message dated 16th March, 1888,[24]
and on the subject of the reported failure of the Government of China to
finally agree to the same.

A few days after the copy of said resolution was received by me, and on
the 1st day of October, 1888, I sent a communication to the
Congress,[25] accompanying my approval of a bill prohibiting the return
of Chinese laborers to the United States, in which I supposed all the
information sought under the terms of the Senate resolution above
recited was fully supplied.

I beg to refer in this connection to Senate Executive Document No. 273,
first session of the Fiftieth Congress, and especially to page 3
thereof.

Believing the information contained in said document answered the
purposes of said Senate resolution, no separate and explicit answer was
made thereto.

But in my message of October 1, 1888, the tenor and purport of a cipher
dispatch from our minister in China to the Secretary of State, dated
September 21, 1888, was given instead of attempting to transmit a copy
of the same.

For greater precision, however, and with the object of answering in more
exact terms the resolution of the Senate, I transmit with this, in
paraphrase of the cipher, a copy of the said dispatch. I also transmit
copies of two notes which accompanied my message of October 1, 1888, one
from Mr. Shu Cheon Pon, charge d'affaires of the Chinese legation in
this city, dated September 25, 1888, to the Secretary of State, and the
other being the reply thereto by the Secretary of State, dated September
26, 1888, both of which will be found in Senate Executive Document No.
273.

The dispatch and notes above referred to comprise, in the language of
the Senate resolution, "all communications and correspondence" the
transmission of which is therein requested.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

[Footnote 24: See p. 610.]

[Footnote 25: See pp. 630-635.]

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _January 3, 1889_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:

I transmit herewith for the consideration of the Congress a report of
the Secretary of State, with accompanying papers, recommending an
appropriation for the relief of Japanese subjects injured and of the
families of Japanese subjects killed on the island of Ikisima in
consequence of target practice directed against the shore by the United
States man-of-war _Omaha_ in March, 1887.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _January 3, 1889_.

_To the Senate_:

I desire to sup