Mr. Romero to Mr. Gresham.
Washington , March 28, 1894 . (Received March 29.)
Mr. Secretary: I have had the honor to receive your note of yesterday in which, while acknowledging the receipt of mine of the 21st, relating to the payment of an indemnity which the Government of Mexico on equity tendered to Mrs. Baldwin for the death of her husband in Mexico, you state that the Government of the United States has never taken into consideration the proposal to pay $20,000 out of the fund appertaining to the La Abra and Weil claims in the event of the Court of Claims of the United States deciding that it should be turned over to Mexico.
When I made this proposal to you under instructions of the Government of Mexico, you declared to me that the Government of the United [Page 422] States could not take it into consideration for the reasons stated in your note, and several others which seemed to me well founded. I so informed the Government of Mexico, recommending there and then that the condition set for this payment be withdrawn, and thence arose your impression that the Government of Mexico would pay the $20,000 in gold coin of the United States, without the above-stated condition.
The straitened condition of the Mexican treasury, chiefly due to the depreciation of silver, has not permitted the Government of Mexico to offer a payment in gold of the $20,000 if it were made from its ordinary funds, and its last proposal, as you know, is to pay $20,000 in Mexican currency.
Accept, etc.,