a foreign state of belligerent rights to insurgents under circumstances such as now exist in Cuba, if not justified by necessity, is a gratuitous demonstration of moral support to the rebellion. Such necessity may yet hereafter arrive, but it has not yet arrived, nor is its probability clearly to be seen. If it be war between Spain and Cuba, and be so recognized, it is our duty to provide for the consequences which may ensue in the embarrassment to our commerce and the interference with our revenue. If belligerency be recognized, the commercial marine of the United States becomes liable to search and to seizure by the commissioned cruisers of both parties; they become subject to the adjudication of prize courts. Our large coastwise trade between the Atlantic and the Gulf States and between both and the Isthmus of Panama and the States of South America (engaging the larger part of our commercial marine) passes of necessity almost in sight of the island of Cuba. Under the treaty with Spain of 1795, as well as by the law of nations, our vessels will be liable to visit on the high seas. In case of belligerency the carrying of contraband, which now is lawful, becomes liable to the risks of seizure and condemnation. The parent Government becomes relieved from responsibility for acts done in the insurgent territory, and acquires the right to exercise against neutral commerce all the powers of a party to a maritime war. To what consequences the exercise of those powers may lead is a question which I desire to commend to the serious consideration of Congress. In view of the gravity of this question, I have deemed it my duty to invite the attention of the war-making power of the country to all the relations and bearings of the question in connection with the declaration of neutrality and granting of belligerent rights. There is not a de facto government in the island of Cuba sufficient to execute law and maintain just relations with other nations. Spain has not been able to suppress the opposition to Spanish rule on the island, nor to award speedy justice to other nations, or citizens of other nations, when their rights have been invaded. There are serious complications growing out of the seizure of American vessels upon the high seas, executing American citizens without proper trial, and confiscating or embargoing the property of American citizens. Solemn protests have been made against every infraction of the rights either of individual citizens of the United States or the rights of our flag upon the high seas, and all proper steps have been taken and are being pressed for the proper reparation of every indignity complained of. The question of belligerency, however, which is to be decided upon definite principles and according to ascertained facts, is entirely different from and unconnected with the other questions of the manner in which the strife is carried on on both sides and the treatment of our citizens entitled to our protection. The questions concern our own dignity and responsibility, and they have been made, as I have said, the subjects of repeated communications with Spain and of protests and demands for redress on our part. It is hoped that these will not be disregarded, but should they be these questions will be made the subject of a further communication to Congress. U. S. GRANT. EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 17, 1870. To the Senate of the United States: In answer to the resolution of the Senate of the 8th instant, requesting the President "to communicate, in confidence, the instructions of the Navy Department to the navy officers in command on the coast of Dominica and Hayti, and the reports of such officers to the Navy Department, from the commencement of the negotiation of the treaty with Dominica," I herewith transmit the papers received from the Secretary of the Navy, to whom the resolution was referred U. S. GRANT. EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 25, 1870. To the Senate of the United States: In answer to the resolution of the 22d instant, requesting to be furnished with "proposals received from any company or citizens of the United States for constructing and placing iron steamships in transatlantic service," I transmit herewith the only proposal of that nature received by me. U. S. GRANT. To the Senate of the United States: WASHINGTON, July 9, 1870. In answer to the resolutions of the Senate of the 26th of May and of the 14th of June last, I transmit a report from the Secretary of State thereupon, and the papers* by which it was accompanied. To the Senate of the United States: U. S. GRANT. WASHINGTON, July 12, 1870. I transmit to the Senate, for consideration with a view to ratification, a convention between the United States and Austria, concerning the *Lists of American vessels seized by Spanish authorities in Cuba; of American citizens executed and imprisoned in Cuba; of American citizens whose property was confiscated or embargoed in Cuba, and of decrees under which the Spanish authorities acted, and correspondence showing steps taken by the United States Government in reference thereto. rights, privileges, and immunities of consuls in the two countries, signed at Washington on the 11th instant. U. S. GRANT. To the Senate of the United States: WASHINGTON, July 13, 1870. I transmit to the Senate, in answer to their resolution of the 8th instant, a report from the Secretary of State and the papers* which accompanied it. U.S. GRANT. To the Senate of the United States: WASHINGTON, July 13, 1870. In answer to their resolution of the 8th instant, I transmit to the Senate a report from the Secretary of State and the papers† which accompanied it. U. S. GRANT. WASHINGTON, July 14, 1870. To the Senate of the United States: I transmit to the Senate, in answer to their resolution of the 7th instant, a report from the Secretary of State, with accompanying docu ments. U. S. GRANT. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, The Secretary of State, to whom was referred the resolution of the Senate requesting the President "to institute an inquiry, by such means as in his judgment shall be deemed proper, into the present condition of the commercial relations between the United States and the Spanish American States on this continent, and between those countries and other nations, and to communicate to the Senate full and complete statements regarding the same, together with such recommendations as he may think necessary to promote the development and increase of our commerce with those regions and to secure to the United States that proportionate share of the trade of this continent to which their close relations of geographical contiguity and political friendship with all the States of America justly entitle them," has the honor to report: The resolution justly regards the commercial and the political relations of the United States with the American States of Spanish origin as necessarily dependent upon each other. If the commerce of those countries has been diverted from its natural connection with the United States, the fact may probably be partly traced to political causes, which have been swept away by the great civil convulsion in this country. For the just comprehension of the position of this Government in the American political system, and for the causes which have failed to give it hitherto the influence Instructions to the minister to Spain stating the basis on which the United States offered its good offices for the purpose of terminating the war in Cuba, correspondence relative thereto, etc. + Correspondence between the United States and Great Britain concerning questions pending between the two countries. to which it is properly entitled by reason of its democratic system and of the moderation and sense of justice which have distinguished its foreign policy through successive Administrations from the birth of the nation until now, it is necessary to make a brief notice of such measures as affect our present relations to the other parts of this continent. The United States were the first of the European colonies in America to arrive at maturity as a people and assume the position of an independent republic. Since then important changes have taken place in various nations and in every part of the world. Our own growth in power has been not the least remarkable of all the great events of modern history. When, at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, having conquered by arms our right to exist as a sovereign state, that right was at length recognized by treaties, we occupied only a narrow belt of land along the Atlantic coast, hemmed in at the north, the west, and the south by the possessions of European Governments, or by uncultivated wastes beyond the Alleghanies, inhabited only by the aborigines. But in the very infancy of the United States far-sighted statesmen saw and predicted that, weak in population and apparently restricted in available territory as the new Republic then was, it had within it the germs of colossal grandeur, and would at no remote day occupy the continent of America with its institutions, its authority, and its peaceful influence. That expectation has been thus far signally verified. The United States entered at once into the occupation of their rightful possessions westward to the banks of the Mississippi. Next, by the spontaneous proffer of France, they acquired Louisiana and its territorial extension, or right of extension, north to the line of the treaty demarcation between France and Great Britain, and west to the Pacific Ocean. Next, by amicable arrangement with Spain, they acquired the Floridas, and complete southern maritime frontiers upon the Gulf of Mexico. Then came the union with the independent State of Texas, followed by the acquisitions of California and New Mexico, and then of Arizona. Finally, Russia has ceded to us Alaska, and the continent of North America has become independent of Europe, except so much of it as continues to maintain political relations with Great Britain. Meanwhile, partly by natural increase and partly by voluntary immigration from Europe, our population has risen from 3,000,000 to nearly 40,000,000; the number of States and Territories united under the Constitution has been augmented from thirteen to forty-seven; the development of internal wealth and power has kept pace with political expansion; we have occupied in part and peopled the vast interior of the continent; we have bound the Pacific to the Atlantic by a chain of intervening States and organized Territories; we have delivered the Republic from the anomaly and the ignominy of domestic servitude; we have constitutionally fixed the equality of all races and of all men before the law; and we have established, at the cost of a great civil war-a cost, however, not beyond the value of such a result-the indissoluble national unity of the United States. In all these marked stages of national progress, from the Declaration of Independence to the recent amendments of the Constitution, it is impossible not to perceive a providential series and succession of events, intimately attached one to the other, and possessed of definite character as a whole, whatever incidental departures from such uniformity may have marked, or seemed to mark, our foreign policy under the influence of temporary causes or of the conflicting opinions of statesmen. In the time of Washington, of the first Adams, of Jefferson, and of Madison the condition of Europe, engaged in the gigantic wars of the French Revolution and of the Empire, produced its series of public questions and gave tone and color to our foreign policy. In the time of Monroe, of the second Adams, and of Jackson, and subsequently thereto, the independence of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of America produced its series of questions and its apparent modification of our public policy. Domestic questions of territorial organization, of social emancipation, and of national unity have also largely occupied the minds and the attention of the later Administrations. The treaties of alliance and guaranty with France, which contributed so much to our independence, were one source of solicitude to the early Administrations, which were endeavoring to protect our commerce from the depredations and wrongs to which the maritime policy of England and the reaction of that policy on France subjected it. For twenty years we struggled in vain to accomplish this, and at last drifted into war. The avoidance of entangling alliances, the characteristic feature of the foreign policy of Washington, sprang from this condition of things. But the entangling alliances which then existed were engagements made with France as a part of the general contract under which aid was furnished to us for the achievement of our independence. France was willing to waive the letter of the obligation as to her West India possessions, but demanded in its stead privileges in our ports which the Administration was unwilling to concede. To make its refusal acceptable to a public which sympathized with France, the Cabinet of General Washington exaggerated the principle into a theory tending to national isolation. The public measures designed to maintain unimpaired the domestic sovereignty and the international neutrality of the United States were independent of this policy, though apparently incidental to it. The municipal laws enacted by Congress then and since have been but declarations of the law of nations. They are essential to the preservation of our national dignity and honor; they have for their object to repress and punish all enterprises of private war, one of the last relics of mediæval barbarism; and they have descended to us from the fathers of the Republic, supported and enforced by every succeeding President of the United States. The foreign policy of these early days was not a narrow one. During this period we secured the evacuation by Great Britain of the country wrongfully occupied by her on the Lakes; we acquired Louisiana; we measured forces on the sea with France, and on the land and sea with England; we set the example of resisting and chastising the piracies of the Barbary States; we initiated in negotiations with Prussia the long line of treaties for the liberalization of war and the promotion of international intercourse; and we steadily demanded, and at length obtained, indemnification from various governments for the losses we had suffered by foreign spoliations in the wars of Europe. To this point in our foreign policy we had arrived when the revolutionary movements in Spanish and Portuguese America compelled a modification of our relations with Europe, in consequence of the rise of new and independent states in America. The revolution which commenced in 1810, and extended through all the Spanish American continental colonies, after vain efforts of repression on the part of Spain, protracted through twenty years, terminated in the establishment of the independent States of Mexico, Guatemala, San Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, the Argentine Republic, Uruguay, and Paraguay, to which the Empire of Brazil came in time to be added. These events necessarily enlarged the sphere of action of the United States, and essentially modified our relations with Europe and our attitude to the rest of this continent. The new States were, like ourselves, revolted colonies. They continued the precedent we had set, of separating from Europe. Their assumption of independence was stimulated by our example. They professedly imitated us, and copied our National Constitution, sometimes even to their inconvenience. The Spanish American colonies had not the same preparation for independence that we had. Each of the British colonies possessed complete local autonomy. Its formal transition from dependence to independence consisted chiefly in expelling the British governor of the colony and electing a governor of the State, from |