DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES. 



193 



borders, and useful to our own country by affording a 

 coveted opportunity for extending its commerce and 

 securing enlarged fields for our products and manufact- 

 ures, instead of friendly intervention here and there, 

 patching up a treaty between two countries to-day , 

 securing a truce between two others to-morrow, it 

 was apparent to the President that a more compre- 

 hensive plan should be adopted if war was to cease in 

 the Western Hemisphere. It was evident that certain 

 European powers had in the past been interested in 

 promoting strife between the Spanish- American coun- 

 tries, and might be so interested in the future, while 

 the interest of the United States was wholly and 

 always on the side of peace with all our American 

 neighbors, and peace between them all. 



GENERAL GARFIELD'S IDEAS. It was, therefore, the 

 President's belief that mere incidental and partial ad- 

 justments failed to attain the desired end, and that a 

 common agreement of peace, permanent in its charac- 

 ter and continental in its extent, should if possible be 

 secured. To effect this end it had been resolved, be- 

 fore the fatal shot of July 2d, to invite all the inde- 

 pendent governments of North, and South America to 

 meet in a Peace Congress at Washington. The date 

 to be assigned was March 15, 1882, and the invita- 

 tions would have been issued directly after the New 

 England tour, which the President was not permitted 

 to make. Nearly six months later, on the 22d of No- 

 vember, President Garfield's successor issued the in- 

 vitations for the Peace Congress, in the same spirit 

 and scope and with the same limitations and restric- 

 tions that had been originally designed. As soon as 

 the project was understood in South America, it re- 

 ceived a most cordial approval, and some of the coun- 

 tries, not following the leisurely routine of diplomatic 

 correspondence, made haste to accept the invitation. 

 There can be no doubt that within a brief period all 

 the nations invited would have formally signified their 

 readiness to attend the Congress ; but in six weeks 

 after the invitations had gone to the several countries 

 President Arthur caused them to be recalled, or at 

 least suspended. The subject was afterward referred 

 to Congress in a special message, in which the Presi- 

 dent ably vindicated his constitutional right to assem- 

 ble the Peace Congress ; but expressed a desire that 

 the legislative department of the Government should 

 give an opinion upon the expediency of the step be- 

 fore the Congress should be allowed to convene. 

 Meanwhile the nations that received the invitations 

 were in an embarrassing situation, for, after they were 

 asked by the President to come, they found that the 

 matter had been reconsidered and referred to another 

 department of the Government. This change was 

 universally accepted as a practical though indirect 

 abandonment of the project, for it was not, from the 

 first, probable that Congress would take any action 

 whatever upon the subject. The good-will and wel- 

 come of the invitation would be destroyed by a long 

 debate in the Senate and House, in which tne ques- 

 tion would necessarily become intermixed with per- 

 sonal and party politics, and the project would be 

 ultimately wrecked from the same cause and by the 

 same process that destroyed the usefulness of the Pa- 

 nama Congress more than fifty years ago, when Mr. 

 Clay was Secretary of State. The time for congres- 

 sional action would have been after the Peace Confer- 

 ence had closed its labors. The conference could not 

 agree upon anything that would be binding upon the 

 United States unless assented to as a treaty by the 

 Senate or enacted into a law by both branches. The 

 assembling of the Peace Conference, as President Ar- 

 thur so well demonstrated, was not in derogation of 

 any right or prerogative of the Senate or House. The 

 money necessary for the expenses of the conference 

 which would not have exceeded $10,000 could not 

 with reason or propriety have been refused by Con- 

 gress. If it had been refused, patriotism and philan- 

 thropy would have promptly supplied it. 



THE PEACB CONGRESS. Such friendly interven- 

 tions as the proposed Peace Congress, and as the at- 



VOL. xxn. 13 A 



tempt to restore peace between Chili and Peru, fall 

 within the line of both duty and interest on the part 

 of the United States. Nations, like individuals, often 

 require the aid of a common friend to restore relations 

 of amity. Peru and Chili are in deplorable need of 

 a wise and powerful mediator. Though exhausted by 

 war, they are unable to make peace, and unless they 

 shall be' aided by the intervention of a friend, polit- 

 ical anarchy and social disorder will come to the con- 

 quered, and. evils scarcely less serious to the conqueror. 

 Our own Government can not take the ground that it 

 will not offer friendly intervention to settle troubles 

 between American countries, unless at the same time 

 it freely concedes to European governments the right 

 of such intervention, and thus consents to a practical 

 destruction of the Monroe doctrine and an unlimited 

 increase of European and monarchical influence on 

 this continent. The late special envoy to Peru and 

 Chili, Mr. Trescott, gives it as his deliberate and pub- 

 lished conclusion that if the instructions under which 

 he set out upon his mission had not been revoked, 

 peace between those angry belligerents would have 

 been established as the result of his labors necessa- 

 rily to the great benefit of the United States. If our 

 Government does not resume its efforts to secure peace 

 in South America, some European government will be 

 forced to perform that friendly office. The United 

 States can not play between two nations the part of 

 dog in the manger. We must perform the duty of 

 humane intervention ourselves, or give way to foreign 

 governments that are willing to accept the responsi- 

 bility of the great trust, and secure the enhanced in- 

 fluence and numberless advantages resulting from 

 such a philanthropic and beneficent course. 



A BRIGHT PICTURE. A most significant and im- 

 portant result would have followed the assembling of 

 the Peace Congress. A friendship and an intimacy 

 would have been established between the states of 

 North and South America which would have demand- 

 ed and enforced a closer commercial connection. A 

 movement in the near future as the legitimate out- 

 growth of assured peace would in all probability have 

 been a great commercial conference at the city of Mex- 

 ico or at Rio Janeiro, whose deliberations would be 

 directed to a better system of trade on the two conti- 

 nents. To such a conference the Dominion of Can- 

 ada could properly be asked to send representatives, 

 as that Government is allowed by Great Britain a very 

 large liberty in regulating its commercial relations. 

 In the Peace Congress, to be composed of independ- 

 ent governments, the Dominion could not have taken 

 anv part, and was consequently not invited. From 

 this trade conference of the two continents the United 

 States could hardly have failed to gain great advan- 

 tages. At present the commercial relations of this 

 country with the Spanish-American countries, both 

 continental and insular, are unsatisfactory and un- 

 profitable. Indeed, those relations are absolutely op- 

 pressive to the financial interests of the Government 

 and people of the United States. In our current ex- 

 changes it requires about $120,000,000 to pay the bal- 

 ance which Spanish America brings against us every 

 year. This amount is fifty per cent more than the 

 average annual product of the gold and silver mines 

 of the United States during the past five years. This 

 vast sum does not of course go to Spanish America in 

 coin, but it goes across the ocean in coin or its equiv- 

 alent to pay European countries for manufactured ar- 

 ticles which thev furnish to Spanish America, a large 

 proportion of which should be furnished by the manu- 

 facturers of the United States. 



WORTH A GREAT STRUGGLE. In no event could 

 harm have resulted from the assembling of the Peace 

 Congress. Failure was next to impossible. Success 

 might be regarded as certain. The subject to be dis- 

 cussed was peace, and how it can be permanently pre- 

 served in North and South America. The labors of 

 the Congress would have probably ended in a well- 

 digested system of arbitration 1 , under which all future 

 troubles between American states could be quickly, 



