No. 78.
(No. 427.) My Lord,
Lord Lyons to the Earl of Derby.--(Received May 26.)
Paris, May 25, 1875.
I HAVE the honour to transmit herewith to your Lordship a copy of a paper which was given to me yesterday by the Duc Decazes at the French Foreign Office. In putting it into my hand the Duke simply said that he hoped that I should find that it placed the questions respecting the French Commercial Treaty with Annam upon a ground upon which the British and French Governments might easily come to an understanding.
Your Lordship will see that this paper purports to be an answer to the memorandum stating the objections of Her Majesty's Government, which was communicated to the French Government by Lord Lytton with his note of the 15th November last.
In that memorandum remonstrance was made against the French Treaties with Annam on general as well as on particular grounds. It was pointed out that these were the first Treaties wherein one of the great European Powers had departed from the wholesome rule, in accordance with which every nation represented in Chinese and Japanese waters had been content, as regarded its interests in those waters, to act in concert with other nations, seeking no exclusive privileges for itself, but co-operating in the common interest to obtain equal rights for all. It was argued that the practical effect of the political Treaty, when fully completed by the Commercial Treaty, would be to confer upon France unlimited control over the trade of Annam, to place the Custom-houses of Annam under the exclusive supervision of France, and their conduct under her special protection by means of French ships of war in the ports; to give to the same European Power exclusive command of access to the Chinese province of Yunnan by means of the Tongka River, and, in fact, to surrender to French agents exclusively whatever real authority the King of Annam might have before possessed in political as well as commercial matters. Finally, it was urged that such a result would constitute an unprecedented departure from the salutary understanding which had, up to that time, governed the common practice of the great European Powers in their commercial and political dealings with countries in the category to which Annam belongs.
No direct answer to these general remonstrances appears in the paper given me by the Duc Decazes.
Nor does the Duc Decazes' paper contain any specific answer to the particular objections made by Her Majesty's Government to the XVth and XVIIth Articles of the Commercial Treaty. Your Lordship may remember that the first of these Articles requires masters of foreign vessels to report their arrival to the French Consul, and place their ships' papers in his hands; while the XVIIth obliges foreign merchants having occasion to load or unload goods, to do so through the agency of the same Consul.
The Duc Decazes' observations are in fact confined to three special points :-- 1st. The jurisdiction attributed to the French Agents in Annam over the subjects of other European Powers; 2nd. The privilege in virtue of which those agents are empowered to decide disputes between foreigners and the Annamese Custom-house officials; and, 3rd. The differential duties in favour of the French Colony of Saigon.
With regard to these differential duties, the paper merely repeats the old arguments that they are established in compensation for pecuniary and other sacrifices made by France, and that foreign ships resorting to Saigon will share in the advantage to be derived from them. To the first of these arguments it may obviously be replied that it does not concern foreign nations to enquire what may be the consideration which France has given for a privilege which she has obtained to their detriment. While the second argument, if valid, would imply that foreign nations would not be aggrieved if (for instance) France were to insert in a Treaty with Italy a stipulation obliging the Italian Government to levy double duties on all merchandise not passing through Marseilles.
The Duc Decazes, while insisting in this paper upon the necessity of maintaining these duties for the present, suggests that when the tariffs are revised ten years hence, it may be considered whether they shall be enforced or not after that time.
The statements made in the paper respecting the jurisdiction of French Agents over foreigners, and their intervention in disputes between foreigners and Annamese Customs authorities, appear much more worthy of consideration.
The paper represents these privileges as only temporary, and seems to imply that any foreign nation may emancipate itself from their effects by making a Commercial Treaty of its own with Annam, and sending Consuls of its own to protect its subjects.
This is, I suppose, the basis upon which the Duc Decazes hopes that the two Governments may come to an understanding, and there does, in fact (setting the question
302