trade; but my services accepted, I have gone to work to study the American commercial situation, searching for the causes of its obstruction and demonstrating the only reforms which could remedy them.

I found an anæmic trade, a very ill patient, whom it was necessary to bring back to health by means of the treatment my intelligence might suggest. I made the diagnosis, and demonstrated the gravity of the case, but it appears that the family so much interested in the improvement of the patient does not wish the opinion of a physician, but unconditional and complimentary encomiums upon the prosperous state of the patient. Therefore the delegate having the floor was evidently not the one called upon to act in the latter capacity, and if there be errors in the question as it now stands they are due to my appointment and not to the freedom of my judgment, which will be exercised with independent frankness in all matters submitted to my examination.

American trade would never be fully considered without the right to discuss national affairs as far as they serve to obstruct it. I have had to study the products destined to establish new currents of trade and the manner in which they can freely circulate in the interior of the continent. If, therefore, I have lingered with the tariff of the United States I have done nothing but comply with a duty and exercise a right with which the Conference has clothed me. The Argentine delegation has alway's shown a great respect for the sovereignties of friendly nations, but this sentiment can not restrict the examination which, on the other hand, is imposed on me. The internal trade of the United States has merited from the delegate who has the floor naught but enthusiastic praise and wishes for its prosperity.

But the honorable General Henderson confounds my position with that of an accuser, and I repel his words officially and personally. If any unfounded and gratuitous accusation results from the clash of our ideas, it is that so undeservedly directed at me by the honorable delegate from the United States. I have accused no country on earth. I have not designated as egotistical the political

economy of the United States. I appeal to my honorable colleagues who have heard me, and, as a last resort, to the minutes themselves. The Argentine delegation is not an accusing party. If the honorable delegate feels aggrieved by the opinions I have expressed on this point, he could have refrained from raising it in our discussion, but by no means attribute to them the sense of his own. I have considered a system; I have not attacked a nation. Did I need an example to prove that tariffs can not be sustained by feelings of national pride and dignity, I would only have to remind him of what is demonstrated by contemporaneous scientific history. Unofficially, and not upholding principles imposed by any conference, the Hon. Mr. Gladstone has just dropped the pen with which he opened his polemics on the tariffs of the United States, and the eminent statesman who hears me from the chair, the Hon. James G. Blaine, replied thereto, demonstrating the greatness of his talent and the power of his dialectics. Having touched, although very lightly, upon free trade and protection, I can not but convey to him my sincere congratulations. The task of Gladstone was to my mind easier than that undertaken with such brilliant erudition by the honorable Secretary of State.

I am about to close. My distinguished friend, Mr. Henderson, allows himself to be misled by the hope that Chili and the Argentine will some day accept his ideas. In my opinion the United States will some day espouse our cause, as we are not protectionists and they are nearing the stage of growth when they can not longer be. The United States will some day rule the commerce of the world with their manufactures, and when I see the seas filled with their merchant marine, the smoke of their forges quadruplicated and their high chimneys multiplied until they obscure the sun with their breath, I shall not hesitate in exclaiming: The United States have reformed their tariff and have renounced protection forever.

My distinguished friends of the inviting delegation may not agree for the time being with the economic opinions I have expressed, but they will accept, I hope, the wishes which, without hesitation or reservation, I entertain for the prosperity of their illustrious and great nation.

SESSION OF APRIL 7, 1890.

The FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT: Taking up the order of the day, the discussion upon the reports of the Committee on Customs Union will continue.

REMARKS OF MR. PRICE.

Mr PRICE. Mr. President-Gentlemen: I was a witness. in our last session of the impatience manifested by several members of the Conference, especially by the Hon. Mr. Estee, a delegate from the United States, to close the debate on this question of Customs Union. I do not propose, consequently, to inflict on you a long speech on this subject, which most probably would produce no modification in your opinions, as each one seems to me to have definitely made up his mind on this subject.

But not having had the honor to take part in your previous debates on this important and interesting question, I beg of you to permit me to express to you in as few words as possible the reasons for the vote which I am about to cast on the report submitted for our deliberation.

In reality, we find ourselves in the presence of two reports; one of the majority of the committee charged to examine the question, which proposes to us to recommend to our respective Governments to make partial reciprocity treaties with one or more American States, if they have any interest in so doing, while the other report presented by the minority, concludes with a pure, simple, and undisguised rejection of the proposition of a Customs Union.

Putting aside the details of organization, which are more or less complicated according to the relative situations of the nations which form themselves into a customs union, we will admit, with the majority of the committee, that the two characteristic signs of such an organization are: the uniformity of customs tariff with association for the division of products and absolute, free exchange in the interior of the territory of the Union. The report concludes, after this explanation, that there is no use to constitute between the nations represented in this Conference

a real Customs Union with proportionate division of duties levied.

Such a Union, it says, would necessitate not only a partial sacrifice of the sovereignty of American nations, but more radical changes in their respective constitutions than they would be willing to accept.

I adhere to this opinion, but I think that its natural consequence should be the pure and simple rejection of any project of Customs Union between the nations of America, as the report of the minority proposes.

Nevertheless, the majority is of the opinion that in place of this real Customs Union, "free trade between the American nations of all their natural or manufactured products; that is to say, absolute reciprocity, is acceptable in principle, because all measures which tend to the freedom of commerce must necessarily increase the traffic and the development of the material resources of the countries. which accept this system, and a Customs Union in this sense would probably give as favorable results as those which are obtained by free trade between the States of this Union."

One is astonished after having read this declaration to find that the report concludes in the rejection of a Customs Union thus conceived. If the results were to necessarily develop the material resources of the States which accepted this unlimited system of reciprocity, why should we hesitate to adopt so beneficial a system?

If it is true that the obstacle was the purely fiscal interest attaching to the custom-houses of our respective nations, it could easily be avoided by means of the fixing in each State of an import duty ad valorem, proportioned to its financial necessities, but of which the rate should remain fixed and invariable for all the natural or manufactured products coming from the countries included in the Union; there, truly, where there is no differential tariff there is no protectionist régime.

I do not think either that the obstacle lies in the repugnance which the United States of America might have in partially giving up their policy of industrial protection.

As the Hon. Mr. Henderson, a delegate from the United

States, has frankly stated, this vast and beautiful country has attained, as far as agricultural and manufacturing prosperity is concerned, a height from whence it can defy all competition; it has arrived to-day at the third stage of development of the public fortune; it now aims to the extension of its foreign commerce; it aspires to take on the great. market of the world the high position which its formidable manufacturing power assures it. We know that the American customs furnish an excess of revenue of seventy millions of dollars to the needs of the Federal Treasury. We have also been shown that this sum is larger than the total of duties levied on all the importations from other nations of the New World. It would, therefore, be easy for the United States, I think, to consent to the sacrifices, light for them, which might be necessary to assure the formation of an American Customs Union, if such a Union be really desirable.

No! The obstacle is not there. It is entirely on account of the inequality of the economical situation of the different nations represented in this Conference.

In this development of public riches, which consists of three successive stages, as the honorable delegate, Mr. Henderson, has so well stated, agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, we have not all advanced at the same rate, we have not all reached the same level of national prosperity. Amongst all the nations represented around this table there is but one which has entirely passed beyond the first two stages, but one whose manufacturing industry has absolutely nothing to fear from a system of international free trade with the others. The others, for the most part, and in spite of the rapid progress accomplished during the last fifteen or twenty years, have hardly begun at the present time to confront their manufacturing problem; some of them, and amongst these to my real and sincere regret must be counted the country which I have the honor to represent-some of these have not even yet completely solved their agricultural problem; that portion of their territory lying fallow is infinitely larger than what it has been able to bring under cultivation.

We are consequently not in the same condition as those