Emperor vacated his office as soon as he heard that the Emperor had been dethroned, thought that one of the Mexican delegates was the only possible candidate which could have the support of the South American delegates, because, while Mexico is inhabited by the same race and having the same conditions as the South American Republics, she was by the great distance from her sisters and the scanty means of communication between them, entirely neutral to their differences and friendly to all; but the nucleus formed around the Argentine delegates would not be satisfied with a neutral Vice-President, and they desired one who was willing to act in accord with their views on the subject of arbitration and conquest. So when the time came to elect a Vice-President, the Argentine delegates, together with their friends, had as their candidate the Peruvian delegate, who was very well fitted for the position, as he had been partially educated in the United States, spoke English very well, had lived many years in this country, and was perfectly familiar with the same, besides being a man of great ability and remarkably good sense; while some of the other delegates, like the Chilian, Brazilian, and others, who opposed the preponderance of the Argentines, and could not see with indifference that they should have control of the Conference, tried to have a neutral delegate as VicePresident, and their choice was in favor of one of the Mexican repre

sentatives.

The election of the first Vice-President took place on December 6, 1889, and on the first ballot Señor Zegarra, the Peruvian representative, received six votes, a Mexican representative five, Señor Hurtado three votes, Señor Quintana and Señor Cruz one vote each, and nobody having obtained a majority, the question was presented whether some of the absent delegates had a right to vote, but finally it was decided to take another ballot the following day. At this ballot, which took place on December 7, 1889, Señor Zegarra and myself received eight votes each, and Señor Aragon, a delegate from Costa Rica, proposed that chance should decide which of the two should be first and second Vice-Presidents respectively.

A recess was taken and two ballots deposited in a box, one bearing the name of Señor Zegarra and the other mine. A ballot was drawn, bearing the name of Señor Zegarra, and he was thereupon declared first Vice-President.'

The Peruvian delegate, who knew well the programme of his friends, did not attend the Conference during the two days in which

'It may be interesting to know how the delegates voted on that occasion, and although the ballot was secret and I cannot be sure of the way in which each delegation voted, I think from what I knew and heard at the time that the most approximate version is the following: For Señor Zegarra, The Argentine Republic, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras; for myself, the United States, Brazil, Chili, Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Salvador, and Hayti.

the ballots were taken, but as I did not consider myself a candidate, I attended both meetings, but was not in the hall of the Conference when the ballot was taken on the second day.

As Mexico had two delegates, one of them intended to vote for his colleague, not as an honor to him personally, but to their country, which course would have been perfectly proper; but he was induced by me to give up his intention and the election was decided by lot. I had no desire to act as presiding officer of the Conference, because that would have curtailed considerably my freedom of action on the floor. Señor Zegarra made a model presiding officer.'

On that occasion an incident occurred, insignificant in itself, but which caused a misunderstanding that I do not think is yet fully dispelled. As the United States delegates were disposed to accept and support anything that their colleagues might determine upon in regard to the vice-presidency, as an act of courtesy towards them and in exchange for their having elected as President the Secretary of State, they thought that the Latin-American delegates would be more free to discuss and decide this point, which was a delicate one, being somewhat personal, if they consulted by themselves; and for this reason the United States delegates were not present in the room where their colleagues met. Their absence, however, was considered by some of the Latin-American delegates as an act of discourtesy, because they took as a want of consideration to them the fact of their not assembling in the same room with their colleagues, whereas the true reason was a desire to show consideration for their associates.

Right of Delegates to Express Personal Opinions.-Another incident which threatened to disturb the good understanding of the Conference was the view entertained by the Argentine delegation that the delegates should express only the official opinion of their Governments, and that personal views ought not to be taken into account, either in the Conference or in the committees. The law providing for the meeting

of the Conference had authorized each nation to send as many delegates as it thought proper, but prescribed at the same time that each country should have only one vote; so that whatever might have been the opinions of the delegates from any State, in casting their vote only one opinion was expressed, which was the opinion of the majority, and therefore the official opinion of their Government.

It was natural to suppose and to expect that each delegate would express the opinion of his Government contained in his instructions when the case under consideration was embraced in such instructions, or an opinion as nearly as possible in accord with the wishes and interests

1 In my answer to Señor Pierra, to which I have already alluded and which appears among the documents forming the Appendix to this paper, I give further details about the election of the Vice-Presidents.

of his country, as each one could form when he had not specific instructions on any particular question. In many cases the American Governments either did not give instructions to their delegates or gave them very broad ones, preferring that they should exercise their own personal judgment and discretion on such questions as might arise. To assert, therefore, that the delegates ought to express only the official opinion of their Governments was to interfere in a measure with the relations of the delegates with their respective Governments, and to limit their right to say what they thought proper. This opinion did not meet with favor in the Conference, since, while it arrived at no decision on this point, it never refused to hear any personal opinion, or contrary opinions from two or more members of the same delegation.

Appointment of Committees.-The appointment of the committees was a very important matter, since a great deal of the success of the Conference depended thereon, and, with a view to avoiding any unpleasantness among the delegates on this account, they agreed to request the President to appoint them. Mr. Blaine performed that duty without consulting any of the delegates, only exercising his own discretion on the subject. As I understand, Señor Quintana was the only man consulted as to his own wishes, believing that he would turn out to be a "punctilious gentleman," as Mr. Blaine expressed it. His preference was ascertained, and then he was placed on the Committee of General Welfare. I do not know that the appointment of the committees gave rise to any well-grounded complaint, or caused embarrassment in the transaction of the business which they had in charge. The only embarrassment I have heard of in the committees was caused by the discordant opinions of the delegates from one country who were members of the same committees, and by the fact that the United States delegates had no instructions from their Government, and could therefore express only their own personal views. In the Committee on Monetary Union there were two United States delegates who held opposite views in regard to the coining of silver, and this made it difficult for the other members of the committee to find out what was the view of the United States Government on this subject. I understand there was a similar difficulty, although in a less degree, in the Committee on Communications by Railways; but the most serious misunderstanding arose in the General Welfare Committee, which had the subject of arbitration in charge, because the United States member expressed personal views which were not shared by the other members of the committee.

Rules of the Conference.-The Conference, when organized, decided, very prudently, to frame a code of rules for its deliberations and decisions, and the committee appointed for that purpose took as a model the rules approved by the South American Congress that met at

Montevideo in 1888, which had the advantage of having been put in practice successfully at that congress. Señor Quintana, and a member of the Committee on Rules, who was also a member of that congress, was requested by the committee to prepare the rules and to support them in the discussion before the Conference.

The parliamentary practices of the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon nations being so widely different, the rules reported by the committee of seven, of whom six were Latin members and only one AngloSaxon member, met with great opposition on the part of the United States delegates. A long discussion of each article, which lasted for several weeks, ensued. This discussion, which was mainly sustained by the Argentine delegates, warmly supported by Señor Alfonso, the chairman of the committee, showed at once the firmness of character of both sets of delegates, and especially of the United States delegates, who were not quite disposed to accept the modifications suggested to them, even though these were not of much consequence. This was an indication of what was to happen later with more important subjects. The rules were finally approved substantially as they were presented by the committee.

Señor Quintana, conscious of his own merits, and influenced always by firm convictions, was never willing to yield even in such points as might be considered of a secondary nature, as in some cases it is quite desirable to do for the purpose of obtaining the cordial and spontaneous support of an assembly wherein, necessarily, different views exist. Tact, which in such a case consists in yielding on secondary points for the purpose of securing the principal ones, although frequently there are differences of opinion as to which are the principal and which the secondary points,-possibly, after all, is a characteristic of weaker minds.

Mr. Henderson, the Chairman of the United States delegation, possessed somewhat similar strong convictions, and for this reason the discussions which had the liveliest character, and which sometimes went so far as to be personal, were those which took place between this gentleman and Señor Quintana. The Argentine delegates, inspired by the great progress of their country, and having no political relations and no business of any importance with the United States, showed an independence which in every case was very laudable, but they sometimes, perhaps on account of their personal characteristics, displayed an extraordinary and exquisite susceptibility. Whatever may have been disagreeable in the discussions of the Conference was disposed of, however, in a satisfactory manner by the following remark of Mr. Henderson in closing the session: "If in that freedom of speech a word of acrimony has been used, let us now consider it expunged from the record, and resolve to forget it forever."

Soon after the Conference met, some newspapers in this country, prompted by jealous politicians at Buenos Ayres, began to attack the Argentine delegates with extraordinary and unjustifiable rudeness, even going so far as to say that they were paid agents of England acting with the purpose of preventing the success of the Conference. Such uncalled-for and ungrounded attacks caused, as was only natural, a strong reaction, by which the merits of those gentlemen were made plain and the reflections cast upon them were disposed of in so successful a manner that such insinuations were never again referred to. Any unpleasant feeling which these aspersions may have caused the Argentine delegates was certainly abundantly compensated for by the satisfaction they must have felt when they were so triumphantly and successfully vindicated.

The attitude of the Argentine delegates, who, during the discussions of the Conference, had frequent encounters with the United States delegates, especially with Mr. Henderson, and spoke of their country as being on a parallel with the United States, was of course a source of great satisfaction to many more patriotic than discreet SpanishAmericans, who did not realize the objects of the Conference and the best means to accomplish these objects to the advantage of the LatinAmerican nations. Not only the Argentine papers, but the papers of other Spanish-American countries, praised very highly the attitude of the Argentine delegates, and those who like myself had followed a different course were severely censured by Mexican papers, and I was criticised even by a distinguished Mexican writer. I had, therefore, to enter into a discussion with a prominent literary man of Mexico, who regretted that I did not assume the more than independent attitude of the Argentine delegates, and that discussion was ended by the Mexican Government stating that I had acted under their instructions and in a manner entirely satisfactory to them. I append extracts from a letter written by me at the time to my critic explaining my course.

Mr. William E. Curtis.-Although I realize how disagreeable it is to descend to personal matters, I think it indispensable, with a view to a better understanding of what happened in the Conference, to make some explanation of certain incidents of this nature. Mr. William E. Curtis, who had acted as Secretary and finally as a member of the South American Commission sent by President Arthur, in 1884, for the purpose of promoting trade with South America, was appointed by Mr. Blaine to take charge of the work preparatory to the meeting of the Conference, and more especially to supervise the excursion which the Government of the United States arranged in honor of the delegates.

According to the original plan of the Conference Mr. Curtis was to be Chief Secretary, or Executive Officer, with three Under-Secretaries