructions as to the nature and amount of protection which you should afford to naturalized British subjects in Mexico, and I have now to state to you, for your information and guidance, that the rule laid down in10 Lord Palmerston’s circular of January 8, 1851, is only applicable to persons holding certificates of naturalization [Page 1342] granted after that date, and that persons holding such certificates are not to be held entitled to the same rights and capacities in Mexico as a natural-born British subject.
“The protection to be accorded in virtue of Lord Clarendon’s circular of May 1, 1854,. applies merely to the right of sojourn and of locomotion, but not to protection generally in regard to business pursuits in which naturalized British subjects may be engaged.
“I am, &c.,
A question was raised in 1865 as to the liability of British subjects in Mexico to serve in the police and national guard.
1 Under the advice of the law officers, Mr. Scarlett was instructed that they could properly2 be called upon to serve in the police, or to pay a tax for exemption, but not in the national guard, which might be used for active military service.3.
4 In May, 1865, Mr. Scarlett forwarded a copy of a decree recently published in Mexico, by which the illegitimate children born of foreigners and Mexican women, as well as those foreigners who may acquire landed property in Mexico, are to be considered as Mexican subjects.5
He was instructed that “the decree respecting illegitimate children seemed to furnish no reason for remonstrance from foreign governments, except, perhaps, so far as it extended to the illegitimate children born of Mexican women in foreign States (‘dentro ó fuera del territorio del Impero,’) a matter, however, of little practical importance.”
“The decree as to foreigners acquiring landed property should be protested against in so far as it was made retrospective, and that time should be allowed to such aliens to determine whether they would retain their property, and to enable them to dispose of it without injury or loss accruing from this ex post facto law.
“With regard to its prospective operation, though it would be severe on foreigners, especially if the words ‘propieded territoria’ extend to shares in mines and leases of land and houses, yet it was within the competence of the Mexican government to pass such a law.”
6 Mr. Benjamin Crowther, a British subject who had served in the army of the so-called Confederate States, having applied to Mr. Scarlett for protection, Lord Russell instructed Mr. Scarlett in November, 1865, that “a British subject who has neither been enrolled as a citizen nor naturalized in America, ought not, on the ground of his having served on either side during the civil war, to be deprived in a third country like Mexico of all British protection.”
7 M. Saviñon, a Mexican by birth, having claimed British protection as a British naturalized subject, Mr. Scarlett’s conduct in refusing it to him in Mexico was approved November, 1865.8
- To Mr. Scarlett, No. 43.↩
- Home Office, May 17, 1865.↩
- Law officers, May 22, 1865.↩
- Law officers, June 20, 1865.↩
- To Mr. Scarlett, No. 50; June 26, 1865.↩
- Queen’s Advocate; June 9, 1865.↩
- To Mr. Scarlett, No. 51; June 26, 1865.↩
- To Mr. Scarlett, No. 83; November 1, 1865.↩
- Queen’s Advocate; November 7, 1865.↩
- To Mr. Scarlett, No. 2; November, 1865.↩