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 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 ve