Mr. Blaine to Mr. Denby.
Washington, April 18, 1890.
Sir: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your No. 1049, of February 9 last, with inclosures, reporting action by you in the case of the claim of Louis McCaslin on account of injuries suffered by him in consequence of the closing of the bridge at Ningpo, on April 29, 1888, and from which it appears that you have in the main anticipated the Department’s instruction No. 510 on the subject.
Reiterating the views expressed in that instruction, it is desired that you present the case to the Imperial Chinese Government de novo and request a reopening thereof as by explicit direction of this Government, upon the ground that the course of Mr. Pettus in the so-called joint investigation before the taotai of Ningpo was, in the opinion of this Government, justified by the ambiguity of that officer’s answer to the consul’s question as to the necessity for the presence of the plaintiffs witnesses in court for the purpose of giving oral testimony for Mr. McCaslin. The advantage promptly taken of that ambiguity by the taotai, notwithstanding the fact that he was alone responsible for it, in his reception of the evidence previously given in the plaintiff’s behalf, is deemed by this Government to fully sustain its claim that the case shall receive, in fact, the joint hearing which was agreed upon.
The facts in the case seem to have been fully reported to the Department by yourself and Mr. Pettus, and it does not appear from anything submitted here that blame can attach to Mr. Pettus in any degree for the apparently total miscarriage of justice, or that any reason can be assigned to him for the failure to hold a joint investigation as ordered by the yamên.
The point Should be insisted upon that this Government can not regard the last hearing of the case by the taotai as a “joint investigation” even by implication, and that the consul can not be permitted to be called to account for his most natural construction of the taotai’s language: “I beg to state you must suit yourself about the foreign witnesses.” Unless that sentence was intended to convey the idea that the presence and oral repetition of the testimony of the foreign witnesses already on file in writing would not be required by the taotai, it is not clear what idea it was meant to express.
After considerable correspondence between yourself and the yamên, a joint investigation was ordered as an admission by the Imperial Government that the separate hearings already had were found incapable [Page 181] of attaining the ends of justice and for the express purpose of bringing the evidence of both sides before the court. That purpose was distinctly defeated by the indirect and misleading language of the taotai in reply to the consul’s question as to the necessity for the presence of the foreign witnesses at the joint investigation, and by no other means. In this view of the case, it is not doubted that the Imperial Government will, upon a proper presentation of the facts by this Government, perceive the propriety of reopening the case in order that its own original purpose in directing a joint investigation may not appear to have been avoided by the equivocal course of the taotai of Ningpo.
You may communicate this dispatch by reading to the yamên, and, if desired, you will leave a copy with them, fortifying the representations herein by such oral recital of your previously advanced arguments as may seem proper.
I am, etc.,