cation of a public character to the
Senate and House of Representatives until advised of their readiness to
receive it. I have deferred to this usage until the close of the first
month of the session, but my convictions of duty will not permit me
longer to postpone the discharge of the obligation enjoined by the
Constitution upon the President "to give to the Congress information of
the state of the Union and recommend to their consideration such
measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."

It is matter of congratulation that the Republic is tranquilly advancing
in a career of prosperity and peace.

Whilst relations of amity continue to exist between the United States
and all foreign powers, with some of them grave questions are depending
which may require the consideration of Congress.

Of such questions, the most important is that which has arisen out of
the negotiations with Great Britain in reference to Central America.

By the convention concluded between the two Governments on the 19th of
April, 1850, both parties covenanted that "neither will ever" "occupy,
or fortify, or colonize, or assume or exercise any dominion over
Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast, or any part of Central
America."

It was the undoubted understanding of the United States in making this
treaty that all the present States of the former Republic of Central
America and the entire territory of each would thenceforth enjoy
complete independence, and that both contracting parties engaged equally
and to the same extent, for the present and for the future, that if
either then had any claim of right in Central America such claim and all
occupation or authority under it were unreservedly relinquished by the
stipulations of the convention, and that no dominion was thereafter to
be exercised or assumed in any part of Central America by Great Britain
or the United States.

This Government consented to restrictions in regard to a region of
country wherein we had specific and peculiar interests only upon the
conviction that the like restrictions were in the same sense obligatory
on Great Britain. But for this understanding of the force and effect of
the convention it would never have been concluded by us.

So clear was this understanding on the part of the United States that in
correspondence contemporaneous with the ratification of the convention
it was distinctly expressed that the mutual covenants of nonoccupation
were not inten