dent, who has had repeated and even recent assurances that the c plete evacuation of Mexico by the French will be consummated at t periods mentioned, or earlier if compatible with climatical, military, and other conditions." Mr. Seward, Sec. of State, to Mr. Campbell, Oct. 25, 1866; MSS. Inst., Mex. As to proceedings in Mexico under French occupation, see Mr. Seward's report, As to subsequent proceedings in Mexico, see Senate Ex. Doc. No. 20, 40th Cong., "The revolution which recently occurred in Mexico was followed by the accession of the successful party to power and the installation of its chief, General Porfirio Diaz, in the Presidential office. It has been the custom of the United States, when such changes of Government have heretofore occurred in Mexico, to recognize and enter into official relations with the de facto Government as soon as it should appear to have the approval of the Mexican people, and should manifest a disposition to adhere to the obligations of treaties and international friendship. In the present case such official recognition has been deferred by the occurrences on the Rio Grande border, the records of which have been already communicated to each house of Congress, in answer to their respective resolutions of inquiry. Assurances have been received that the authorities at the seat of the Mexican Government have both the disposition and the power to prevent and punish such unlawful invasions and depredations. It is earnestly to be hoped that events may prove these assurances to be well founded. The best interests of both countries require the maintenance of peace upon the border, and the development of commerce between the two Republics. (See infra, § 70.) "It is gratifying to add that this temporary interruption of official relations has not prevented due attention by the representatives of the United States in Mexico to the protection of American citizens, so far as practicable. Nor has it interfered with the prompt payment of the amounts due from Mexico to the United States under the treaty of July 4, 1868, and the awards of the joint commission. While I do not anticipate an interruption of friendly relations with Mexico, yet I cannot but look with some solicitude upon continuance of border disorders as exposing the two countries to initiations of popular feeling and mischances of action which are naturally unfavorable to complete amity. Firmly determined that nothing shall be wanting on my part to promote a good understanding between the two nations, I yet must ask the attention of Congress to the actual occurrences on the border, that the lives and property of our citizens may be adequately protected and peace preserved." President Hayes, First Annual Message, 1877. "Since the resumption of diplomatic relations with Mexico, correspondence has been opened, and still continues, between the two Governments upon the various questions which at one time seemed to endanger their relations. While no formal agreement has been reached as to the troubles on the border, much has been done to repress and diminish them. The effective force of United States troops on the Rio Grande, by a strict and faithful compliance with instructions, has done much to remove the sources of dispute, and it is now understood that a like force of Mexican troops on the other side of the river is also making an energetic movement against the marauding Indian tribes. This Government looks with the greatest satisfaction upon every evidence of strength in the national authority of Mexico, and upon every effort put forth to prevent or to punish incursions upon our territory. Reluctant to assume any action or attitude in the control of these incursions, by military movements across the border, not imperatively demanded for the protection of the lives and property of our own citizens, I shall take the earliest opportunity, consistent with the proper discharge of this plain duty, to recognize the ability of the Mexican Government to restrain effectively violations of our territory. It is proposed to hold next year an international exhibition in Mexico, and it is believed that the display of the agricultural and manufacturing products of the two nations will tend to better understanding and increased commercial intercourse between their people." President Hayes, Second Annual Message, 1878. "As the relations between the Government of the United States and that of Mexico happily grow more amicable and intimate, it is but natural that a disposition should in like mauner develop itself between the citizens of the respective countries to seek new means of fostering their material interests, and that the ties which spring from commercial interchange should tend to grow and strengthen with the growing and strengthening spirit of good-will which animates both peoples. That this spirit exists is one of the most evident proofs that the frank and conciliatory policy of the United States towards Mexico has borne and is beating good fruit. It is especially visible in the rapidly extending desire on the part of the citizens of this country to take an active share in the prosecution of those industrial enterprises for which the magnificent resources of Mexico offer so broad and promising a field, and in the responsive and increasing disposition which is manifest on the part of the Mexican people to welcome such projects. No fact in the historical relations of the two great Republics of the northern continent is more naught with happy promises for both, and it is a source of especial gratifleation to this Government that the jealousies and distrusts which have at times in the past clouded the perfect course of the mutual relations of the two Governments are thus yielding to the wore wholesome spirit of reprocal tankness and cortidence "It seems to me proper at this time, when a new. Administration has constitutionally and peacefully come into power in Mexico, devoted to fulfilling and extending the just policy of its predecessor, to call your attention to those general precepts which, in the judgment of the Presi dent, should govern the relations between the two Republics, and to bear testimony to which will be your most important duty as the diplomatic representative of the United States. "The record of the last fifteen years must have removed from the minds of the enlightened statesmen of Mexico any possibly lingering doubt touching the policy of the United States toward her sister Republic. That policy is one of faithful and impartial recognition of the independence and the integrity of the Mexican nation. At this late day it needs no disclaimer on our part of the existence of even the faintest desire in the United States for territorial extension south of the Rio Grande. The boundaries of the two Republics have been long settled in conformity with the best jurisdictional interests of both. The line of demarkation is not conventional merely. It is more than that. It separates a Spanish-American people from a Saxon-American people. It divides one great nation from another with distinct and natural finality. The increasing prosperity of both commonwealths can only draw into closer union the friendly feeling, the political sympathy, and the correlated interests which their history and neighborhood have created and encouraged. In all your intercourse with the Mexican Government and people it must be your chiefest endeavor correctly to reflect this firm conviction of your Government. "It has been the fortunate lot of this country that long years of peace and prosperity-of constant devotion to the arts and industries which make the true greatness of a nation-have given to the United States an abundance of skilled labor, a wealth of active and competent enterprise, and a large accumulation of capital, for which even its own vast resources fail to give full scope for the untiring energy of its citizens. It is but natural, therefore, that a part of this great store of national vitality should seek the channels which are offered by the wonderful and scarcely developed resources of Mexico, and that American enterprise and capital should tend to find their just employment in building up the internal prosperity of that Republic on like firm bases, and in opening new commercial relationship between the two countries. "It is a source of profound gratification to the Government of the United States that the political condition of Mexico is so apparently and assuredly in the path of stability, and the administration of its constitutional Government so regular, that it can offer to foreign capital that just and certain protection without which the prospect even of extravagant profit will fail to tempt the extension of safe and enduring commercial and industrial enterprise. It is still more gratifying that with a full comprehension of the great political and social advantages of such a mode of developing the material resources of the country, the Government of Mexico cordially lends its influence to the spirit of welcome and encouragement with which the Mexican people seem disposed to greet the importation of wealth and enterprise in their midst. The progress now making in this direction by the National Government of Mexico is but an earnest of the great good which may be accomplished when the intimate and necessary relations of the two countries and peoples are better understood than now. To conduce to this better understanding must be your constant labor. While, therefore, carefully avoiding all appearance of advocacy of any individual undertaking which citizens of the United States may desire to initiate in Mexico, you will take every opportunity which you may deem judicious to make clear the spirit and motive which control this movement in the direction of developing Mexican resources, and will impress upon the Government of Mexico the earnest wish and hope felt by the people and Government of this country that these resources may be multiplied and rendered fruitful for the primary benefit of the Mexican people themselves; that the forms of orderly, constitutional, and stable government may be strengthened as domestic wealth increases and as the conservative spirit of widely distributed and permanent vested interests is more and more felt; that the administration of the Mexican finances, fostered by these healthful tendencies, may be placed on a firm basis; that the rich sections of the great territory of the Republic may be brought into closer intercommunication; in a word, that Mexico may quickly and beneficially attain the place toward which she is so manifestly tending as one of the most powerful, well-ordered, and prosperous states in the harmonious system of western Republics. "In future dispatches more detailed instructions will be given you touching certain points of interest to the two Governments in the direc tion of an enlarged reciprocal trade and interchange of commodities. It is my present design simply to acquaint you with the President's views and feeling toward Mexico and the spirit which will animate his policy." Mr. Blaine, Sec. of State, to Mr. Morgan, June 1, 1881; MSS. Inst., Mex.; For. "I had hardly completed my instruction to you of the 16th instant, No. 138, when information reached me from the United States minister at the Guatemalan capital, placing in a still graver light the condition. of the relations between Mexico and Guatemala, touching the possession of the territory of Soconusco. In fact, so serious is the apprehension caused in the mind of the President by these untoward reports, that I feel constrained to supplement my previous instructions to you on the subject with even more of energy and succinctness. "It appears now as though the movement on the part of Mexico was not merely to obtain possession of the disputed territory, but to precip itate hostilities with Guatemala, with the ultimate view of extending I her borders by actual conquest. Large bodies of Mexican troops are said to be on their way to Soconusco, and the exigency is reported to be so alarming that plans for national defense are uppermost in the minds of President Barrios and his advisers. Frequent border raids into Guatemalan territory have inflamed the passions of the residents of the frontier country, and the imminence of a collision is very great. Of the possible consequence of war it may be premature to speak, but the information possessed by the Department intimates the probable extension of hostilities to the other Central American states and their eventual absorption into the Mexican federal system. "I cannot believe it possible that these designs can seriously enter into the policy of the Mexican Government. Of late years the American movement toward fixity of boundaries and abstention from territorial enlargement has been so marked, and so necessarily a part of the continental policy of the American Republics, that any departure therefrom becomes necessarily a menace to the interests of all. "This is a matter touching which the now established policy of the Government of the United States to refrain from territorial acquisition gives it the right to use its friendly offices in discouragement of any movement on the part of neighboring States which may tend to disturb the balance of power between them. More than this, the maintenance of this honorable attitude of example involves to a large extent a moral obligation on our part, as the strong but disinterested friend of all our sister states, to exert our influence for the preservation of the national life and integrity of any one of them against aggression, whether this may come from abroad or from another American Republic. "No state in the American system has more unequivocally condemned the forcible extension of domain, at the expense of a weaker neighbor, than Mexico herself; and no state more heartily concurs in the condemnation of filibusterism in every form than the United States. It is clearly to the mutual interest of the two countries, to whose example the success of republican institutions on this continent is largely due, that their policy in this regard should be identical and unmistakable. "As long as the broadened international diplomacy of our day affords peaceable recourse to principles of equity and justice in settlement of controversies like that between Mexico and Guatemala, the outbreak of a war between them would, in the judgment of the President, involve much farther-reaching results than the mere transitory disturbance of the entente cordiale so much desired by the United States Government between all the American Republics. Besides the transfers of territory which might follow as enforced compensation for the costs of a war, it is easy to foresee the serious complications and consequent dangers to the American system, should an opening be afforded to foreign powers to throw their influence or force into the scale in determination of the contest. Mexico herself has but too recently recovered from the effects of such a foreign constraint not to appreciate at its full force the con |