intention. On resuming office,(Blaine finally arranged the meeting of a Pan-American Congress in the United States. Chosen to preside, he presented an elaborate program, including a plan for arbitrating disputes; commercial reciprocity; the establishment of uniform weights and measures, of international copyright, trade-marks and patents, and of common coinage; improvement of communications; and other subjects. At the same time he exerted himself to secure in the McKinley Tariff Bill, which was just then under consideration, a provision for reciprocity of trade with American countries. This meeting was not a complete success, since Congress gave him only half of what he wanted by providing for reciprocity but making it general instead of purely American. Nevertheless one permanent and solid result was secured in the establishment of the Bureau of American Republics at Washington, which has become a clearing house of ideas and a visible bond of common interests and good feeling.

Throughout the years of Blaine's prominence, the public took more interest in his bellicose encounters with Europe, and particularly with Great Britain, than in his constructive American policy; and he failed to secure for either an assured popular

support. His attempt to widen the gulf between Europe and America was indeed absurd at a time when the cable, the railroad, and the steamship were rendering the world daily smaller and more closely knit, and when the spirit of democracy, rapidly permeating western Europe, was breaking down the distinction in political institutions which had given point to the pronouncement of 1823. Nevertheless Blaine did actually feel the changing industrial conditions at home which were destroying American separateness, and he made a genuine attempt to find a place for the United States in the world, without the necessity of sharing the responsibilities of all the world, by making real that interest in its immediate neighbors which his country had announced in 1823. Even while Blaine was working on his plan of "America for the Americans," events were shaping the most important extension of the interests of the United States which had taken place since 1823.

5

CHAPTER V

THE UNITED STATES AND THE PACIFIC

LONG before the westward march of Americans had brought their flag to the Pacific, that ocean was familiar to their mariners. From Cape Horn to Canton and the ports of India, there ploughed the stately merchantmen of Salem, Providence, and Newburyport, exchanging furs and ginseng for teas, silks, the "Canton blue" which is today so cherished a link with the past, and for the lacquer cabinets and carved ivory which give distinction to many a New England. home. Meanwhile the sturdy whalers of New Bedford scoured the whole ocean for sperm oil and whalebone, and the incidents of their self-reliant three-year cruises acquainted them with nearly every coral and volcanic isle. Early in the century missionaries also began to brave the languor of these oases of leisure and the appetite of their cannibalistic inhabitants.

The interest of the Government was bound to

follow its adventurous citizens. In 1820 the United States appointed a consular agent at Honolulu; in the thirties and forties it entered into treaty relations with Siam, Borneo, and China; and owing to circumstances which were by no means accidental it had the honor of persuading Japan to open her ports to the world. As early as 1797 an American vessel chartered by the Dutch had visited Nagasaki. From time to time American sailors had been shipwrecked on the shores of Japan, and the United States had more than once picked up and sought to return Japanese castaways. In 1846 an official expedition under Commodore Biddle was sent to establish relationships with Japan but was unsuccessful. In 1853 Commodore Perry bore a message from the President to the Mikado which demanded

though

the demand was couched in courteous language "friendship, commerce, a supply of coal and provisions, and protection for our shipwrecked people." After a long hesitation the Mikado yielded. Commodore Perry's success was due not solely to the care with which his expedition was equipped for its purpose nor to his diplomatic skill but in part to the fact that other countries were known to be on the very point of forcing an entrance into the seclusion of Japan. Few Americans realize how close,

indeed, were the relations established with Japan by the United States. The treaty which Townsend Harris negotiated in 1858 stated that "The President of the United States, at the request of the Japanese Government, will act as a friendly mediator in such matters of difference as may arise between the Government of Japan and any European power. Through his personal efforts Harris may almost be said to have become the chief adviser of the Japanese Government in the perplexities which it encountered on entering international society.

Not only did the United States allow itself a closer intimacy with this new Pacific power than it would have done with a state of Europe, but it exhibited a greater freedom in dealing with the European powers themselves in the Far East than at home or in America. In 1863 the United States joined in fact, in the absence of a naval force it strained a point by chartering a vessel for the purpose with a concert of powers to force the opening of the Shimonoseki Straits; subsequently acting with Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands, the United States secured an indemnity to pay the cost of the expedition; and in 1866 it united with the same powers to secure a convention by which Japan bound herself to establish certain tariff regulations.