188 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



were based, may do a salutary work in substituting in the public mind, 

 or at the least some part of it, a real knowledge of the actual nature 

 and course of British policy toward the United States, for surmise and 

 suspicion as to the ''deep and dark designs" of Downing Street. 

 Whether British policy toward the United States in earlier times were 

 good or evil, or a mixture of both, knowledge and actual fact are better 

 than imagination and legend, and the substitution, so far as it can be 

 effected, may do something to clarify future relations. Moreover, 

 such a publication as is proposed is not likely to be undertaken by any 

 one else. The correspondence which passed between the American 

 Secretary of State and the American minister in London, and also that 

 which passed between the latter and the British Foreign Secretary and 

 that which passed between the American Secretary of State and the 

 British minister in Washington, are matters which the United States 

 government may appropriately publish, and of which, indeed, it has 

 in past times published a large part; but it would not be within its 

 proper functions to print the correspondence of the British minister 

 with his chief in London or with the governor-general of Canada or 

 other British subjects, and the British government is known to have 

 no intention of doing so. Mr. Balfour, however, when Foreign Secre- 

 tary, expressed entire willingness that the volumes of correspondence 

 preserved among the Foreign Office Papers at the Public Record Office 

 should be used for the purpose indicated, and it is not apprehended 

 that any subsequent secretary would be likely to take a different view. 



The American series in the Foreign Office Papers will undoubtedly 

 supply the main substance of the proposed publication, and will pre- 

 sent no other difficulties than such as arise from their great extent, 

 which must be provided against by suitable compression. But in 

 many cases, and sometimes systematically, ministers wrote private 

 letters to their chief, in which they often expressed themselves more 

 freely and more interestingly than in the official series of despatches. 

 These letters did not usually go into the official files of the Foreign Of- 

 fice, but remained in the possession of the Secretary, who took them 

 with him when he went out of office — though several groups of them 

 have in modern times come back into the possession of the public and 

 are now in the Public Record Office. Since such correspondence, when 

 it can be found, or that which ministers maintained with friends or 

 relatives in Great Britain, is often more illuminating than the official 

 despatches, it seemed a duty to hunt for it, and secure copies of what 

 might be available. 



The results of the expedition in this particular respect, up to the date 

 at which this report ends, have been meager. Everyone has been 

 most obliging, but it does not appear that, with one important ex- 

 ception, much correspondence of the earlier ministers in Washington 

 is extant in private hands. That exception consists of the abundant 

 papers of Sir Charles Bagot, who admirably represented Great Britain 



