No. 127.
Mr. Seward
to Mr. Evarts.
Pelting, July 12, 1879. (Received September 4.)
Sir: A conference of foreign ministers was held on the 10th instant at the house of Sir Thomas Wade, doyen of the diplomatic body, at which it was agreed that the following questions, to wit, taxation of foreign manufactures and foreign owned domestic produce, official intercourse, and judicial proceedings, require attention and shall be brought under discussion with a view to reach conclusions to be put before the Chinese Government. Sir Thomas Wade was requested to communicate with absent ministers in this sense, and to say that it is proposed to meet for the study of these questions early in September.
The matters indicated have formed the subject of a number of dispatches heretofore addressed by me to the State Department, both from [Page 141] Shanghai and since I have been in charge here. They have come up for remark more particularly in connection with the German treaty revision scheme, and the English convention of Chefoo. They were severally dealt with in the protocol of November 25, 1876, transmitted with my dispatch No. 177.
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I think that no special instructions in regard to the subjects which it is proposed to consider in September are needed. It is by no means certain that the foreign representatives here will be able to reach harmonious conclusions, and not likely that any one will desire to propose changes of treaty stipulations without first submitting the concrete propositions to his government. A bare approval, therefore, of the proposal to confer together, and a general authority to carry co-operation as to theresults, so far as may be appropriate, looking to the important character of the matters under discussion, is all that I would ask for.
My correspondence will have shown you that there has been some improvement in official intercourse and in the judicial situation since my arrival in Peking. The Chinese appear to admit now, in theory, that civil cases can only be dealt with in the courts of the defendants, and in accordance with the laws of the country of the defendant, and they have yielded somewhat in ceremony both here and at the ports.
The practical extinction of the Foochow Trade Committee has also been of decided advantage to us. There is no new light, however, in regard to the internal taxation question, unless I may consider that the evident disposition of the ministers resident here to look for a practical solution of the difficulties surrounding the subject to new stipulations which can be cordially accepted by all, including the Chinese, rather than to attempt to define and to sustain existing stipulations, which are obscure in terms and halve evidently failed to meet the purposes in view, is an advance of a substantial sort.
I have, &c.,