being accredited to this Government as charge d’affaires from the State of Nicaragua, in a note to the Secretary of State, a translation of which is herewith sent, declared that he was “only empowered to exchange ratifications of the treaty concluded with Mr. Squier, and that the special convention concluded at Guatemala by Mr. Hise, the charge d’affaires of the United States, and Senor Selva, the commissioner of Nicaragua, had been, as was publicly and universally known, disapproved by his Government.”

We have no precedent in our history to justify such a treaty as that negotiated by Mr. Hise since the guaranties we gave to France of her American possessions.  The treaty negotiated with New Granada on the 12th day of December, 1846, did not guarantee the sovereignty of New Granada on the whole of her territory, but only over “the single Province of the Isthmus of Panama,” immediately adjoining the line of the railroad, the neutrality of which was deemed necessary by the President and Senate to the construction and security of the work.

The thirty-fifth article of the treaty with Nicaragua, negotiated by Mr. Squier, which is submitted for your advice in regard to its ratification, distinctly recognizes the rights of sovereignty and property which the State of Nicaragua possesses in and over the line of the canal therein provided for.  If the Senate doubt on that subject, it will be clearly wrong to involve us in a controversy with England by adopting the treaty; but after the best consideration which I have been able to give to the subject my own judgment is convinced that the claims of Nicaragua are just, and that as our commerce and intercourse with the Pacific require the opening of this communication from ocean to ocean it is our duty to ourselves to assert their justice.

This treaty is not intended to secure to the United States any monopoly or exclusive advantage in the use of the canal.  Its object is to guarantee protection to American citizens and others who shall construct the canal, and to defend it when completed against unjust confiscations or obstructions, and to deny the advantages of navigation through it to those nations only which shall refuse to enter into the same guaranties.  A copy of the contract of the canal company is herewith transmitted, from which, as well as from the treaty, it will be perceived that the same benefits are offered to all nations in the same terms.

The message of my predecessor to the Senate of the 10th February, 1847, transmitting for ratification the treaty with New Granada, contains in general the principles by which I have been actuated in directing the negotiation with Nicaragua.  The only difference between the two cases consists in this:  In that of Nicaragua the British Government has seized upon part of her territory and was in possession of it when we negotiated the treaty with her.  But that possession was taken after our occupation of California, when