WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1826
34
But, 'Mr. H. said, they were told that now was the accepted time, because a Congress had assembled at Panama. They have been deliberating for some time, and our Ministers should have been despatched two months ago. He shou!d like to know what reasons the Governments of South America could have, that would determine them to pass anything that would be injurious to the interests of the United States? Have we provoked such a course of conduct? If they are disposed to enter into any regulation of that kind-if they are disposed to be faithless towards the United States, and act injuriously to us without any provocation- they are a People with whom we ought to 'form no alliance: if they are not actuated by the purest principles, and American Minister would be degraded in an assembly of that kind. If they do justice, Mr. H. said, it is all we· have a right to ask or expect from them. If they have a disposition to come to a determination, prejudicial to the interests of the United States, could our Minis- ters prevent that? But have, their institutions a natural tendency to prejudice the interests of the United States? Is it to their interests to do so? If it is, we should not experience any advantage from sending our Ministers there, when we should not constitute a majority in the assembly. They might, indeed, hold out induce- ments to them to prevent any prejudicial regulations being entered into by them: but, if it is their interests to make such, how long could the influence of such inducements be relied on? The House has been told, Mr. H. said, that this was a subject of vast importance. In this light he had regarded it, so far as he had been able to view it. He thought it a subject of no common importance, because it was about to take a direction perfectly novel. It is proposed, said he to meet different nations or their representatives, in deliberate body, to establish certain regula- tions which are to govern us in our relations to foreign Powers and in our intermediate re!ations. He concurred with the gentle- man from South Carolina that it was quite new, because its effect would be to introduce a new era in the annals of this country. Hitherto we have evinced a disinclination to entangle ourselves with alliances. We have exalted ourselves by persisting in a sys- tem that has been extremely beneficial to us, and so long as this system, in which we persist, proves beneficial to us, either as a nation or as individuals, so long ought it to be retained. We stand unshackled from all connexions with the nations of the earth. We have our relations of amity and comerce with them, not treaties
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