I avail myself of this other opportunity to renew to your excellency the
expression of my highest consideration and to subscribe myself the
Secretary’s very humble obedient servant.
[Inclosure—Translation.]
Honorable members of the National
Constituent and Legislative Assembly:
The minister of foreign relations will lay before you the treaties
signed at Washington on January 9 last by our minister, Senor Don
Enrique Cortés and the plenipotentiaries of the United States and
Panama, the Hon. Elihu Root and Senor Don Carlos Constantin
Arosemena.
After all, this important and delicate negotiation began in
Washington with the uote addressed on the 23d of December,
1903,1 to his excellency, the Hon. John Hay,
Secretary of State of the United States, by the mission over which I
had the honor to preside and of which Gen. Don Jorge Holguín, Don
Pedro Nel Ospina, and Don Lucas Cabellero were members.
In concluding these treaties our legation at Washington kept within
the instruction sent it by the Government through the various
ministers in charge of the department of foreign affairs under this
administration, and justice demands recognition of the patriotism
and intelligence with which our present minister to the United
States Senor Don Enrique Cortés, has conducted and carried to a
successful issue those negotiations.
I cherish the hope that the Colombian people will, when it knows
them, give them its decidedly favorable verdict, since the
Government, in concluding them, has borne in mind not only its
interests and conveniences but also its mandates.
Indeed, the board of commissioners of commerce, agriculture, and
industry of the departments assembled at Bogota in July, 1906, for
the treatment of economical questions alive at that time and of
great importance, whose members belonged to every political party
and are furthermore favorably known for their high political and
social standing in our community, unanimously approved at its
session of July 12, 1906, the following motion:
The undersigned commissioners of commerce, agriculture, and
industry, of the departments of Narino, Cauca, Antioquia,
Bolivar, Atlantico, and Magdalena, which are the departments
of which some abut on the Pacific and others on the Atlantic
Ocean, declare to the Government the necessity of promptly
adjusting, in an honorable way acceptable to Colombia, the
questions pending with the United States and Panama and asks
that this motion, which has been drawn up in accord with the
minister of foreign relations, be taken up by the board.
Celedonio Piñeres.
oscar a. noguera.
Luciano Herrera.
Ricardo Restrepo,
C.
Leonardo Tascón.
Very respectable organs of the press have welcomed this motion with
applause, and public opinion, in possession of the knowledge needed
to form judgment on so grave subject, was not long in bringing its
preponderating influence to bear in the same sense, as is evidenced
by a multitude of documents circulated in printed form, which may
reasonably be considered as the result of a great plebiscite.
The Government considering, in a way, that relations with foreign
nations are part of domestic policy, conscious of its duties and
responsibilities, and at the same time interpreting the national
will and looking after the moral and material interests of the
country in its charge, never ceased in the last 5 years to labor
with the greatest zeal for an honorable and suitable settlement of
so delicate a question, and believes it has succeeded in this with
the treaties that are submitted to your enlightened examination and
are approved by it without any restriction.
R. Reyes.
Bogota, February 22,
1909.
