Mr. Bayard to Mr. Becerra.
Washington, December 11, 1885.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the 3rd instant, informing me of a special decree of your Government, supplementary to the decree concerning which you were addressed on June 1 last. That decree required that not only should the importers at ports in Colombia (held and controlled at the time by rebel troops) from whom duties were collected by the insurgents, be required to make the said payment a second time to the National Government when it had regained control, but also to make an additional payment of 50 per cent, thereon in case of delay. The present decree limits the above liability, restricting it to cases where the importers freely and voluntarily paid duties to the rebels.
Referring to the terms of my note of June 1, respecting the first decree, the Government of the United States assumes, in respect of this supplementary decree, that no unreasonable proof will be required of the involuntary character of the payments to the insurgent agents. It is well known that in times of armed insurrection, when forced loans and arbitrary extortion are resorted to, the usual forms of protest are not permitted, and the parties levied upon are almost invariably constrained to submit, rather than run the danger of incurring by a show of resistance double burdens and greater loss.
Even under the normal operation of Colombian laws a protest against such levies may entail a penalty. This was the case with the decree against which my note of June 1 last remonstrated, for it assumed to add 50 per cent, in the case of those merchants who should refuse payment to the agents of the constitutional Government of duties already paid by them to the insurgents when in sole control.
[Page 282]In the disorganized and unprotected condition of society at the Colombian ports in question during the period referred to, it would be indeed surprising to learn that any American importer there had been permitted to make or file formal protest against the payment of customs duties to the rebel authorities. Under such circumstances the rational and necessary presumption is that they yielded to vis major and paid under duress, unless the contrary be distinctly shown.
We trust that the manifest justice and reasonableness of this will be borne in mind, in executing the Colombian decree now announced by you, which, regardless of all rational presumption, seems to throw upon the sufferers the burden of proof that positive coercion was resorted to against them.
Accept, sir, &c.,