The New International Encyclopædia/Congress

CONGRESS (Lat. congressus, conference, from congredi, to meet together, from com-, together + gradi, to step). In international affairs, an assembly either of sovereign princes or of delegates of sovereign States for the purpose of considering matters of common interest. In the United States, where the term has now a specific meaning as applied to the National Legislature (see United States), it had a similar origin, the first Congress being that of the delegates from the various British colonies, who met on October 7, 1765, for the purpose of considering their grievances. Previous to signing a treaty of peace, a meeting of plenipotentiaries usually takes place, to which the name of a congress is sometimes applied, though the term seems more properly to be reserved for those more important meetings at which extensive schemes of future policy are determined. The period of secular diplomatic congresses opened with the Congress of Münster and Osnabrück, which closed the Thirty Years' War by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 (q.v.). Since then, omitting those diplomatic bodies whose object was simply to arrange terms of peace at the close of a war, the most important European congresses have been those of Vienna (1814-15), Paris (1856), Berlin (1878), and the Internation Peace Conference at The Hague (1899). An international ‘Pan-American’ congress, to discuss industrial and commercial questions, was held at Washington, from October, 1888, to April, 1890. In the winter of 1901-02 a similar congress assembled at Mexico and discussed at great length the question of international arbitration. See Vienna, Paris, Berlin, Congress of.