The Portland daily press., 1900-12-04
PRESIDENTS MESSAGE.
To the Senate and House of Representa-

tives:
AT the outgoing Of the old and the In
coming OF the new century you begin the
hast session OF the Fifty-sixth Congress
with evidences on every hand Of indi-
yidual ard national prosperity and with
proof OF the growing strength and in
creasing power for good OF Republican
institutions. Your countrymen will join
with you in felicitation that American
liberty Is more firmly established than
ever before, aud that love for It and the
determination TO preserve it are more uni
versal than at any former period OF our
history.
The Republic was never SO strong, be-
cause never so strongly intrenched in the
hearts of the people as now. The Con-
stitution, with few amendments, exists as
it left the hands of its authors. The adj
ditions which have been made to it pro-
claim larger freedom and more extended
citizenship. Popular government has
demonstrated in its one hundred and
twenty-four years Of trial here its sta
bilRy and security, and its efficiency as
the best instrument of national develop
ment and the best safeguard to human
rights.
When the Sixth Congress assembled in
United States was 5,30S,4S3. 1t is now
T6.304, 100. Then we had sixteen States.
Now we have forty-fve. Then our ter
ritory consisted of 909,050 square miles.
1t is now 3,S46,5 square miles. Edu-
cation, religion, and morality have kept
pace with our advancement in other d.
rections. and while extending its power
the Government has adhered to its foun-
dation principles and abated none of
them In dealing with our new peoples
and possessions. A nation so preserved
and blessed gives reyerent thanks to
God and invokes His guidance and the
continuance of His care and favor.
In our foreign intercourse the dominant
question has been the treatment of the
Chinese problem. Apart from this our
relations with the powers have been hap
Ply.
The recent troubles In China spring
from the antiforeign agitation which for
the past three years has gained strength
in the northern provinces. Their origin
lies deep in the character of the Chinese
race and in the traditions of their Gov
eminent. The TAPPING rebellion and the
opening of the Chinese ports to foreign
trade and settlement disturbed alike the
homogeneity and the seclusion of China.
Meanwhile foreign activity made itself
felt in all quarters. not alone on the
coast, but along the great river arteries
and in the remoter districts, carrying new
ideas and introducing new associations
among a primitive people which had pur-
sued for centuries national policy Of
isolation.
The telegraph and the railway spread
ing over their land, the steamers plying
on their waterways, the merchant and
the missionary penetrating year by year
farther to the interior, became to the Chi
nese mind types of an alien invasion,
changing the course of their national life
and fraught with vague forebodings of
disaster to their beliefs and their self
control.
For several years before the present
troubles all the resources of foreign d.
plomacy, backed by moral demonstrations
of the physical force of fleets and arms,
have been needed to secure due respect
for the treaty rights of foreigners and to
obtain satisfaction from the responsible
authorities for the sporadic outrages upon
the persons and property of unoffending
sojourners, which from time to time oc-
CURED at widely separated points in the
northern provinces, as in the case of the
outbreaks in Sze-chuen and Shan-tung.
Posting of nntiforeign placards became
a daily occurrence, which the repeated
reprobation of the Imperial power failed
10 check or punish. These infiammatory
appeals to the ignorance and superstition
of the masses, mendacious and absurd
in their accusations and deeply hostile
in their spirit, could not but work cumu-
lative harm. They aimed at no particu-
lar class of foreigners; they were impair
tial in attacking everything foreign.
An outbreak in Shan-tung, in which
German missionaries were slain, was the
too natural result of these maleyolent
teachings The posting of seditious pla-
cards, exhorting TO the utter destruction
of foreigners and of every foreign thing,
continued unrebuked. Hostile demon
STATIONS toward the stranger gained
strength by organization.
The sect, ommonly styled the Boxers,
developed greatly in the provinces north
of the Yang Use, and with the collision
of many notable officials, including some
in the immediate councils of the Throne |
itself, became alarmingly aggressive. No
foreigners life, outside of the protected
treaty ports, was safe. No foreign inter- |
est was secure from spoliation.
The diplomatic representatives of the !
powers in Picking strove in vain to check |
this movement. Protest was followed by |
demand and demand by renewed protest, /
TO be met with perfunctory edicts from the /
Palace and evasive and futile assurances
from the Tsung-h Yamen. The circle of /
the Boxer influence narrowed about Pc
king, and while nominally stigmatized as
seditious, it was felt that its spirit per-
vaded the capital itself, that the Impe-
rial forces were imbued with its doc
trjnes, and that the immediate counselors
of the Empress Dowager were in full
sympathy with the antiforeign move
ment.
The increasing gravity of the condi-
tions in China and the imminence of per-
II to our own diversified interests in the !
Empire, as well as to those of all the
other treaty governments, were soon ap-
preciated by this Government causing it
profound solicitude. The United States
from the earliest days of foreign inter
course with China had followed a policy
of peace emitting no occasions to testify /