LORD SALISBURY AND MR PHELPS.
T' 01W SALISBURY' has brought the unpleasant I dispute about Lord Sackville to the best conclusion possible. He has turned it into a discussion-on a question of international usage. The action- of the United States Government -make it easy for him to take this course. On October 27th, the Foreign Secretary was informed by Mr. Phelps of the President's request that Lord Sackville should be recalled. In reply to this intimation, Lord Salisbury asked to be furnished with the data on which the request was founded ; and had the -United States Government delayed any further action until these data were forthcoming, Lord Salisbury would have been obliged to pass judgment on Lord Sackville's conduct. President Cleveland, however, was of opinion that it was a case in which delay would be dangerous. The Presidential election was only seven days off, and it was supposed to be essential to Mr. Cleveland's success that he should give the Britisher a slap in the face before the week was out. As there was not time to tell Lord Salisbury why he was asked to. recall Lord Sackville, and as Lord Salisbury declined to recall him without knowing why, he must be sent off without waiting for a recall. Accordingly, "on October 30th, the President of the United States terminated all diplomatic intercourse with Lord Sackville, and forwarded his passports,"— passports, it may be noted, invented for this occa- sion only. The immediate end being thus gained, there was abundance of time in which to prepare the proof of Lord Sackville's guilt, and it was not until Deceiaber 4th. that Mr. Phelps forwarded the papers to the Foreign Office. What had happened in the interval made it unnecessary for Lord Salisbury to examine them in detail. The United States Government had made a "striking departure from the circumspect and deliberate procedure by which in such cases it is the usage of friendly States to mark their consideration for one another," and Lord. Salisbury can see nothing in the circumstances to justify such a departure. That Lord Sackville would have been recalled had it suited Mr. Cleveland's purpose to postpone action until Lord Salisbury had the facts before him, is likely enough. But a Government which will not wait for the production of evidence cannot claim to have that evidence examined when it is at last produced. In dismissing Lord Sackville for what he declared to be sufficient cause, Mr. Cleveland did no more than he had a right to do,—unusual as such an exercise of the right might be. But in taking this step, he exhausted his powers. They. did not extend to extracting from Lord Salisbury any further or confirmatory censure of Lord Sackville's action.
Probably the United States Government were not sorry to let the matter drop, for in his letter of December 4th, Mr. Phelps sets up a theory of international usage which he can hardly have regarded as more than a means of getting out of a diffieulty. When we asked you,' he says, to with- draw Lord Sackville, we thought that we had done enough, to ensure compliance with our request. The reasons- on whichit was founded might demand or receive consideration hereafter, but we thought that the Minister's recall would come first, and that the inquiry would follow.' Indeed, there was no need for the United States Government to assign any reasons. Whether they are given or not, the acceptance- or retention of a Minister is a question solely to be deter- mined by the Government to which, he is accredited. Nothing but an intimation that the Minister has ceased to be persona, grata is wanted, and upon this his recall follows as a matter of course. "The Government of the United States was not, therefore, prepared. for the demand that particulars of the language complained of . should be furnished." It had rather expected that Lord Salisbury would hang Lord Sackville first, and try him afterwards. Lord Salisbury meets this singular contention with dis- cretion and success. If it be not a positively new theory, it is one-that has long since been disposed of. Just forty years ago, the Spanish Government set up the same claim in justification of the same course. They dismissed Sir Henry Bulwer, and then asserted that every Government was entitled to obtain the recall of any foreign Minister whenever, for reasons of its own, it may wish for his removal. Lord Palmerston has left an excellent precedent for dealing with a, claim of this sort. International usage, he told the Duke of Sotomayor, may permit a Government to make such a demand.; but it is equally a matter of usage that the Government to which the demand is addressed may refuse it. It was hardly necessary to quote Lord Palmerston in defence of what is really a commonplace. Each of the two Governments concerned in the transaction has a specific part belonging to it, and each is free to act as it chooses in relation. to that part. The Government to which a Minister is accredited need. not continue to hold. diplomatic intercourse with him. That is a point which concerns no onsbut itself. Nor need it assign any reasons for dis- missing him.. The dismissal is a sovereign exercise of discretion, and a Government is not bound to render any account of the use it makes of its discretion. Rut the Government by which the Minister has been sent is not bound to make this exercise of discretion easier or more agreeable. If it thinks the complaint made against the Minister a just one, it will naturally recall him. But if it thinks the complaint unjust, or if it is ignorant what the complaint is, its obvious, course is to do nothing. To take the opposite view would be to subject the Government in question to a perfectly needless annoyance. No doubt, if it were a maxim of international-law that Ministers could not be dismissed, the case would be different. It would be so inconvenient that a Government should be forced to hold intercourse with another Government through an intermediary whom it disliked or distrusted, that it would have come by this time to be one of the duties which one State owes to another, that a Minister should be re- called whenever his recall was asked for. But the right of dismissal makes any such doctrine wholly superfluous. The end is attained much more easily, and with much less friction, in the way Lord Salisbury holds to be the right way, than in the alternative way suggested by Mr. Phelps. Why should either Lord Sackville's chief be subjected to the annoying alternative of either recalling him for what he might not consider an adequate reason, or of refusing to take into account the wishes of a friendly Government, when Mr. Cleveland was able, as the event showed, to bring about Lord Sackville's departure in a way which involved neither of these inconveniences ? International law would be a very much more irrational thing than it is, if it kept an obligation in existence for no better purpose than to cause useless irritation.
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