Townsend Harris' Letter to Lewis Cass, Transcribed and Annotated
The original letter, Correspondence No. 30, from Letterbook 4,
City College Cohen Library Archives and Special Collections,
written in the hand of Mr. Henry Heusken, Harris' secretary,
appears at left; the transcribed letter is to the right.
For annotations, click on the brown text.
To the Hon. Lewis Cass Secretary of State
Simoda Sep. 11/58. Sir, I have the honor to transmit herewith Dutch and English versions of the Treaties, recently concluded by the Japanese with the Russian English and Dutch plenipotentiaries. The Russian Treaty is dated August 19 1858, the English the 26 of August and the Dutch is post dated October 4, 1858. In my dispatch no. 19 of the present year, I transmitted [sic] copy of a letter, addressed to me, by the Great Council of State of Japan, in which the Council promised that the Treaty concluded with me, should be signed on the 4th of September 1858 and further promising that no Treaty or Convention, should be signed with any other nation, until thirty days after the American Treaty had been signed. For reasons already communicated to you, the signing of the Treaty took place on the 29 of July last, and consequently the Japanese had the right to execute Treaties with other Nations, on and after the 30 of August last. But in the case of the Russian and English Treaties, they did not wait the stipulated time, the Russian Treaty was signed ten days and the English three days, before the expiration of the stipulated thirty days. The Dutch Treaty was engrossed early in July and the date of October 4 was doubtless inserted to comply with the pledge given to me. I have not asked any explanation of this breach of promise, by the Japanese government, nor shall I do so, until I have been specially instructed by you, to that effect. In all the Treaties above referred to, the second and the tenth articles of the American Treaty are omitted. It was stated and very correctly by the various plenipotentiaries, that no Treaty stipulations were required, to serve to Japan all the provisions of those articles, as they were universally granted by the Comity of Nations. In this matter I think the negotiators made a mistake. Of the millions in Japan who will read all the Treaties, not one hundred know any thing about the comity of nations, and when they read the second and tenth articles of the American Treaty and when they see, that those articles are omitted in the Russian, English and Dutch Treaties, they will consider the Government of the U.S. as having shown a far more friendly spirit towards their Country, than is shown by other Nations, and it will no doubt create a feeling of partiality for the Americans. With the above exceptions, the Russian and Dutch treaties are identical, in their meaning with the American treaty. By the fourth article of the English Treaty, the extraterritoriality of British subjects in Japan, is as fully asserted as the same principle is by the sixth article of the American Treaty. You will probably be surprised in reading in the sixth article of the English Treaty, that the principle so strongly insisted on, by all civilized nations, in their negotiations with the semi civilized races of the East is partially abandoned, and that a British defendant is to a certain extent, to be tried by Japanese judges. This clause was never demanded by the Japanese, and its voluntary insertion by Lord Elgin, is one of those singular terms of diplomacy, which are quite unaccountable, to the world at large. The English Treaty places cottons and woolens in the class of five percent duty instead of twenty percent, as granted by the American, Russian, and Dutch Treaties. This will reduce the estimated revenue from customs duties at least one third, and is a measure of very questionable policy, in my mind. The remainder of the English Treaty is precisely the same, in intention, spirit and meaning as the American Treaty. A short time after Lord Elgin had given the Japanese a draft of the Treaty, nearly as it now stands, he informed the Japanese commissioners, that if they delayed the execution of the treaty, he should go away, and soon return at the head of a fleet of fifty ships, and that he should then not only demand, what he now asked, but should also require the Japanese, to give to all British subjects, the right to travel in to any or all parts of the Japanese Empire, and also that the Japanese should be free, to adopt the Christian faith if they saw fit. This apparently aggressive attitude, was all together uncalled for, and was calculated to prevent, anything like an “entente cordiale” between the two Nations, and notwithstanding the present of an expansive steam yacht to them, the Japanese see, that the spirit that *actuated* Captain *_____* in the Harbour of Nagasaki in 1804 is not extinct. It is note worthy, that Lord Elgin entirely ignores the Treaty, made by Admiral Stirling at Nagasaki, October 1854. |