orty
million dollars; but that otherwise they would advise taking the
Nicaragua route. Ever since 1846 we had had a treaty with the power then
in control of the Isthmus, the Republic of New Granada, the predecessor
of the Republic of Colombia and of the present Republic of Panama, by
which treaty the United States was guaranteed free and open right of way
across the Isthmus of Panama by any mode of communication that might
be constructed, while in return our Government guaranteed the perfect
neutrality of the Isthmus with a view to the preservation of free
transit.

For nearly fifty years we had asserted the right to prevent the closing
of this highway of commerce. Secretary of State Cass in 1858 officially
stated the American position as follows:

"Sovereignty has its duties as well as its rights, and none of these
local governments, even if administered with more regard to the just
demands of other nations than they have been, would be permitted, in a
spirit of Eastern isolation, to close the gates of intercourse of the
great highways of the world, and justify the act by the pretension that
these avenues of trade and travel belong to them and that they choose
to shut them, or, what is almost equivalent, to encumber them with such
unjust relations as would prevent their general use."

We had again and again been forced to intervene to protect the transit
across the Isthmus, and the intervention was frequently at the request
of Colombia herself. The effort to build a canal by private capital had
been made under De Lesseps and had resulted in lamentable failure. Every
serious proposal to build the canal in such manner had been abandoned.
The United States had repeatedly announced that we would not permit
it to be built or controlled by any old-world government. Colombia was
utterly impotent to build it herself. Under these circumstances it
had become a matter of imperative obligation that we should build it
ourselves without further delay.

I took final action in 1903. During the preceding fifty-three years the
Governments of New Granada and of its successor, Colombia, had been in
a constant state of flux; and the State of Panama had sometimes been
treated as almost independent, in a loose Federal league, and sometimes
as the mere property of the Government at Bogota; and there had been
innumerable appeals to arms, sometimes of adequate, sometimes for
inadequate, reasons. The following is a partial list of the distur