Mr. Gresham to Mr. Romero.
Washington, August 20, 1894.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the 14th instant, with which you communicate copy of an instruction addressed to you by Señor Mariscal, under date of August 3, 1894, in relation to the payment of $20,000 in United States gold to the widow of Leon McLeod Baldwin, a citizen of the United States, who was murdered by bandits in the State of Durango, Mexico.
This arrangement, including the stated terms of payment by installments, is in conformity with the understanding heretofore reached by you and me in the course of conference and correspondence, and I am gratified to learn through your present communication that His Excellency the President of the United Mexican States has decided that the arrangement referred to shall be accepted, and to that end (without waiting for your formal completion of the agreement by exchange of notes) he has directed the immediate delivery, through the U. S. minister in Mexico, of the first installment, in the form of a bill of exchange on New York, made payable to my order, for the sum of $3,000, the same to be followed by the successive monthly delivery of like drafts for $1,000 each.
Señor Mariscal’s declaration that this payment is granted to the claimant by Mexico as a matter of simple equity without implying any admission that in the case in question the Mexican Government was, strictly speaking, responsible, and that it is not to constitute a precedent for the future treatment of similar cases, is likewise in accordance with the understanding which we reached in the premises.
The draft to which Señor Mariscal refers has been duly forwarded hither by Mr. Gray, and I shall have the pleasure of delivering it to Mrs. Baldwin in the course of a few days, taking her receipt therefor, which will be promptly transmitted to you.
The agreement being thus closed to the mutual satisfaction of the two Governments, your note of the 14th instant and my present reply may be taken as the formal documentary completion of our understanding, by exchange of notes.
Expressing the President’s gratification and my own that the diplomatic discussion of the Baldwin case is now ended, I renew, etc.,