The Rhode Island Republican

THE PANAMA MISSION.—The difficulties, which it is understood the Panama mission has encountered in the Senate excite in this part of the country great and universal astonishment. We were in hopes that the course suggested by the President in relation to this subject, would have been sustained by the Senate with a cordiality & promptitude, which the obvious interests of the country required—at a moment of such peculiar delicacy as the present, when the deputies of the whole of America are assembling at Panama, and our active and vigilant rival, the commercial and powerful England, stands ready to seize upon every advantage which circumstances may offer. We do not profess to be deeply versed in the peculiar and appropriate duties of the Senate in relation to questions of this nature, but we have always understood, and from high authority, that in similar cases it has been considered that the duties of the Senate, or at least the legitimate and judicious exercise of those duties was confined to the rejection or confirmation of persons nominated for any particular mission by the President, and did not extend to the expediency or policy of the mission itself. We do not feel disposed to enlarge more particularly on a subject of this importance, and especially when it is committed, like the mission in question, to a high branch of the executive authority. We will therefore only add that in our opinion the interest of the country, as well as its character (and this is the universal sentiment around us) require that the nomination of the Commissioners to Panama, should be disposed of by the Senate within some reasonable time before the opening of that Congress.

Much speculation is indulged in the papers as to the threatened opposition of Mr. Calhoun and his friends to this measure: and he, and his well selected Committee of Foreign Relations, with the profound Mr. Tazewell to back them, have presented, it is said, to the Senate a very specious report in opposition to the mission. No one who knows the strength and worth of the Administration, and its solid claims to the attachment of the country can feel any serious alarm at Mr. Calhoun's maneuvering, or at the speciousness or subtlety of any report of his committee. But if he really contemplates a regular opposition to the Government or is preparing to assail it with a desultory and partizan warfare, we hope he will select as an object of his aggression some other measure of the Administration less connected with the highest interests and best hopes of the country.