mercial convention of January 20, 1883.

Our commercial treaty of 1831 with Mexico was terminated, according to
its provisions, in 1881, upon notification given by Mexico in pursuance
of her announced policy of recasting all her commercial treaties. Mexico
has since concluded with several foreign governments new treaties of
commerce and navigation, defining alien rights of trade, property, and
residence, treatment of shipping, consular privileges, and the like.
Our yet unexecuted reciprocity convention of 1883 covers none of these
points, the settlement of which is so necessary to good relationship.
I propose to initiate with Mexico negotiations for a new and enlarged
treaty of commerce and navigation.

In compliance with a resolution of the Senate, I communicated to that
body on August 2 last, and also to the House of Representatives,[6] the
correspondence in the case of A.K. Cutting, an American citizen, then
imprisoned in Mexico, charged with the commission of a penal offense in
Texas, of which a Mexican citizen was the object.

After demand had been made for his release the charge against him was
amended so as to include a violation of Mexican law within Mexican
territory.

This joinder of alleged offenses, one within and the other exterior to
Mexico, induced me to order a special investigation of the case, pending
which Mr. Cutting was released.

The incident has, however, disclosed a claim of jurisdiction by Mexico
novel in our history, whereby any offense committed anywhere by a
foreigner, penal in the place of its commission, and of which a Mexican
is the object, may, if the offender be found in Mexico, be there tried
and punished in conformity with Mexican laws.

This jurisdiction was sustained by the courts of Mexico in the Cutting
case, and approved by the executive branch of that Government, upon the
authority of a Mexican statute. The appellate court in releasing Mr.
Cutting decided that the abandonment of the complaint by the Mexican
citizen aggrieved by the alleged crime (a libelous publication) removed
the basis of further prosecution, and also declared justice to have been
satisfied by the enforcement of a small part of the original sentence.

The admission of such a pretension would be attended with serious
results, invasive of the jurisdiction of this Government and highly
dangerous to our citizens in foreign lands. Therefore I have denied it
and protested against its attempted exercise as unwa