Mr. Blaine to Mr. Stevens.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,

Washington, April 26, 1890.

SIR: I have to acknowledge with gratification the receipt of your number 22 of the 9th instant, in which you communicate the affirmative response of Hawaii to the invitation by which that Government was requested to send a Delegate to the Pan-American Conference.

The Conference has adjourned- and while, therefore, the participation of Hawaii therein by her distinguished Delegate, Mr. Carter, is not now possible, the action which you report illustrates anew the good will existing between

the two countries.

As soon as Mr. Carter shall notify the Department of his appointment, he will be furnished with copies of the conclusions of the Conference, with a view to the accession of Hawaii thereto, to such extent as may be found possible and in the interest of Hawaii as a member of the American family of States.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

JOHN L. STEVENS, Esq., etc.,

JAMES G. BLAINE.

Honolulu.

ORGANIZATION OF THE CONFERENCE.

SESSION OF OCTOBER 2, 1889.

The Conference assembled in the Diplomatic Chamber of the Department of State, Washington, D. C., at noon on the 2d of October, 1889, the following Delegates being present:

For Bolivia:

Mr. Juan F. Velarde.

For Brazil:

Mr. Lafayette Rodrigues Pereira.

Mr. J. G. do Amaral Valente.

Mr. Salvador de Mendonça.

For Columbia:

Mr. José M. Hurtado.

Mr. Carlos Martinez Silva.

Mr. Climaco Calderón.

For Costa Rica:

Mr. Manuel Aragón.

For Guatemala:

Mr. Fernando Crux.

For Honduras:

Mr. Jerónimo Zelaya.

For Mexico:

Mr. Matias Romero.

For Nicaragua:

Mr. Horatio Guzman.

For Peru:

Mr. F. C. C. Zegarra.

For Salvador:

Mr. Jacinto Castellanos.
For the United States:

Mr. John B. Henderson.
Mr. Clement Studebaker.

Mr. Cornelius N. Bliss.
Mr. T. Jefferson Coolidge.
Mr. John F. Hanson.

Mr. William Henry Trescot.

Mr. Morris M. Estee.

Mr. Henry G. Davis.

Mr. Charles R. Flint.

For Uruguay:

Mr. Alberto Nin.

For Venezuela:

Mr. Nicanor Bolet Peraza.

Mr. José Andrade.

The Delegates were introduced to the Honorable James G. Blaine, Secretary of State, who delivered the following address of welcome:

ADDRESS OF WELCOME BY MR. BLAINE.

Gentlemen of the International American Conference: Speaking for the Government of the United States, I bid you welcome to this capital. Speaking for the people of the United States, I bid you welcome to every section and to every State of the Union. You come in response to an invitation extended by the President on the special authorization of Congress. Your presence here is no ordinary event. It signifies much to the people of all America to-day. It may signify far more in the days to come. No conference of nations has ever assembled to consider the welfare of territorial possessions so vast and to contemplate the possibilities of a future so great

and so inspiring. Those now sitting within these walls are empowered to speak for nations whose borders are on both the great oceans, whose northern limits are touched by the Arctic waters for a thousand miles beyond the Straits of Behring and whose southern extension furnishes human habitations farther below the equator than is elsewhere possible on the globe.

The aggregate territorial extent of the nations here represented falls but little short of 12,000,000 of square miles-more than three times the area of all Europe, and but little less than one-fourth part of the globe; while in respect to the power of producing the articles which are essential to human life and those which minister to life's luxury, they constitute even a larger proportion of the entire world. These great possessions to-day have an aggregate population approaching 120,000,000, but if peopled as densely as the average of Europe, the total number would exceed 1,000,000,000. While considerations of this character must inspire Americans, both South and North, with the liveliest anticipations of future grandeur and power, they must also impress them with a sense of the gravest responsibility touching the character and development of their respective nationalities.

The Delegates I am addressing can do much to establish permanent relations of confidence, respect, and friendship between the nations which they represent. They can show to the world an honorable, peaceful conference of eighteen independent American Powers, in which all shall meet together on terms of absolute equality; a conference in which there can be no attempt to coerce a single Delegate against his

own conception of the interests of his nation; a conference which will permit no secret understanding on any subject, but will frankly publish to the world all its conclusions; a conference which will tolerate no spirit of conquest, but will aim to cultivate an American sympathy as broad as both continents; a conference which will form no selfish alliance against the older nations from which we are proud to claim inheritance-a conference, in fine, which will seek nothing, propose nothing, endure nothing that is not, in the general sense of all the Delegates, timely and wise and peaceful.

And yet we can not be expected to forget that our common fate has made us inhabitants of the two continents which, at the close of four centuries, are still regarded beyond the seas as the New World. Like situations beget like sympathies and impose like duties. We meet in firm belief that the nations of America ought to be and can be more helpful, each to the other, than they now are, and that each will find advantage and profit from an enlarged intercourse with the others.

We believe that we should be drawn together more closely by the highways of the sea, and that at no distant day the railway systems of the north and south will meet upon the isthmus and connect by land routes the political and commercial capitals of all America.

We believe that hearty co-operation, based on hearty confidence, will save all American States from the burdens and evils which have long and cruelly afflicted the older nations of the world.

We believe that a spirit of justice, of common and