Daily inter mountain., 1900-12-04
To the Senate and House of Represen-

tatives:
With the outgoing Of the old and the
beginning Of the new century, you begin
the last session Of the Fifty-sxth con
gress with evidences on every hand of
individual and national prosperity and
with proof OF the growing strength and
increasing power for good to republican
institutions. Your countrymen will join
with you in felicitation that American
liberty is more firmly established than
ever before and that love for it and the
determination to preserve it are more
universal than at any former period of
our history.
The republic was never so strong, be-
cause never so strongly entrenched in
the hearts Of the people as now. The
constitution with few amendments exist
as it left the hands of its authors. The
additions which have been made to it
proclaim larger freedom and more ex-
tended citizenship. Popular government
has demonstrated in its one hundred and
twenty-four years of trial here it's sta
biity and security and it's efficiency as
the best safeguard to human rights.
When the sixth congress assembled in
November 1S0O the population Of the
United States was 5,SOS 4S3. 1t is now
76,3O4.l9 Then we had sixteen states.
Now we have forty-five. Then our ter
ritory consisted Of 909, $50 square miles. 1t
Is now 3,S46,595 square miles. Educatio
religion and morality have kept pace
with our advancement in other directions
and while extending it's power the gov
ernment has adhered to it's foundation
principles and abated none of them in
dealing with our new peoples and possess
sions. A nation so preserved and blessed
gives reverent thanks to God and invokes
his guirance and the continuance of his
care and favor.
CHINESE PROBLEM
In our foreign intercourse, the DOM
inant question has been the treatment
Of the Chinese problem. Apart from
this, our relations with the powers have
been happy. The recent troubles in
China sprang from the anti-foreign agi-
tation which for the past three years
has gained strength in the northern
provinces Their origin lies deep in the
character of the Chinese races and in the
traditions of their government. The Tai
Ping rebellion and the opening of Chi
nese ports to foreign trade and settle
ment disturbed alike the homogenity
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 associa-
tons among a primitive people which
had pursued for centuries a national
policy of isolation. The telegraph and
the railway spreading over their land
the steamers plying on their waterways
the merchant and the missionary pene-
trating year by year farther to the in
terror, became to the Chinese mind
types of an alien invasion, changing the
course of their national life and fraught
with vague forebOding of disaS to
their beliefs and their self-control.
For several years before the present
troubles all the resources of foreign di-
plomacy, backed by moral demonstra-
tions of the physical force of fleets and
arms, have been needed to secure due
respect for the treaty rights of foreign
ers and to obtain satisfaction from the
responsible authorities for the sporadic
outrages upon persons and prosperity of
unoffending sojourners which from time
to time occurred at widely separa ted
points in the northern provinces, as in
the case of the outrages in Szechuen
and Shang Tung.
Posting OF anti-fOreign placardS be-
came daily occurrence, which the re-
peated probation of the imperial power
failed to check or punish. These inlam-
matory appeals to the ignorance and
superstition of the masses, mendacous
and absurd in their accusations and
deeply hostile in their spirit, could not
but work culmnative harm. They
aimed at no particular class of foreign
ars hnv ,,,r, ia1 IN,
everything foreign. An outbreak in
Shang Tung, in which German mission
aries We're slain, was the too natural
result of the malevolent teachings. The
posting of seditous placards, eXhorting
to the utter destruction of foreigners
and of every foreign thing, continued
until rebuked Hostile demonstrations
toword the stranger gained strength by
organization.
DEVELOPMENT OF BOXERS.
The Sect commonly styled the Box
ers developed greatly in the provinces
north of the Yang Use, and with colu
sion of many notable officials, including
some in the immediate councils of the
throne itself, became alarmingly ag-
sressiye. No foreigners life, outside of
the protected treaty ports, was safe.
alton. The diplomatic representatives of
the powers in Pekin stroye in vain to