To the question which may be asked, whether this meeting and the principles which may be adjusted and settled by it as rules of intercourse between the American nations may not give umbrage to the holy league of European powers or offense to Spain, it is deemed a sufficient answer that our attendance at Panama can give _no just cause_ of umbrage or offense to either, and that the United States will stipulate nothing there which can give such cause. Here the right of inquiry into our purposes and measures must stop. The holy league of Europe itself was formed without inquiring of the United States whether it would or would not give umbrage to them. The fear of giving umbrage to the holy league of Europe was urged as a motive for denying to the American nations the acknowledgment of their independence. That it would be viewed by Spain as hostility to her was not only urged, but directly declared by herself. The Congress and administration of that day consulted their rights and duties, and not their fears. Fully determined to give no heedless displeasure to any foreign power, the United States can estimate the probability of their giving it only by the right which any foreign state could have to take it from their measures. Neither the representation of the United States at Panama nor any measure to which their assent may be yielded there will give to the holy league or any of its members, nor to Spain, the right to take offense; for the rest the United States must still, as heretofore, take counsel from their duties rather than their fears. Such are the objects in which it is expected that the plenipotentiaries of the United States, when commissioned to attend the meeting at the Isthmus, will take part, and such are the motives and purposes with which the invitation of the three Republics was accepted. It was, however, as the House will perceive from the correspondence, accepted only upon condition that the nomination of commissioners for the mission should receive the advice and consent of the Senate. The concurrence of the House to the measure by the appropriations necessary for carrying it into effect is alike subject to its free determination and indispensable to the fulfillment of the intention. That the congress at Panama will accomplish all, or even any, of the transcendent benefits to the human race which warmed the conceptions of its first proposer it were perhaps indulging too sanguine a forecast of events to promise. It is in its nature a measure speculative and experimental. The blessing of Heaven may turn it to the account of human improvement; accidents unforeseen and mischances not to be anticipated may baffle all its high purposes and disappoint its fairest expectations. But the design is great, is benevolent, is humane.