It has long been felt, and is felt deeply to-day, that there are many kindly offices of state which this great nation may offer to weaker, feebler, and distressed peoples, for their good and for our glory; that it is not enough to be simply an example and an asylum, but to be a potent benefactor in a direct and personal way, teaching them that peace, not war, is the secret of growth and greatness. This, in effect, was the object of the peace congress, which was a cherished design of the administration, and to which Mr. Blaine was fully committed.
No wonder that such a project commanded the thought and enlisted the sympathies of such men as Garfield and his great premier; and Mr. Blaine tells us that it was the intention, resolved on before the fatal shot of July 2d, to invite all the independent governments of North and South America to meet in such a congress at Washington, on March 15, 1882, and the invitations would have been issued directly after the New England tour the president was not permitted to make. But the invitations were sent out by Mr. Blaine on the 22d of November, when in Mr. Arthur’s cabinet. It met with cordial approval in South American countries, and some of them at once accepted the invitations. But in six weeks President Arthur caused the invitations to be recalled, or suspended, and referred the whole matter to congress, where it was lost in debate, just as the Panama congress was wrecked when Mr. Clay was secretary of state over fifty years ago.
It was argued that such an assemblage of representatives from those various states would not only elevate their standard of civilization, and lead to the fuller development of a continent at whose wealth Humboldt was amazed, but it would also bring them nearer us and turn the drift of their European trade to our American shores. As it is, they have a coin balance of trade against us every year, of one hundred and twenty millions of dollars, and this money is shipped from our country to Europe, to pay for their immense purchases there. Their petroleum comes from us, but crosses the Atlantic twice before it gets to them, and the middle-men in Europe receive a larger profit on it than the producers of the oil in north-western Pennsylvania.
It may be both wise and prudent, in order to completeness of biography, to state two aspersions,—one of war, and the other of gain,—cast upon the policy of Mr. Blaine.
William Henry Trescot, in a published letter dated July 17, 1882, states “his knowledge of certain matters connected with Mr. Blaine’s administration as secretary of state”:—
“2. As to your designing a war, that supposition is too absurd for serious consideration. If you had any such purpose it was carefully concealed from me, and I left for South America with the impression that I would utterly fail in my mission if I did not succeed in obtaining an amicable settlement of the differences between the belligerents.
“3. In regard to the Cochet and Landreau claims, it is sufficient to say that you rejected the first, absolutely. As to the second, you instructed General Hurlbut to ask, if the proper time for such request should come, that Landreau might be heard before a Peruvian tribunal in support of his claim.
“General Hurlbut, although approving the justice of Landreau’s claim in his dispatch of Sept. 14, 1881, never brought it in any way to the notice of the Peruvian government. During my mission in South America, I never referred to it, so that, in point of fact, during your secretaryship the Landreau claim was never mentioned by ministers of the United States, either to the Chilian or Peruvian government. It could not, therefore, have affected the then pending diplomatic questions in the remotest degree.”
But for these he appeared and answered, in company with Mr. Trescot, before the House committee on foreign affairs, Hon. Charles G. Williams, of Wisconsin, chairman.
“He received a vindication,” is the simple report.