s of blood or government or
historical tradition may necessarily come together in response to a call
embracing such vast and diverse elements.

You will present these views to the minister of foreign relations of
Mexico, enlarging, if need be, in such terms as will readily occur to
you, upon the great mission which it is within the power of the proposed
congress to accomplish in the interest of humanity, and upon the firm
purpose of the United States to maintain a position of the most absolute
and impartial friendship toward all. You will thereupon, in the name
of the President of the United States, tender to His Excellency the
President of the Mexican Republic a formal invitation to send two
commissioners to the congress, provided with such powers and
instructions on behalf of their Government as will enable them to
consider the questions brought before that body within the limit of
submission contemplated by this invitation.

The United States as well as the other powers will in like manner be
represented by two commissioners, so that equality and impartiality will
be amply secured in the proceedings of the congress.

In delivering this invitation through the minister of foreign affairs
you will read this dispatch to him and leave with him a copy, intimating
that an answer is desired by this Government as promptly as the just
consideration of so important a proposition will permit.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

JAMES G. BLAINE.

[Footnote 10: Sent under the same date, _mutatis mutandis_, to the
United States ministers in the Argentine Republic, Bolivia, Brazil,
Central America, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay and Uruguay, Peru,
and Venezuela: also directly to the minister of foreign relations of
Ecuador, in which country the United States had no diplomatic
representative.]

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _April 18, 1882_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:

I transmit herewith, for the consideration of Congress, a note addressed
by the minister plenipotentiary of Mexico to the Secretary of State,
proposing the conclusion of a convention between the two countries for
defining the boundary between the United States and Mexico from the
Rio Grande westward to the Pacific Ocean by the erection of durable
monuments. I also lay before Congress a letter on the same subject, with
its accompaniment, from the Secretary of War, to whom the proposition
was referred by the Secretary of State for the expressio