which has always been so unfriendly to our people, would surely make their voice heard and be guilty of some unfriendly sign or demonstration. But public opinion was too strong, and they must have recognized that any such movement would have met with almost universal condemnation.

The situation previous to your arrival was such that it only required the simple assurances which you were able to make and the friendly advances which your visit portended to destroy the suspicions of the serious-minded people whose friendship was worth having, and to stimulate the liking and affectionate regard which must come with greater knowledge of our people and our principles. There can be no doubt that your trouble and time would have been amply repaid by your visit to Brazil, even had you never set foot in other parts of South America.

The first practical results of your visit are now beginning to make themselves seen. Three days ago a prominent member of the Chamber of Deputies introduced a bill, which has been reported in the embassy's No. 22, of August 29, which is a project for alterations in the existing Brazilian tariff, and which, if carried into effect, would give a 20 per cent preferential reduction in favor of all merchandise imported into Brazil from the United States. This preferential reduction is in favor of countries which import more than 4,000,000 sacks of coffee and admit it free of duty, and as we are the only country which comes within this category the preference is as against the whole world. On the other hand, a surtax is proposed which provides for a 10 per cent increase of the Brazilian tariff on merchandise emanating from countries imposing over 50 per cent import duty on Brazilian coffee or sugar, and 20 per cent increase on merchandise emanating from countries imposing over 100 per cent duty on the same Brazilian products.

As a further instance of the practical results of your visit, I may mention that Doctor Botelho, the secretary of agriculture of the State of São Paulo, has issued an order that all the employees of his secretariate shall learn to speak the English language and that the ability to do so will be a necessary qualification for future candidates for office. In private conversation Doctor Botelho gives as his reason for the new regulation that your visit has opened his eyes to the necessity for his people of a better understanding of the United States. One can hardly overestimate the importance of an order which will tend to spread our language among a people which for generations has been under the influence of French philosophy and literature.

In this connection I may add that Dr. Felix Gaspar, the minister of justice of Brazil, has recently stated that if satisfactory arrangements can be made he proposes to send to the United States one-half of the students which each year the Brazilian Government has hitherto been sending exclusively to Europe.

In order to take advantage of the good feeling engendered and to stimulate our trade with Brazil, I have in mind at present that we should endeavor to bring about three changes. In the first place, we should secure a preferential reduction in the Brazilian tariff as soon as possible; secondly, we should negotiate a parcels-post convention with Brazil in order to facilitate the sending of samples and sample

shipments of merchandise; and, thirdly, we should secure the necessary authorization for the operation of express companies between Brazil and the United States in order to facilitate the speedy transmission of valuable freights. The principal need of this is due to the fact that when freight reaches the port of Rio from the United States it takes usually between two and a half and three months for it to be brought to land and to pass the customs. Express matter, however, would receive special handling and would pass the customs in the same way as passengers' baggage within two or three days. I have taken advantage of the moment to broach both the question of parcels-post and the express companies to the Brazilian Government, and the suggestions have been very favorably received and the necessary negotiations have been started. It is fortunate that just at this moment, as telegraphed to you by me on the 20th instant, the Lloyd Brasileiro, the largest Brazilian steamship company, has put into operation a new monthly steamship service between Rio and New York. The English company of Lamport and Holt have been running a monthly service with a practical monopoly, and without competition the freights have been prohibitive. It is hoped that we are entering upon an era more favorable to merchants who may desire to reach out for trade with Brazil.

The crying need of our commercial relations with Brazil is better steamship communications. Inquiry among our leading financiers and merchants indicates that encouragement by our National Government in the form of a small postal or other subvention would quickly bring about the establishment of a good line of American steamers between New York and Rio. Given a few facilities, our trade with. Brazil must inevitably go ahead at once with leaps and bounds. would seem that the moment following your visit to South America would be propitious for interesting our congress and public in some measure to stimulate our commerce with this part of our hemisphere. It were indeed a pity if the wave of friendly feeling which is sweeping over South America following upon your visit, and the great forces which you have set in motion, so ripe with beneficial possibilities, should meet with no responsive movement on the part of our people and should be allowed to subside without leaving lasting practical results.

I have, etc.,

LLOYD GRISCOM.

MESSAGE OF THE BRAZILIAN PRESIDENT TO THE CONGRESS OF

BRAZIL.

No. 166.]

Chargé Richardson to the Secretary of State.

AMERICAN EMBASSY, Petropolis, May 17, 1906. SIR: Referring to my dispatch No. 162, inclosing a copy of the Brazilian President's message to Congress, I now have the honor to inclose an excellent translation of it from the Brazilian Review of May 15, 1906.

I have the honor to be, etc.,

CHARLES RICHARDSON, Chargé d'Affaires ad interim.

[Inclosure.]

[Extract from the Brazilian Review May 15, 1906.]

Our relations with foreign powers continue to be satisfactory, it having always been my endeavor to draw closer the bonds which unite us to them.

A treaty of arbitration was signed in this city on September 7 by the plenipotentiaries of Brazil and the Argentine Republic which in due course will be submitted for the approval of the Congress of both countries. A fine division of the Argentine navy arrived in the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, where it stayed some days, having been sent by the order of its Government to take part in the celebrations commemorating our independence. The demonstrations which this visit evoked bore fresh testimony to the esteem in which the Brazilian Government and people hold the friendship of Argentina.

Our treaty of arbitration with Chile of May 18, 1899, having been lately mutually ratified in Santiago, I signed the decree of April 14 of the current year, bringing this act into force.

On May 20 of last year the arbitration court of Brazil and Bolivia created by article 2 of the treaty of November 17, 1903, commenced its deliberations in this city, whilst on January 15 last the Brazil-Peru court, established by the convention of July 12, 1904, also began its sittings. Both are under the presidency of the apostolic nuncio. The former of these had doubts as to the exact meaning of a clause of its internal regulations of June 3, 1905. This question was decided by the two Governments on January 30 of this year.

There have been installed in the (provisionally) neutral zones of Breu (Alto Juruá) and Catay (Alto Purús) the fixed police and fiscal commissions agreed upon the accord of July 12, 1904, between Brazil and Perú. The commissions appointed to report on the Alto Purús and the Alto Juruá, courageously overcoming great difficulties brought their explorations to a conclusion as rapidly as was possible, going not only to the sources of these two rivers and of their more remote tributaries, but also to the small streams which connect them with certain tributaries of the Ucayle. The chiefs of the commissions for the report on the Alto Purús have already delivered to their respective governments their report and their maps. The mixed commission which went to the Alto Juruá is finishing its clerical work at Manãos. When these documents have been perused and more exact data in respect to these reasons are to hand, the two Governments will be able to enter into negotiations with more probability of arriving at a satisfactory solution of the frontier questions at present pending.

Two protocols relative to the putting into effect of the frontier treaty between Brazil and Venezuela of May the 5th, 1859, were signed at Caracas by the plenipotentiaries of the two countries on the 9th of December last. By the first there was approved and recognized the line of demarcation made in 1888 by the mixed Brazil and Venezuelan commission from Pedra de Cucuhy, near the Rio Negro, up to Serra Cupy in an easterly direction. By the second it was stipulated that a mixed commission should verify the line of demarcation, made in 1882 to 1884 by a Brazilian commission without the concurrence of Venezuela, from Serra Cupy up to the point of Monte Roraima where the three frontiers of Brazil, Venezuela, and British Guiana meet, giving always the preference to the dividing line of the waters which go by the Amazon, Orinoco, and Essequibo, and carrying out the line of demarcation in accordance with the disposition contained in paragraphs 2 and 3 of article 2 in the aforementioned frontier treaty of 5th of May, 1859.

The frontier treaty which we concluded with Ecuador on the 6th of May, 1904, having been duly ratified by both powers, I promulgated it by decree of 18th of May, 1905.

I hope that we may shortly bring to a satisfactory conclusion the negotiations at present proceeding with the Dutch Government with regard to the frontier of Brazil and the colony of Surinam.

Negotiations have been reopened in Bogotá which had been broken off since 1870 for the adjustment of the frontier between Brazil and Colombia. The conciliatory and reasonable solution at which we have arrived in the interests of the two friendly countries will only be rendered impossible if, which I do not suppose, the Colombian Government maintains that our effective power, which has continued for nearly two centuries on the left bank of the Amazon and on the lower Ica, or Putumayo, is of less value than that of the preliminary or provisional treaty of 1777, never completely executed and never followed by

the definite treaty which it itself provided for, but always broken since the war of 1801.

I propose to begin without further delay the work of demarcation of the new frontiers between Brazil and Bolivia and the construction of the Madeira to Mamoré Railway, thereby faithfully fulfilling our obligations laid down in the treaty of 17th of November, 1903.

There are now awaiting approval by the two Governments interested on the maps presented by the Brazil-Argentina mixed commission, which marks out the limits of the common frontier by the Uruguay, Pepiry-Guassu, Santo Antonio and Iguassu, from the confluence of the Quarahim up to the Alto Paraná, as I announced to you in my last year's message.

By decrees of 13th of July and 5th of October, 1905, there came into force in Brazil the international accord for the repression of the white slave trade to which we had given our adherence on the 18th of May, 1904, and the International Sanitary Convention which we concluded in this city of Rio de Janeiro on the 12th of June, 1904, with the Republics of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

Another decree, dated 3d of February last, promulgated the agreement on trade and commercial marks between Brazil and the Argentine Republic signed on the 30th of October, 1901.

His Holiness Pope Pius X gave proof of his peculiar affection for the Brazilian people by elevating to the cardinalate in the consistory of 11th of December last the Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, Don Joaquin Arcoverde de Albuquerque Cavalcanti. It is the first time that so high a distinction has been conferred upon a Latin-American prelate.

The third scientific Latin-American congress held its sessions in this capitai from the 6th to the 16th of August of last year.

The representatives of South American Republics in Washington, in accordance with instructions received from their respective Governments, at a meeting held on the 6th of December last, chose the city of Rio de Janeiro as the place of meeting for the Third International American Congress. The firstas you know-was held in Washington from 1889 to 1890, and the second in Mexico in 1901.

A special commission consisting of the Secretary of State of the United States of America, of the ambassadors of Brazil and Mexico, and of the ministers of the Argentine Republic, Chile, Costa Rica, and Cuba drew up the programme to be discussed, which was unanimously approved at the sessions of April 6 and 21.

The conference will open its sessions on July 21 and close them on the 1st of September, in accordance with the programme already approved by the Union of American Republics in Washington.

Mr. Elihu Root, Secretary of State of the United States of America, is expected to arrive in this capital on July 25, on a visit to Brazil, and he will be our guest for several days.

It is a great satisfaction to me to note that the relations of cordial friendship between Brazil and the United States of America are ever becoming stronger. In this regard I have done no more than follow the traditional policy established by the founders of our independence in the year 1822, which has been continued without interruption by all Brazilian Governments.

The second peace conference, to which we were invited, as we were to the first in 1899, was going to meet at The Hague on the 15th day of July next, in accordance with the proposal made to the various Governments by His Majesty the Emperor of Russia. Arrangements having already been made for the meeting in Rio de Janeiro during that same month of the Pan-American Congress, we, in conjunction with the Government of the United States of America, asked for a postponement of the meeting at The Hague to a date when the Pan-American Congress should have finished its deliberations, in order that some of the delegates might be able to take part in both conferences. This postponement was readily and without question accepted by Russia and all the other European powers.

On the 30th of April last I notified our legation in Berne that Brazil would give her adherence to the convention of Geneva of August 22, 1864, known as the Red Cross, this adhesion being subject to your approval. Paraguay, Ecuador, and Colombia, the only South American countries in like case with ourselves, have informed us that they also are disposed to adhere to this convention from now onward.

BRAZIL.

139

On the initiative of His Majesty the King of Italy an International Institute of Agriculture has been founded in Rome, and Brazil, having been invited to take part in the preliminary discussions, will be duly represented. Finally, I authorized our diplomatic representative in Italy to sign, as plenipotentiary and with an ad referendum to the National Congress, the convention arranged between the powers who approve of the creation of the aforesaid institute. Brazilian interests at the sugar conference have been defended by the minister of Brazil to Belgium and by a delegate appointed by the minister of finance.

The Dutch Government has Our legation in Mexico has been reestablished. created a legation in Rio de Janeiro, which was inaugurated on the 16th of December last. The reestablishment of our former legation at The Hague depends on your approval of a project which will be submitted to you.