high assembly for consultation upon American interests.  It was not considered a conclusive reason for declining this invitation that the proposal for assembling such a Congress had not first been made by ourselves.  It had sprung from the urgent, immediate, and momentous common interests of the great communities struggling for independence, and, as it were, quickening into life.  From them the proposition to us appeared respectful and friendly; from us to them it could scarcely have been made without exposing ourselves to suspicions of purposes of ambition, if not of domination, more suited to rouse resistance and excite distrust than to conciliate favor and friendship.  The first and paramount principle upon which it was deemed wise and just to lay the corner stone of all our future relations with them was disinterestedness; the next was cordial good will to them; the third was a claim of fair and equal reciprocity.  Under these impressions when the invitation was formally and earnestly given, had it even been doubtful whether any of the objects proposed for consideration and discussion at the Congress were such as that immediate and important interests of the United States would be affected by the issue, I should, nevertheless, have determined so far as it depended upon me to have accepted the invitation and to have appointed ministers to attend the meeting.  The proposal itself implied that the Republics by whom it was made believed that important interests of ours or of theirs rendered our attendance there desirable.  They had given us notice that in the novelty of their situation and in the spirit of deference to our experience they would be pleased to have the benefit of our friendly counsel.  To meet the temper with which this proposal was made with a cold repulse was not thought congenial to that warm interest in their welfare with which the people and Government of the Union had hitherto gone hand in hand through the whole progress of their revolution.  To insult them by a refusal of their overture, and then invite them to a similar assembly to be called by ourselves, was an expedient which never presented itself to the mind.  I would have sent ministers to the meeting had it been merely to give them such advice as they might have desired, even with reference to their own interests, not involving ours.  I would have sent them had it been merely to explain and set forth to them our reasons for declining any proposal of specific measures to which they might desire our concurrence, but which we might deem incompatible with our interests or our duties.  In the intercourse between nations temper is a missionary perhaps more powerful than talent.  Nothing was ever lost by kind treatment.  Nothing can be gained by sullen repulses and aspiring pretensions.