this sum they charge interest since the year 1849, and by virtue of this operation they fix the responsibility of the Mexican Government at two millions, one hundred and forty thousand, one hundred and four dollars.

They have behind this the moderation to cede one-tenth of the sum for the missions of the Lower California, and in this manner the demand is condensed to a determined cipher.

In this calculation, as it has been said, the ground itself is meager, and fluctuating. If is read the instruction of the Attorney Ramirez, to whom the claimants ascribe as much infallibility as to the Pope, it will be found at every step, that the author of that work wanted documental facts in regard to some very important items, but when so much faith is given to the informations of that source, the bishops claiming ought not to have forgotten what the same Ramirez informed to the Government of Mexico, three days before the issue of the law which incorporated the said fund in the public treasury, and then, they will not make such whimful [sic.] and erroneous accounts. This information reads at the foot of the page among the last documents which, copied anew, the claimants have brought to the commission. It reads so:

EXCELLENT SIR:

The Pious Fund of Californias consists of three-quarter parts of the hacienda of "Cienega del Pastor" and other three-quarter parts of seventy thousand dollars in which were sold in emphyteusis some houses of Vergara Street, to build the new theater.

The hacienda of "San Agustin de Amoles" and the annexed in the districts of San Luis and Tamaulipas and the other of Ibarra in the district of Guanajuato. [Sic.] A capital of forty thousand dollars imposed in the hacienda of "Arroga Zareo," and forty-two thousand dollars in the hacienda of "Santa Lugarda," and annexed farm, in the San Juan de los Llams. A deed of one hundred and sixty-two thousand, six hundred and eighteen dollars, three reals and three grains, invested at interest at the rate of five per cent per annum in the old Consulado and of which nothing has been collected till now, and in other sums which in several occasions has [sic.] been taken for the public treasury with the clause of devolution.

The three-quarter parts of the hacienda of the Cienega are embargoed and ordered to be sold pursuant a judicial demand prosecuted by Mr. José Ma. Jauregui vs. the Fund, and if the sentence is carried into effect in the manner it has been pronounced, the embargoed estate will not be sufficient to cover it. The fund is responsible to other credits, which could not be covered on account of loan which, with its mortgage, the supreme

Government raised, as almost all its income was applied to pay the interest of said loan, and which is paying now at great sacrifice. With the above stated I believe I answer to the note of your Excellency, which I have just received, and I avail of this opportunity to assure you of my considerations and respects. God and Liberty, Mexico, February 5, 1842.

PEDRO RAMIREZ, to His Excellency

the MINISTER of Justice anD PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.

It will be seen by the foregoing information report the bad condition in which was the fund of Californias at the time that the Mexican treasury received it, that a great part of it consisted in old credits, represented in Mexico by a paper which had almost no quotation in the market, and that the author of the report declares that all the fund was at the point of being absorbed by a judicial sentence pronounced in favor of one of the creditors.

It is not strange that the news hereabove copied should be so discouraging, as seventeen years before it was written, the Secretary of the Treasury of Mexico gave the same discouraging facts about the same matter, in his report presented to the Congress in the year 1825, viz.:

CALIFORNIAS

The missions of the same established with the purpose of bringing to the faith the Indians who did not possess it, were in charge of the Jesuits. When these yet subsisted, the Marquis of Villa Puente de la Pena, left in September, 1726, under the protection of the Government, six haciendas with the obiect of sustaining said missions. When the Jesuits were suppressed, the haciendas were managed by the administrator and auditor of the temporalities; afterwards the clergy of San Fernando and Santo Domingo, and, in 1782, one of the Secretaries of the Mexican Treasury. They are now under the responsibility of one administrator.

The hacienda called "Zarra," the one of "San Augustin de los Amoles," the one of the "Buez," the "Valla," a part of the one of "Ciénega," and another in the houses in Vergara St. of Mexico, comprise the total estates, in the county and in the city, of the fund of missions of Californias.

Their proceeds are very small, the insurrection of 1810 caused to the five first named, such great damages that [they] were almost ruined. The want of cattle and repairs keep them very low: their proceeds may be in 1825, 12,150 dollars and 5 reals.

These missions have besides 631,056 dollars, 7 reals and 9 grains of capital imposed in consolidated, national treasury, consulado, and others, of which no interest are collected.

The salaries of its employees amount to 3,300 dollars, 4 reals.

The sinodes, viaticums, and the other indispensable expenses of the missionaries, clergymen are calculated at present to be 19,250 dollars [sic.]; the deficit will be a passive credit which will take its place when it has to be paid.

Here is the place to insist upon the point that not only the claimants exaggerate much the importance of the fund, to which interest they believe to be share-holders, but they want to divide it as the lion of the fable, when they only leave one-tenth for the Church of the Lower California.

If it is to be given to the documents which constitute the history of this matter the literal and strict interpretation that the Bishops of Upper California pretends [sic.] the fund in question had as single and exclusive object the sustain [sustenance] of the missions.

The greatest number of them were since the beginning founded in the Lower California, so that making an equitable division and adopting the same law, and the same history used by the claimants, it will only belong to them the smallest part of the interest they claim. (See the number of the missions respectively founded in the two Californias, detailed in the statement which appears in the page 15 of Exhibit No. 25.)

As it has been already said the Mexican Government was sustaining these foundations with resources derived of private donation as well as of the public revenues. The confirmation of this can be seen by the successive budgets of the federal administration.

Whether after the peace of Guadalupe the same thing has been done or not, or whether it has been or not erogations for the civilization of the indigenes in Lower California or in the other Western States is a matter that the undersigned does not believe himself under the necessity of demonstrating here, nor the Mexican Government has not thought itself undoubtedly under the obligation of proving it, because those who now move question about the matter have no right to do it. [Sic.]

So must have been the views of the Government of the United States, when, in 1859, it abstained from presenting this claim, when it was stimulated to do so by those who now present the said claim. The Government of Washington must have opposed the exigency, to which they tried to push it, and this is the reason why it did not wish, as it was pretended, to ask for a dotation in money for the Catholic Church of Upper California, after depriving Mexico of that rich State.

Sometimes a daughter is taken by force or seduction from the paternal house, and the act is repaired by a forced marriage. The husband applies afterwards to demand a dower from the offended and abandoned father.

The Bishops interested in this matter tried to induce the American Government to act in a similar way.

As they did not succeed, they now reproduce before us the same pretension, and it must be dismissed without hesitation.

Such is the opinion of the undersigned.

Award of Sir Edward Thornton, umpire in the original Pious Fund Case before the United States and Mexican Claims Commission of 1868.-Washington, November 11, 1875.1

This case having been referred to the umpire for his decision upon a difference in opinion between the commissioners, the umpire rendered the following decision:

In the case of "Thaddeus Amat, Bishop of Monterey, and Joseph S. Alemany, Archbishop of San Francisco vs. Mexico" No. 493, it will be impossible for the umpire to discuss the various arguments which have been put forward on each side.

He will be able only to state the conclusions which he has arrived at after a careful and lengthened study of all the documents which have been submitted to him.

He is about to give his decision with a profound sense of the importance of the case in accordance with what he considers to be just and equitable as far as he can rely upon his own judgment and conscience.

The first question to be considered is the citizenship of the claimants. On this point the umpire is of opinion that the Roman Catholic Church of Upper California became a corporation of citizens of the United States on the 30th of May, 1848, the day of the exchange of ratifications of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

By the VIII Article of the treaty it was agreed that those Mexicans residing in the territories ceded by Mexico to the United States, who wished to retain the title and rights of Mexican citizens should be under the obligation to make their election within one year from the date of the exchange of the ratifications of the treaty; and that those who should remain in the said territories after the expiration of that year, without having declared their intention to retain the char

United States and Mexican Claims Commission, Opinions (MS. Dep't of State), vol. vii, p. 459.

acter of Mexicans, should be considered to have elected to have become citizens of the United States. It has not been shown that the Roman Catholic Church in Upper California had declared any intention of retaining its Mexican citizenship and it can not but be concluded that it had elected to assume the citizenship of the United States as soon as it was possible for it to do so, which in the opinion of the umpire was when Upper California was actually incorporated into the United States on the exchange of the ratifications of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

With regard to any claim which may have originated before that date the claimants could not have been entitled to appear before the mixed commission established by the Convention of July 4, 1868; but a claim arising after that date would come under the cognizance of the commission.

The claim now put forward is for interest upon the so-called "Pious Fund of the Californias." If this interest should have been paid to the Right Reverend Francisco Garcia Diego, the Bishop of California, before the separation of Upper California from the Republic of Mexico, it seems to the umpire that a fair proportion of it ought now and since the 30th of May, 1848, to be paid to the claimants, who in his opinion are the direct successors of that Bishop, as far as Upper California is concerned.

The "Pious Fund of the Californias" was the results of donations made by various private persons for the purpose of establishing, supporting and maintaining Roman Catholic missions in California, and for converting to the Roman Catholic faith the heathens of that region. The disbursements of the proceeds of these donations was entrusted by the donors to the Society of Jesus. The object of the donors was without doubt principally the advancement of the Roman Catholic religion. The donations were made by private persons for particular and expressed objects and had nothing public, political or national in their character. Once permission was granted to the Jesuit fathers Salvatierra and Kühu to establish missions in California, to take charge of the conversion to Christianity of the heathens, and to solicit alms for that purpose, it does not seem that the Spanish Government assisted them with any considerable sums, if any at all, and certainly with not so much as almost any Government would have considered itself bound to furnish for the benefit of a region over which it claimed dominion.

It can be easily understood that the Spanish Government was very