in the critical period of revolt and massacre we did our full share in
safeguarding life and property, restoring order, and vindicating the
national interest and honor. It behooves us to continue in these paths,
doing what lies in our power to foster feelings of good will, and
leaving no effort untried to work out the great policy of full and fair
intercourse between China and the nations, on a footing of equal rights
and advantages to all. We advocate the "open door" with all that it
implies; not merely the procurement of enlarged commercial opportunities
on the coasts, but access to the interior by the waterways with which
China has been so extraordinarily favored. Only by bringing the people
of China into peaceful and friendly community of trade with all the
peoples of the earth can the work now auspiciously begun be carried to
fruition. In the attainment of this purpose we necessarily claim parity
of treatment, under the conventions, throughout the Empire for our trade
and our citizens with those of all other powers.

We view with lively interest and keen hopes of beneficial results the
proceedings of the Pan-American Congress, convoked at the invitation
of Mexico, and now sitting at the Mexican capital. The delegates of the
United States are under the most liberal instructions to co-operate with
their colleagues in all matters promising advantage to the great family
of American commonwealths, as well in their relations among themselves
as in their domestic advancement and in their intercourse with the world
at large.

My predecessor communicated to the Congress the fact that the Weil and
La Abra awards against Mexico have been adjudged by the highest courts
of our country to have been obtained through fraud and perjury on the
part of the claimants, and that in accordance with the acts of the
Congress the money remaining in the hands of the Secretary of State