No. 57.
Mr. Trescot
to Mr. Frelinghuysen.
Lima, Peru, April 5, 1882. (Received April 26.)
Sir: I must ask that this dispatch be considered entirely confidential. My reason for the request will, I think, be apparent and satisfactory when you have read it.
In dispatch No. 13, under date March 4, I communicated to you the protocol and the consequent correspondence between Señor Balmaceda and myself. The position then established was that the Government of the United States declined to offer its good offices upon the conditions stated in the protocol, and the Government of Chili declined to modify those conditions.
From the date of that correspondence up to the time of my leaving Valparaiso, I had several full and frank conversations with the Chilian secretary of state.
I cannot undertake to repeat these discussions in detail. It will be sufficient to say that on the Sunday before my departure (18th March) the secretary expressed to me in the strictest confidence his willingness to consider the following modifications of his original terms, if Peru would propose them as a substitute:
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You will see that these are very considerable concessions. Of course I told the secretary that I had no authority to accept them as the basis of an offer of good offices; that I could not even say that, as a matter of individual opinion, I would advise their acceptance, and that I did not believe they would be accepted. He thought they would be. All that I felt authorized to do was to bring them confidentially to the notice of the provisional government of Peru.
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I have, &c.,