ble to contract any conventional engagement on
this topic, our views would extend no further than to a mutual pledge of
the parties to the compact to maintain the principle in application to
its own territory, and to permit no colonial lodgments or establishment
of European jurisdiction upon its own soil; and with respect to the
obtrusive interference from abroad--if its future character may be
inferred from that which has been and perhaps still is exercised in more
than one of the new States--a joint declaration of its character and
exposure of it to the world may be probably all that the occasion would
require. Whether the United States should or should not be parties to
such a declaration may justly form a part of the deliberation. That
there is an evil to be remedied heeds little insight into the secret
history of late years to know, and that this remedy may best be
concerted at the Panama meeting deserves at least the experiment of
consideration. A concert of measures having reference to the more
effectual abolition of the African slave trade and the consideration of
the light in which the political condition of the island of Hayti is to
be regarded are also among the subjects mentioned by the minister from
the Republic of Colombia as believed to be suitable for deliberation at
the congress. The failure of the negotiations with that Republic
undertaken during the late administration, for the suppression of that
trade, in compliance with a resolution of the House of Representatives,
indicates the expediency of listening with respectful attention to
propositions which may contribute to the accomplishment of the great end
which was the purpose of that resolution, while the result of those
negotiations will serve as admonition to abstain from pledging this
Government to any arrangement which might be expected to fail of
obtaining the advice and consent of the Senate by a constitutional
majority to its ratification.

Whether the political condition of the island of Hayti shall be brought
at all into discussion at the meeting may be a question for preliminary
advisement. There are in the political constitution of Government of
that people circumstances which have hitherto forbidden the
acknowledgment of them by the Government of the United States as
sovereign and independent. Additional reasons for withholding that
acknowledgment have recently been seen in their acceptance of a nominal
sovereignty by the _grant_ of a for