ims of a similar character, and among the
documents now communicated to Congress will be distinguished a treaty of
commerce and navigation with that Republic, the ratifications of which
have been exchanged since the last recess of the Legislature. The
negotiation of similar treaties with all the independent South American
States has been contemplated and may yet be accomplished. The basis of
them all, as proposed by the United States, has been laid in two
principles--the one of entire and unqualified reciprocity, the other the
mutual obligation of the parties to place each other permanently upon
the footing of the most favored nation. These principles are, indeed,
indispensable to the effectual emancipation of the American hemisphere
from the thraldom of colonizing monopolies and exclusions, an event
rapidly realizing in the progress of human affairs, and which the
resistance still opposed in certain parts of Europe to the
acknowledgment of the Southern American Republics as independent States
will, it is believed, contribute more effectually to accomplish. The
time has been, and that not remote, when some of those States might, in
their anxious desire to obtain a nominal recognition, have accepted of a
nominal independence, clogged with burdensome conditions, and exclusive
commercial privileges granted to the nation from which they have
separated to the disadvantage of all others. They are all now aware that
such concessions to any European nation would be incompatible with that
independence which they have declared and maintained.

Among the measures which have been suggested to them by the new
relations with one another, resulting from the recent changes in their
condition, is that of assembling at the Isthmus of Panama a congress, at
which each of them should be represented, to deliberate upon objects
important to the welfare of all. The Republics of Colombia, of Mexico,
and of Central America have already deputed plenipotentiaries to such a
meeting, and they have invited the United States to be also represented
there by their ministers. The invitation has been accepted, and
ministers on the part of the United States will be commissioned to
attend at those deliberations, and to take part in them so far as may be
compatible with that neutrality from which it is neither our intention
nor the desire of the other American States that we should depart.

The commissioners under the seventh article of the treaty of Ghent h