(4) Improvement of commercial facilities and the removal of the obstructions then existing in the way of trade and commerce. In reply to these suggestions Mr. Calderon handed Mr. Cushing a note, dated April 16, 1876, in which he represented that his majesty's government was in full accord with Mr. Fish's suggestions. This assurance on the part of the Spanish government completely thwarted Mr. Fish's plans, and, together with Lord Derby's reply, put all further attempts at intervention out of the question. The substance of Mr. Fish's note threatening intervention appeared unofficially in the press of Europe and America in December, 1875, and attracted such general attention that in January the House asked for the correspondence. In reply Mr. Fish submitted to the President for transmission the note of November 5, together with a few carefully chosen extracts from the correspondence between himself and Mr. Cushing,[119] but nothing was given that might indicate that the United States had appealed to the powers of Europe to countenance intervention. As rumors to this effect had, however, appeared in the press, the House called the next day for whatever correspondence had taken place with foreign powers in regard to Cuba. Mr. Fish replied that "no correspondence has taken place during the past year with any European government, other than Spain, in regard to the island of Cuba," but that the note of November 5 had been orally communicated to several European governments by reading the same.[120] This was putting a very strict and a very unusual construction upon the term "correspondence," to say the least. The dispatches, notes, and telegrams that pass between a government and its representatives abroad are the generally recognized means of communicating with foreign powers, and are always spoken of as the correspondence with those powers. The whole affair reveals a curious lack of candor and of courage on the part of Mr. Fish. He was trying to shield either the administration or himself, and did not wish the American public to know that he had reversed the time-honored policy of the state department by appealing to the powers of Europe to intervene in what had been uniformly treated, from the days of John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, as a purely American question. This correspondence was suppressed for twenty years. On March 24, 1896, the Senate called for "copies of all dispatches, notes, and telegrams in the department of state, from and after the note from Secretary Fish to Mr. Cushing of November 5, 1875, and including that note, until the pacification of Cuba in 1878, which relate to mediation or intervention by the United States in the affairs of that island, together with all correspondence with foreign governments relating to the same topic." On April 15 President Cleveland transmitted the "correspondence" called for, which forms a document of 137 pages.[121]