TABLE OF CONTENTS.
No. Name. No. Date. SUBJECT. Page 1 Mr. de Bunsen 12 Oct. 7, 1892 Treaty Confidential • 2 Sir H. Bergne Nov. 25, Japanese Memorandum, urging negotiation of a Treaty. Incloses, with remarks upon the question Minute on No. 1 1 3 * Memorandum on No. 1, after consultation with Mr. Fraser and Mr. Gubbins, and draft of possible Treaty 8 4 Mr. Fraser 5 Dec. 28, Memorandum 12 5 Dec. 5, Memorandum ::: 6 Mr. Gubbins (with Minutes by Sir H. Bergne and Fraser) Apr. 10, 1893 Minutes 16 7 Sir H. Bergne and Sir T. Sanderson June 6, Minutes 18 8 Mr. Fraser July 17, Memorandum 18 9 Sir T. Sanderson, Sir P. Currie, and Lord Rosebery Aug. 14, Memorandum, summarizing the whole case. Decision against making any Treaty with Japan at present 20Printed for the use of the Foreign Office. November 1893.
CONFIDENTIAL.
Papers relating to the Question of Extradition with Japan.
316
No. 1.
Mr. de Bunsen to the Earl of Rosebery.-(Received November 7.)
(No. 12. Treaty. Confidential.) My Lord,
Tokió, October 7, 1892.
IN my despatch No. 11, Treaty, of the 29th August, I had the honour to report that Mr. Mutsu, Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs, had again submitted to the Cabinet the draft of the proposed Rendition Arrangement between the United Kingdom and Japan which Viscount Enomotto, his predecessor in office, had finally accepted in a form not differing materially from the document transmitted to Lord Salisbury in Mr. Fraser's Confidential despatch No. 8, Treaty, of the 20th June.
The draft Arrangement has not emerged from this ordeal, and I have received in its place a Memorandum, in which the Japanese Foreign Minister expresses the hope that Her Majesty's Government will consent to negotiate a formal Extradition Treaty with Japan on a wider basis than that upon which Mr. Fraser's proposals were founded.
In order to explain the position thus taken up by the Japanese Foreign Office I feel obliged to revert to the negotiation with Viscount Enomotto, and to trouble your Lordship with a copy of the draft Arrangement as accepted by that Minister a few days before his retirement from office. It had previously undergone two important corrections at the hands of the Privy Council of Japan. Article VI, providing for the surrender of a fugitive offender only "when the individual claimed is a subject of the Power demanding his rendition" was made to read as follows: "In case any fugitive offender be demanded at the same time by two or more States, each Government shall determine, in accordance with the Laws or Ordinances of its own country, the State to which the fugitive offender shall be surrendered;" and, secondly, in the place of the understanding recorded in Article XI of the draft sent in by Her Majesty's Minister, to the effect that the Arrangement was to be replaced eventually by a formal Extradition Treaty, the Privy Council preferred to stipulate that "this Arrangement may be terminated by either of the Governments, but it shall remain in force for three months after notice has been given of its termination."
The first of these alterations was evidently prompted by a desire to harmonize the proposed Agreement with the terms of the Japanese and American Extradition Treaty of 1886, in which Japan engaged to surrender fugitive offenders from the United States irrespectively of their nationality. It involved the correction of the original text wherever the latter expressed the intention of limiting the operation of the Agreement to the subjects respectively of the two countries.
At an interview with Viscount Enomotto, I objected to this change on the ground that, as we had not recognized the right of the Japanese Government to surrender to the United States a British subject who might have taken refuge in Japan after committing a crime or offence in the former country, we had no wish ourselves to claim the surrender by Japan of the subjects or citizens of a third Power under similar circumstances. If America demanded the extradition of a non-American foreigner in Japan, a conflict of jurisdiction would inevitably ensue, and it was with the intention of averting such conflicts that the terms of Mr. Fraser's draft had been expressly limited to securing the surrender mutually of British and Japanese subjects only.
As regards Article XI I urged the retention of Mr. Fraser's text, stating my belief that the text of the Japanese Privy Council, if adhered to, would compel Her Majesty's Government to insert an additional Article stipulating that, in the event of the termination of the Agreement, the Japanese Government would revert to the provisional arrangements
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