Mr. Hovey to Mr. Seward.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch No. 19, together with its enclosure, your No. 32 to Mr. Hale.
Availing myself of your permission, I read portions of your 32 to General Prado and his minister for foreign affairs, during a private conversation touching the plans and purposes of the allies.
[Page 651]The enclosure, having been carefully interpreted, was received with many manifestations of satisfaction by General Prado and Señor Pacheco.
The secretary for foreign affairs referred to your address to the authorities of Cuba, in which address he seemed to think you were particularly favorable to the Spanish government.
I replied to him that I had not had the honor of reading that address, but that the tone and language of your No. 32 to Mr. Hale, (and particularly that portion indicated below by quotation marks,) clearly and emphatically defines the feeling of the United States toward the South American republics:
“The government of the United States has, during the continuance of hostilities, suffered no occasion to pass unimproved by the exercise of good offices to bring those unhappy conflicts to some end which would be equally advantageous and honorable to all the belligerents. The well-known sentiments of the United States in regard to the painful conflict between Spain and the South American republics remain unchanged.”
This language, I suggested, could admit of but one construction, viz: the deep regret and apprehension with which the United States beheld an attack on the governments of the South American republics by a power with whom she desired to be at peace.
This view was accepted by both General Prado and Señor Pacheco.
I deemed it important to impress, at this interview, the fact of our antecedent friendliness, because many inimical publications have reached here, (extracts from “La Cronica” of New York, and from other Spanish journals.)
Your plain expressions, confidentially made known through your instructions to our minister at Madrid, have fully satisfied the Peruvian government on these points.
I have the honor to be your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.