[23:2] The Swedish members were, the Premier, Boström, the Minister for Foreign Affairs Mr. Lagerheim, and State Secretary Husberg. The Norwegian members were, Prime Ministers Blehr and Qvam, and State Secretaries Knudsen and Ibsen
[24:1] [N:o 3] These latter decisions in the Communiqué, which are conclusive in explaining the later standpoint taken by the Swedish government, are, of course, omitted by Nansen.
[25:1] The same difference also occurs in the drafts of laws which have been proposed at more recent dates.
[26:1] It is manifest that it is on the part of Sweden that the idea of identical laws has arisen. In Norway they afterwards complained, especially the Radicals, of that »Massive instrument.»
[27:1] In the debate in the Storthing on April 27:th 1904 Mr Carl Berner said he had heard that Mr Blehr’s explanation in the Storthing respecting; the Communiqué before its publication was made known to the Swedish government: that the latter, neither previously, nor later on, had made any objections to it. To this State Secretary Michelsen sharply replied, that »Mr Blehr’s explanation was only the explanation of the Norwegian government on the subject of the Communiqué.»
[27:2] Further affirmation is given by Mr Ibsen’s declaration in the Storthing, that the negotiations fell through in consequence of Mr Boström’s opposition to the request of the Norwegian delegates that in the Communiqué it should be mentioned that the identical laws were to be valid only »so long as the present system of foreign administration existed.» When, finally, the Norwegians consented to omit this condition, it could only have been their intention that the laws should only be valid until by mutual consent they were rescinded. Other explanations in the Storthing of the divergencies of opinions on this point are to all intents unacceptable.
IV.
The reception of the Communiqué in Sweden and Norway. Even without taking into consideration the indistinctness that was supposed to characterise the Communiqué, its general contents roused no unanimous approbation. In the Swedish Diet in May 1903, during a debate, serious doubts were rife, and it was emphatically declared that the Consular Question must be solved simultaneously with the Foreign Minister Question as resolved by the Diet in 1893. The Second Chamber (lower Home) was more leniently inclined towards the negotiations, but it nevertheless referred to the resolution of 1893.
Nor did it get a promising reception in Norway at first. It was known there that one of the chief stipulations of the negotiations had been the cessation of the agitation for a separate Minister of Foreign affairs. Meanwhile after the publication of the Communiqué, the Norwegian Radicals immediately expressed their opinions at their large meeting by again solemnly entering this old claim on their party programme.
However when the agitation for a new election for the Storthing was started later on in the year, there was a strong inclination towards negotiating, and even Björnson, among others, warmly advocated the cause of the negotiation programme, and that too, in opposition to the Radical Minister Blehr, who, though having introduced the negotiations, was suspected of being but a lukewarm partisan to the cause. The party for negotiation conquered, and was in the majority in the Storthing, though not in great numbers. The issue could scarcely be attributed to the Swedish proposal alone, but also in no slight degree to the miserable, impoverished condition to which the country had been brought by the old Radical government. Mr Blehr resigned in the autumn 1903, after the elections. Professor Hagerup, the leader of the Conservatives, then became Prime Minister at Christiania in companionship with D:r Ibsen as Prime Minister at Stockholm. The old Radical party retired from the leadership, but exercised, by its criticising, suspicious attitude, a powerful influence on the progress of the negotiations, and that too, in no favourable direction.