an American corporation. The extent of the privileges of American citizens and ships is measurable under the treaty of 1846 by those of Colombian citizens and ships. It would be our earnest desire and expectation to see the world's peaceful commerce enjoy the same just, liberal, and rational treatment.

Secretary Cass had already said to Great Britain in 1857:

The United States, as I have before had occasion to assure your Lordship, demand no exclusive privileges in these passages, but will always exert their influence to secure their free and unrestricted benefits, both in peace and war, to the commerce of the world.

Mr. President, it was upon that declaration, upon that selfdenying declaration, upon that solemn assurance, that the United States sought not and would not have any preference for its own citizens over the subjects and citizens of other countries that Great Britain abandoned her rights under the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and entered into the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, with the clause continuing the principles of clause 8, which embodied these same declarations, and the clause establishing the rule of equality taken from the Suez Canal convention. We are not at liberty to give any other construction to the Hay-Pauncefote treaty than the construction which is consistent with that declaration.

Mr. President, these declarations, made specifically and directly to secure the making of these treaties, do not stand alone. For a longer period than the oldest Senator has lived the United States has been from time to time making open and public declarations of her disinterestedness, her altruism, her purposes for the benefit of mankind, her freedom from desire or willingness to secure special and peculiar advantage in respect of transit across the Isthmus. In 1826 Mr. Clay, then Secretary of State in the Cabinet of John Quincy Adams, said, in his instructions to the delegates to the Panama Congress of that year:

If a canal across the Isthmus be opened "so as to admit of the passage of sea vessels from ocean to ocean, the benefit 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 for reasonable tolls."

Mr. Cleveland, in his annual message of 1885, said:

The lapse of years has abundantly confirmed the wisdom and foresight of those earlier administrations which, long before the conditions of maritime intercourse were changed and enlarged by the progress of the age, proclaimed the vital need of interoceanic transit across the American Isthmus and consecrated it in advance to the common use of mankind by their positive declarations and through the formal obligations of treaties. Toward such realization the efforts of my administration will be applied, ever bearing in mind the principles on which it must rest and which were declared in no uncertain tones by Mr. Cass, who, while Secretary of State in 1858, announced that "What the United States want in Central America next to the happiness of its people is the security and neutrality of the interoceanic routes which lead through it."

By public declarations, by the solemn asseverations of our treaties with Colombia in 1846, with Great Britain in 1850, our treaties with Nicaragua, our treaty with Great Britain in 1901, our treaty with Panama in 1903, we have presented to the world the most unequivocal guaranty of disinterested action for the common benefit of mankind and not for our selfish advantage.

In the message which was sent to Congress by President Roosevelt on the 4th of January, 1904, explaining the course of this Government regarding the revolution in Panama and the making of the treaty by which we acquired all the title that we have upon the Isthmus, President Roosevelt said:

If ever a Government could be said to have received a mandate from civilization to effect an object the accomplishment of which was demanded in the interest of mankind, the United States holds that position with regard to the interoceanic canal.

Mr. President, there has been much discussion for many years among authorities upon international law as to whether artificial canals for the convenience of commerce did not partake of the character of natural passageways to such a degree that, by the rules of international law, equality must be ob

served in the treatment of mankind by the nation which has possession and control. Many very high authorities have asserted that that rule applies to the Panama Canal even without a treaty. We base our title upon the right of mankind in the Isthmus, treaty or no treaty. We have long asserted, beginning with Secretary Cass, that the nations of Central America had no right to debar the world from its right of passage across the Isthmus. Upon that view, in the words which I have quoted from President Roosevelt's message to Congress, we base the justice of our entire action upon the Isthmus which resulted in our having the Canal Zone. We could not have taken it for our selfish interest; we could not have taken it for the purpose of securing an advantage to the people of the United States over the other peoples of the world; it was only because civilization had its rights to passage across the Isthmus and because we made ourselves the mandatory of civilization to assert those rights that we are entitled to be there at all. On the principles which underlie our action and upon all the declarations that we have made for more than half a century, as well as upon the express and positive stipulations of our treaties, we are forbidden to say we have taken the custody of the Canal Zone to give ourselves any right of preference over the other civilized nations of the world beyond those rights which go to the owner of a canal to have the tolls that are charged for passage.

Well, Mr. President, asserting that we were acting for the common benefit of mankind, willing to accept no preferential right of our own, just as we asserted it to secure the ClaytonBulwer treaty, just as we asserted it to secure the HayPauncefote treaty, when we had recognized the Republic of Panama, we made a treaty with her on the 18th of November, 1903. I ask your attention now to the provisions of that treaty. In that treaty both Panama and the United States recognize the fact that the United States was acting, not for its own special and selfish interest, but in the interest of mankind.

The suggestion has been made that we are relieved from the obligations of our treaties with Great Britain because the Canal Zone is our territory. It is said that, because it has become ours, we are entitled to build the canal on our own territory and do what we please with it. Nothing can be further from the fact. It is not our territory, except in trust. Article 2 of the treaty with Panama provides:

The Republic of Panama grants to the United States in perpetuity the use, occupation, and control of a zone of land and land under water for the construction, maintenance, operation, sanitation, and protection of said canal

And for no other purpose

of the width of 10 miles extending to the distance of 5 miles on each side of the center line of the route of the canal to be constructed.

*

The Republic of Panama further grants to the United States in perpetuity the use, occupation, and control of any other lands and waters outside of the zone above described which may be necessary and convenient for the construction, maintenance, operation, sanitation, and protection of the said canal or of any auxiliary canals or other works necessary and convenient for the construction, maintenance, operation, sanitation, and protection of the said enterprise.

Article 3 provides:

The Republic of Panama grants to the United States all the rights, power, and authority within the zone mentioned and described in article 2 of this agreement

From which I have just read

and within the limits of all auxiliary lands and waters mentioned and described in said article 2 which the United States would possess and exercise if it were the sovereign of the territory within which said lands and waters are located to the entire exclusion of the exercise by the Republic of Panama of any such sovereign rights, power, or authority.

Article 5 provides:

The Republic of Panama grants to the United States in perpetu

ity a monopoly for the construction, maintenance, and operation of any system of communication by means of canal or railroad across its territory between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.

I now read from article 18:

The canal, when constructed, and the entrances thereto shall be neutral in perpetuity, and shall be opened upon the terms provided for by section 1 of article 3 of, and in conformity with all the stipulations of, the treaty entered into by the Governments of the United States and Great Britain on November 18, 1901.

So, Mr. President, far from our being relieved of the obligations of the treaty with Great Britain by reason of the title that we have obtained to the Canal Zone, we have taken that title impressed with a solemn trust. We have taken it for no purpose except the construction and maintenance of a canal in accordance with all the stipulations of our treaty with Great Britain. We can not be false to those stipulations without adding to the breach of contract a breach of the trust which we have assumed, according to our own declarations, for the benefit of mankind as the mandatory of civilization.

In anticipation of the plainly-to-be-foreseen contingency of our having to acquire some kind of title in order to construct the canal, the Hay-Pauncefote treaty provided expressly in article 4:

It is agreed that no change of territorial sovereignty or of international relations of the country or countries traversed by the beforementioned. canal shall affect the general principle of neutralization or the obligation of the high contracting parties under the present treaty.

So you will see that the treaty with Great Britain expressly provides that its obligations shall continue, no matter what title we get to the Canal Zone; and the treaty by which we get the title expressly impresses upon it as a trust the obligations of the treaty with Great Britain. How idle it is to say that because the Canal Zone is ours we can do with it what we please.