Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 1, 1873
No. 330.
Mr. Thomas to Mr. Fish.
Lima, Peru , April 29, 1873. (Received May 26.)
Sir: I have the honor to inclose herewith a printed translation of the speech of President Pardo, made at the close of the extraordinary session of the Congress of Pern on the 28th instant.
I am, &c.,
Speech of President Pardo at the close of the extraordinary session, April 28, 1873, to the Congress of Peru
Honorable representatives: Before the Congress of 1872 closes its sessions, allow me to pay yon a tribute of respect, which only is the testimony of the gratitude of the country for the intelligence, application, and elevated patriotism with which you have carried on your labors.
The republic needed, without doubt, in the legislature of 1872, more than at any other time, the exhibition of these great qualities; as in no epoch save the present had there accrued from the force of circumstances and the efforts of individuals more difficult and vital problems on whose solution, and even on the forgetting of the slightest of which, depended the fate of Peru.
In the political system, in the moral system, in the religious system, in the economic system, in each sphere of social activity, you found a grave situation to consider, a great obstacle to avoid or an imperious necessity to satisfy.
A government undermined by its own errors and sacrificed by its own children had sunk along with itself constitutionalism in the republic; a country constantly repressed in the exercise of its liberties dashed in to saved them at the moment they were disappearing, and, having saved them, had become an inexorable judge and a cruel executor in its own cause. A demoralized army, startled by the enormity of a crime to the perpetration of which it had been led by deceit; an administration relaxed by abuse, personal and even local ambitions awakened and kept up by an inconsiderate distribution of funds which had been hastily discounted on the future; an [Page 763] augmented army and civil list, making the situation of the new government still more difficult; the income from the guano absorbed by the external debt; the home revenue of the country insufficient to meet its obligations, and the greater part of these anticipated; public works for enormous sums contracted and under construction without the necessary funds to realize them; public order compromised with the threat of twenty thousand workmen without work, and the mercantile interests of the country intimately connected with those of the contractor for these works; lastly, together with such terrible and complicated elements, a religious question, ready to beak out as soon as it should be touched: these are the principal characteristics of the situation which we inherited, one of those situations in which Providence proves the virtues of a people, and it is for this that it bears in its bosom the lightnings of the tempests and the future of the nation.
Peru has given a new proof that he was able to save her, and she has been saved, thanks to the universal protection of the All-Powerful, and the harmony of will and effort with which the public authorities and people have acted; the former interpreting the aspirations of the last, and the latter helping the former with all their might.
But that union, that agreement whence effect and force have sprung, are themselves the result of a great moral and political cause which the public powers should study.
Peru in her administrative march found herself involved in the complicated crisis which I have just described, and is now undergoing a salutary change, in which new ideas, new sentiments, and new aspirations are creating new political forces and opening up new prospects.
This transformation, which we can call the resurrection of the public spirit, has exhibited this in all its fullness when the bands which confined it disappeared. It distinguished the public evil from the public good by criticizing the wants of the country, which knows them because it feels them. It entered with warmth into the struggle in aid of this good, which is its own, increasing a hundred-fold the elements of intelligence and will, whose concourse is necessary in the passage of great crises, teaching and strengthening with them the constitution al authorities who are their representatives, and constituting, in a word, a new political system, to which the feeling of legality on which public liberty reposes to-day will serve as a wide and immovable base. Neither let us be alarmed nor our convictions shaken by the abuses of them which we see—neither in the course of written words nor in the face of facts. These abuses are the shade of great events and a new proof of their existence. Let us only lament the deviations from the right road which they have caused, and the strange fate which Providence has bestowed in these latter times on those who have set up this ensign in opposition to its designs.
Peru has been desirous of realizing the republic, and has been doing so for some time, swayed between incredulity and passion, sustaining at first, within the limits of the law, an obstinate struggle against all the elements of authority, combined to oppose the rights of the people, and afterward defending with her powerful will the constitutional edifice which she had raised from its ruins, by her activity only causing every attempt to overthow it to fail, and proving herself a determined upholder of constitutional order, tolerating at the same time excesses of liberty with the tranquillity of strength, and solely deploring them for the credit of the republic.
This regeneration of the public spirit, properly understood and directed, and seconded by the proper authorities, is the true secret of the success of your labors, and of the vigor with which you have constituted the republic.
The first two laws which you passed were those of the national guard and of the municipalities. Both obey the same sentiment, are the fruit of the same conviction, respond to the same necessity. The people in Peru is an element of order and the safest rampart of the institutions; they are directly interested in the progress of the country, which is inseparable from peace, and they are, therefore, and at the same time, the most enthusiastic and powerful support and co-operators in the public administration.
The national guard law has called on them to exercise the first mission; the municipal law has removed the obstacles to the carrying out of the second.
The realization of the first has destroyed by itself alone the fears entertained by those who have not yet perceived the internal revolution that is going on in our mode of political being; it has caused them astonishment to see the haste with which the citizens have come forward at the call of the law, without considering that it is the law which has responded to the call of the citizens.
I hold to the belief, in spite of’ the many difficulties which the realization of the second will have to encounter, and although some towns may stray from its practice, that those who have placed themselves at the head of their brethren will teach them the method of exercising the very ample rights conceded by this law, in which are recognized three municipal entities: those of the district, of the province, and of the department. The doors of the institutions are open even to foreigners; the right of dictating regulations is conceded to popular bodies; they may impose taxes and raise loans without needing the approbation of Congress or of the government; local administration [Page 764] in all its branches, except one, is given up to them, and that is the judicial, whose organization is fixed by the constitution; and, in one word, the most ample rights with which the municipal institution has been organized in other nations have been established.
The national guard and municipal laws will be the memorable works of the present legislature, for they constitute the foundation of the republic; of that republic in reality which will raise itself more proudly the more it is opposed.
However sufficient these laws might be for the glory of the legislature of 1872, they are not the only claims with which history will present you to your fellow-citizens.
The economic situation of the country has absorbed the most considerable part of your time and labor, and, thanks to a series of dispositions in which it is grateful to me to recognize the union of the members of the chambers in one sole aspiration, measures have/been adopted by the Congress from which we may look for the results which you have anticipated.
Our credit being menaced by the emission of a loan whose negotiation was twice interrupted, public works contracted for, whose cost greatly exceeds the sum voted for them; a considerable interior floating debt, payable at sight, pending; the product of the guano claimed and absorbed by the external debt and anterior obligations; the natural resources of the country utterly inadequate to tend to even the ordinary exigencies of the administration; our economic horizon lowered until on every side a disastrous crisis was threatened which only your prudent and intelligent action, the confidence which the Congress and the government have been fortunate enough to inspire in the uprightness of their acts, and the resolute aid offered by the people, from the humblest artisan up to the most powerful institutions of credit, have been able to dispel. All have suffered, and all have waited with faith. Their confidence will not be abused.
You began by respecting the rights of our foreign creditors, and you have not considered for your internal necessities the proceeds of the guano which is compromised abroad. By this act you have saved our credit, and you have found means to cover the deficit in the charge for railways without adding to the public burden, but on the contrary obtaining concessions in the contracts already celebrated.
Turning our eyes to the interior, you have increased our national income by the modification of the custom-house tariff and the monopoly of saltpeter, measures which you have sustained with that vigor and abnegation which only convictions inspired by the necessities of the country can give. By these you have called into being an internal credit in the true acceptation of the word, for you instilled confidence into hearts afflicted during the last twenty years for the economic future of the country. After such measures as these, it matters very little that an inevitable deficit should appear in the budget for the next two years, as it will appear, although reduced to one-half, in the following financial period. What was of importance to all was to know if Peru had sufficient patriotism to face at the same time the economic and political crises in her existence which we are now undergoing; and she has had it. I am confident that this deficit, the expression of the crisis in which the period of my rule will serve as an epoch of transition. I am confident, I say, that this deficit will shortly be met—do not wonder at the phrase—by the virtues of the people; by their energy to sustain peace; by their devotion to labor, which will raise the sum of our national productions—the only real and copious fountain of a State’s prosperity.
To this end will contribute powerfully many of the laws of the present legislature, and especially that which has for its object the favoring of foreign immigration, affording to the immigrants every kind of facility to enrich our country with their habits and ideas and our people with their race.
Your law modifying civil proceedings, that which decrees central prisons in order to render effective the repression of crimes at present frequently unpunished for want of secure jails; that for the establishment of normal schools, in order to educate preceptors of both sexes; that which votes the necessary funds for bringing European professors to our schools and colleges, and Sisters of Mercy for our charitable institutions, show by themselves alone that moral necessities, which, be it said in their honor, is more desired among American nations than material ones, has not less merited your attention than our political, administrative, and economic interests.
Industry, in its most important branches, has also had a share in your laborious session. Mining will find, in the new legislation concerning coal-mines, with which our territory is covered, principles which will remove many of the obstacles opposed to the development of this great wealth by laws inadequate to the proportions of modern undertakings in mining. The resolution, which, notwithstanding our difficult financial circumstances, you have taken to devote a large sum during the next years to the construction of bridges, roads, country prisons, and school-houses, will also help to the same end; more particularly, the establishment of the normal school of agriculture, which will furnish to this, the principal source of our riches, elements which the isolated agriculturist cannot encounter, such as the crossing of the breed of cattle, the introduction and trial of new methods and improvement of the existing systems, especially [Page 765] in the production of silk, and for the education of intelligent laborers, of which our farmers stand so greatly in need.
Finally, the laws which authorize the establishment of some branch lines of railway, which guarantee an interest on the capital that may be destined for the laying of a sub-marine cable from Panama to Peru, will augment our productions and draw closer the links which bind us to other nations.
In order to arrive conveniently at this last object, so much in harmony with our feelings, with our ideas, and with our advantage, numerous international treaties have merited your approbation. Among them may be distinguished, for its importance to our prosperity and credit, the conventions celebrated by Portugal to settle the conditions which civilization and justice demand in the Asiatic immigration, with which most essential object the government, from the very first days of its advent to power, has carried on grave diplomatic correspondence, which shall regulate the proceedings of Peruvian commerce with the nations of the East.
Nor can we look for less important results from the law which determines the organization of the army on the plan of conscription and active service of short duration, which will make this contribution more general and its burdens lighter. The executive is as anxious as is the Congress about the organization of our army, not only at present in the choice of worthy chiefs and officers, but also in the future, by opening the military college to young officers whose devotion to study is a guarantee of the hopes that may be formed of them. The very contrast which the credit of the military institution had to suffer in the bitter days of July has disposed the minds of its chiefs to elevate it anew, of which daily testimony is given in discipline in barracks and in the defense of the institutions. The executive is waiting to see the new municipalities established, to dismiss a part of the actual army and then raise it to its legal strength by conscription.
Lastly, the religious question which originated in the illegal appointment of an archbishop for Lima, and which threatened to assume most alarming proportions, has been simply solved, thanks to the delicate prudence with which you treated it and the paternal hearing given to our representation by the Father of the Faithful, with a benevolence which has even more increased the sentiments of respect and affection entertained toward him in our country.
Your last word has been one of pardon and oblivion for the faults of all; let us hope to see with this the sacrifice of every passion on the triple altars of the peace, the honor, and the happiness of our country.
Legislators, such is the resumé of your more important labors. They now permit you to return to your homes, leaving the republic in a very different position to that in which you found her. Men’s minds are calm in the full enjoyment of their liberties; peace is assured as it never was before in Peru, and assured by the conviction of the popular will and not by force; the more important questions of policy and administration have been settled; the confidence of commerce and industry in the future is restored. The republic therefore offers to-day every symptom of peace, certainty in her present, and hope in her future resources.
Your ideas and sentiments being identical with those of the executive power, the laws you have made is the programme of my government. In this great work I count, as I have hitherto done, on the support of the people, and I hope and wish for the help of well-meaning men of all parties.
May Providence, which has inspired the people of Peru with the sentiments of peace, which has guided you in your arduous but glorious task in the path of justice and public profit, continue its omnipotent protection to my government in carrying out your measures, however numerous may be the thorns strewn in my path. If the former constitute your glory, the latter will be mine; both are almost always necessary for the salvation of nations.