With the Spanish islands of Cuba and Porto Rico we maintain, in spite of their adverse legislation, a large commerce by reason of our necessities and of their proximity.  In the year ending June 30, 1869, we imported from them merchandise valued at $65,609,274.  During the same time we sent them goods to the value only of $15,313,919.

The prohibitory duties forced upon them by the policy of Spain shut out much that we might supply.  Their tropical productions, for instance, are too valuable to allow their lands to be given up to the growth of breadstuffs; yet, instead of taking these articles from the superabundant fields of their nearest neighbors, they are forced to go to the distant plains of Spain.  It will be for the interest of the United States to shape its general policy so that this relation of imports and exports shall be altered in Cuba when peace is restored and its political condition is satisfactorily established.

With none of the other Spanish American States in North and South America are our commercial relations what they should be.  Our total imports in the year ending June 30, 1869, from these countries were less than $25,000,000 (or not one-half the amount from Cuba alone), and our exports for the same time to them were only $17,850,313; and yet these countries have an aggregate population nearly or quite as great as that of the United States; they have republican forms of government, and they profess to be, and probably really are, in political sympathy with us.

This Department is not able to give with entire accuracy the imports and exports of Great Britain with the same countries during the corresponding period.  It is believed, however, the following figures will be found to be not far from correct:  Imports to Great Britain, $42,820,942; exports from Great Britain, $40,682,102.

It thus appears that notwithstanding the greater distance which the commerce has to travel in coming to and from Great Britain, notwithstanding the political sympathy which ought naturally to exist between republics, notwithstanding the American idea which has been so prominently and so constantly put forward by the Government of the United States, notwithstanding the acknowledged skill of American manufacturers, notwithstanding the ready markets which the great cities of the United States afford for the consumption of tropical productions, the inhabitants of the Spanish American continent consume of the products of Great Britain more than twice the quantity they take of the products of the United States, and that they sell to us only three-fifths of the amount they sell to Great Britain.

The Secretary of State appends to this report the tables on which these statements are founded.  That their commerce with the United States is not large may be partially explained by the fact that these States have been subject to many successive revolutions since the failure of the congress of Panama.  These revolutions not only exhaust their resources and burden them with debt, but they check emigration, prevent the flow of foreign capital into the country, and stop the enterprise which needs a stable government for its development.