No one of the republics to the south of us, through whose territory it was proposed to build a canal, could raise the capital for its construction or insure its protection when completed. No company chartered by one of these governments could have raised the necessary capital without some further guarantee. Hence it was that all companies organized for this purpose had to secure their charters from some more powerful nation, such as the United States or France, and their concessions from one of the Central American states. This rendered necessary a treaty between the state granting the concession or right to construct a canal through its territory and the state chartering the company. The claims of other states to equality of treatment in the use of such a canal constituted another element that had to be considered. With the establishment of the independence of the Spanish-American republics the question of the construction of a ship canal across the isthmus became a matter of general interest, and it was one of the proposed subjects of discussion at the Congress of American Republics summoned by Bolivar to meet at Panama in 1826. In the instructions to the United States commissioners to that congress, Mr. Clay authorized them to enter into the consideration of that subject, suggesting that the best routes would likely be found in the territory of Mexico or of the Central Republic. As to the diplomatic status of the canal, he said: If the work should ever be executed so as to admit of the passage of sea vessels from ocean to ocean, the benefits of it ought not to be exclusively appropriated to any one nation, but should be extended to all parts of the globe upon the payment of a just compensation or reasonable tolls.[140] In 1835, and again in 1839, the United States Senate passed resolutions authorizing the President to enter into negotiations with other nations, particularly Central America and New Granada, for the purpose of protecting by treaty either individuals or companies who might undertake to open communication between the two oceans, and of insuring "the free and equal navigation of the canal by all nations." Presidents Jackson and Van Buren both commissioned agents with a view to carrying out these resolutions, but without success. While a prisoner at Ham in 1845, Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte secured from the government of Nicaragua a concession granting him power to organize a company for the construction of a waterway to be known as "Le Canale Napoleon de Nicaragua." After his escape from Ham, he published in London a pamphlet entitled "The Canal of Nicaragua, or a Project for the Junction of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by means of a Canal."[141]