While the policies of the General Government upon the tariff, upon the restoration of our merchant marine, upon river and harbor improvements, and other such matters of grave and general concern are liable to be turned this way or that by the results of Congressional elections and administrative policies, sometimes involving issues that tend to peace or war, to be turned this way or that by the results of a Presidential election, there is a rightful interest in all the States and in every Congressional district that will not be deceived or silenced by the audacious pretense that the question of the right of any body of legal voters in any State or in any Congressional district to give their suffrages freely upon these general questions is a matter only of local concern or control.  The demand that the limitations of suffrage shall be found in the law, and only there, is a just demand, and no just man should resent or resist it.  My appeal is and must continue to be for a consultation that shall “proceed with candor, calmness, and patience upon the lines of justice and humanity, not of prejudice and cruelty.”

To the consideration of these very grave questions I invite not only the attention of Congress, but that of all patriotic citizens.  We must not entertain the delusion that our people have ceased to regard a free ballot and equal representation as the price of their allegiance to laws and to civil magistrates.

I have been greatly rejoiced to notice many evidences of the increased unification of our people and of a revived national spirit.  The vista that now opens to us is wider and more glorious than ever before.  Gratification and amazement struggle for supremacy as we contemplate the population, wealth, and moral strength of our country.  A trust momentous in its influence upon our people and upon the world is for a brief time committed to us, and we must not be faithless to its first condition—­the defense of the free and equal influence of the people in the choice of public officers and in the control of public affairs.

BENJ.  HARRISON.

[Footnote 22:  See pp. 59-60.]

[Footnote 23:  See p. 127.]

SPECIAL MESSAGES.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, December 16, 1891.

To the Senate and House of Representatives: 

I transmit herewith, for your information, a letter from the Secretary of State, inclosing the first annual report and copies of the bulletins of the Bureau of the American Republics.

BENJ.  HARRISON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, December 23, 1891.

To the Senate and House of Representatives: 

I transmit herewith the report of the board appointed by me under a clause in the District of Columbia appropriation act approved August 6, 1890, “to consider the location, arrangement, and operation of electric wires in the District of Columbia,” etc., to which the attention of Congress is respectfully invited.