VI.

Banquet of the Chamber of Commerce-Speech-His Administration-Kindness of the PressThe Paris Legation-Lord Salisbury-Diplomatic Experience-Work Accomplished-A Complete Commercial Treaty-Products of France-Growing Trade-New York to be the Commercial Center of the World.

HE Chamber of Commerce entertained Reid at dinner at Delmonico's on April 16. Reid made the following speech on

this occasion :

"Mr. President: The approval of the New York Chamber of Commerce, given to a townsman returning from the service of his country abroad, is a decoration. Your electing him to the little group of your honorary members confers more than ribbons and crosses and jeweled orders. No man knows better than your guest what and how much it means; and if in a fortnight at home, renewed and persistent kindnesses had not made him a very beggar for words, no man could more sincerely or more gratefully thank you. Outside of politics and religion, to a New Yorker little is left unsaid, when the Chamber of Commerce has spoken.

"In a letter of remarkable candor, which appeared the other day in the morning journals, a' distinguished citizen, who has held the highest office in the gift of his countrymen, wrote with honest simplicity that he often feared he did not deserve all the kind things said of him. Under favor of that example, I may venture to say that I have often experienced the same feeling. I wish I could believe that I deserve what you say; but the net result of it all is, a sense, not of increased importance, but of the increasing necessity for more than my natural modesty.

"And yet there is one point, Mr. President, on which I accept very frankly and very honestly all your eulogium. I have tried to do my full duty, to this

great city, and to the great country behind it, which I had the honor to represent near the government of our earliest European friend.

"My difficulties there were largely lessened and my power for any useful service increased from my having had the good fortune to be supported by my countrymen without distinction of party. It is his high incentive to duty, and indeed the inspiration of his office, that the American Minister represents no party, however glorious its record, or however devoted his attachment to it; but that like Richelieu in the elder Bulwer's play, with the receipt of his commission there has entered his official veins the power, the dignity, the honor of the whole sixty-five millions of people of the magnificent continent they inhabit and the matchless history they inherit.

"It has been another comfort for your Minister in Paris during the past three years to find himself still among his own countrymen. Naturally a Minister from New York is likely to see more friends and acquaintanaes in Paris than a representative of any other locality. But the truth is that American friends so surrounded and supported the Paris legation, from the first day of my incumbency to the last, that I was scarcely ever left reason to realize that I was far from City Hall Square or Fifth Avenue or Pennsylvania Avenue.

"And now, Mr. President, I wish, if not to discharge, at least to acknowledge my heaviest obligation. I wish to tender my best thanks to my own profession, the press, for the uniform and considerate kindness with which it has treated me without distinction of parties and without exception. This was as it ought to be, for a Minister in a foreign nation representing his whole country is entitled to its whole support, or to immediate recall. But in my case there has been a spontaneity about it and a generosity alike from old friends and old enemies which touched me to the heart's core. There has been in it too a species of comradeship most grateful to a man who has held every place in the ranks, from the lowest, and who prizes, above all other honors, the distinction conferred by the goodwill and the esteem of his colleagues and rivals in his own calling.

"If there has been any success at the Paris legation in the past three years to warrant this great kindness of the press, and this distinguished honor your chamber now bestows, it is due first of all to Benjamin Harrison and James G. Blaine. They determined their policy and stuck to it. They gave me their instructions, and then gave me unquestioning confidence and support, and left me a free hand. The man who, under those circumstances, cannot do good work, has no good work in him.

"But with reference to any diplomatic success, I am reminded of what

seemed to me a very sagacious remark, made not long ago, by Lord Salisbury, to the effect that, while it was desirable to carry your points in diplomacy as far as possible, it was equally desirable not to brag about it afterward. The other nation might thus be led to think it had conceded too much; and so, in the end, the brag might undo the diplomacy. The counsel is good for us now and always; though in the present case there can be no such danger, since most of the agreements have been confessedly in the common interest-as all of them were, in our opinion-and since the only ones about which a difference of judgment as to actual interest could exist were in the furtherance of an absolute justice, to our demand, for which no adequate reason for refusal ever had been or ever could be given. May I be pardoned for reading, as appropriate to this view of our diplomacy, the charming words in which the great French orator, Senator and Academician, as well as newspaper writer, M. Jules Simon, closed his good-by to me, three weeks ago, at a banquet in Paris.

"When the vessel which carries you toward the New World shall quit the coasts of France, I should like to be on the promontory of the most advanced of these coasts, and would cry to you then in a last echo, from our land to yours, Let us spread liberty with the light; let us spread justice with liberty.'

"Well, gentlemen, your President has referred to what my friend, Mr. Phelps, has grotesquely styled the passage of the American pig under the Arc de Triomphe. He didn't get in very quickly, and he didn't get in very easily; but in the language which the West has made classic, he got there. The absolute prohibition of American pork in France lasted eleven years. It was an invidious discrimination, since it touched only the United States, and it was defended and screened from the charge of distinct unfriendliness only on the ground that the American product was dangerous to the public health. At the same time, importations were permitted from other countries, in at least one of which trichinosis was notoriously abundant and fatal. It must not be forgotten that, from the long time prohibition had lasted, as well as from the charges on which it had been ordered, the great mass of the French people honestly believed it to be needful; while there were three powerful classes absolutely sure of it-the French pork-growers, the French pork-packers, and the Protectionists; and they had overwhelming majorities in Parliament. Let me say at once that the diplomatic contest was ended as soon as the case had been fully presented. When the judgment of the French government was convinced it was instantly ready to do right. What remained was a question of convinc

ing the Chambers also, and of adjusting duties on the general scale then about to be adopted in their new tariff. On that point, as you know, legislators on both sides of the water are apt to have views of their own.

"I had the pleasure of bringing home an extradition treaty completed in the last week of my stay and signed on the day of my departure. It will be of some interest to the merchants of New York, for it more than doubles the number of extraditable crimes with France. And if the Senate should now kindly take the same benevolent view of it with its authors and confirm it promptly, it may have the effect of making the crimes which peculiarly harass the merchant more rare among you, and Paris less attractive to any Americans except the good ones.

"A limited commercial agreement which I had the pleasure of closing just before my return, and in which the Chamber will take some interest, has not yet been proclaimed by the President, since it needs first the assent of the French Chambers. The Tariff Commission has reported, however, unanimously in its favor, and the French Ministers seemed to have no doubt about its approval. Here, coming under section 3 of the new Tariff bill, it requires no ratification by the Senate. It gives us the French minimum tariff and the treatment of the most favored nation, on an amount of our products equal to their exportations to us of hides, skins, sugar and molasses. Unfortunately for us, neither France nor her Colonies have sent us a great deal of these articles. Still, we are able to secure in exchange reduced rates for some nine or ten millions of our exports; and for this we took care to select articles in which we already have some trade established, and in which a duty discriminating in our favor should develop. We have for France, and for Guadeloupe, Martinique, and her other colonies, the whole range of common woods, lumber, clapboards and staves; canned meats; fresh, dried and pressed fruits, and hops. These articles have been chosen, as you will see, with a view of affecting large classes of small producers and large sections of the country. We had some other beautiful selections made, but, unfortunately, the trade in them was already so large that it more than filled the bill.

"There is another matter on which we have had some talk, and on which I hope for something definite by an early steamer. It is possible that this may lead to a little more reciprocity that shall be mutually beneficial. I betray no confidence, indeed, in saying that the thoughts of French statesmen, in and out of the government, are turning in the present economical condition of their

country more and more toward some general reciprocal arrangement with the United States. Some suggestions that came to me on this subject could not, perhaps, be properly detailed here; but there can be no harm, I think, in quoting a remark made to me more than once by the president of the last Chamber and the president now of the Chamber's Tariff Commission, M. Meline, who is, more than any one other, the author of the new tariff-the Major McKinley, in fact, of France. Said he: One of the first things I should favor, after the workings of our tariff are known, would be a complete commercial treaty with the United States.'

"This is a matter, however, in which the assent of the legislative bodies on both sides the water would be required; and when I recall the trials of pork, and the entirely unsentimental view both countries take of trade problems, I am not sure that the lot of the Minister who is fortunate enough to negotiate that treaty will be an altogether happy one.

"In any case, the trade situation of France for the next few years is sure to be peculiar and most interesting. She is just entering upon an untried economical regime. She has become overwhelmingly protectionist-no doubt in part because of our example-and in one respect she is bettering our instructions with vengeance. We have generally reached our present high duties by successive steps, often extending throughout a century. France has suddenly, on dozens of important products, doubled, or trebled, even quadrupled, her late duties, at a single blow. What is to be the effect upon her trade relations? That is a problem on which it is not wise to dogmatize beforehand; but one or two of its elements seem clear. In this sharp and sudden advance on her old duties, France has gone on our road faster, if not farther than ourselves, while she must remain under the influence of radically different conditions. Practically speaking, the United States has no neighbors and no frontiers, while it preserves within its own borders, from side to side of the continent and from the lakes to the Gulf, the largest and most beneficent example of absolute free trade the world can yet show. France has no continent for such a commerce, no room for four or five times her present population, no such undeveloped opportunities for mining, manufacturing, and trade. Now, hemmed in as she is by Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium, and with but a strip of water like Long Island Sound (though some travelers say a trifle more turbulent) between her and Great Britain-whether thus situated France can successfully adapt our practice to her conditions is a question which her states