that it saw a vital reason for insisting upon its
paramount claims, and the outbreak of the Civil War, with its
threats of European intervention, made an easier communication with
the rising States of the Pacific Coast seem an absolute necessity.
But we moved slowly and with vacillating steps. We were divided in
opinion as to the best route to take, as to the sort of canal that
was desirable, as to the advisability of building any canal. When
the war was over, the rapid increase of railroad communication with
the Pacific Coast made public opinion still more indifferent to the
enterprise. Meanwhile the French had started with great energy a
scheme for a canal at Panama, and De Lesseps had been induced to
lend his name to the scheme, and to take an active part in carrying
it out. For this purpose he visited the United States and used his
best diplomatic arts to induce our Government to unite with him in
his plans. But he could do nothing on this side the water and
returned to France to fight the battle alone. There the interest in
the scheme, artificially excited by speculators and still further
aided by the efforts of De Lesseps and his friends, increased to
such an extent as to swamp all considerations of prudence. The name
of De Lesseps, consecrated by the brilliant success of Suez, proved
to be a powerful charm. Thousands and tens of thousands of people in
the cities and in the country put the hard-earned savings of years
into the venture; senators, deputies, men of high social rank in
public life, shamelessly sold their votes and their voices to secure
the moral aid and the money of the state to aid their gambling
enterprise, and the newspaper press of Paris, at all times venal,
betrayed for bribes the trust that was reposed in it.

Such a state of things could not last forever. The end, long
prophesied, came at last; the exposure was complete, and the whole
stupendous scheme of fraud was unmasked. Something might have been
saved from the wreck had the canal itself been a real thing so far
as it had gone, a practical enterprise, sure in time to pay its
investors and serve the public. But it was found that everything
connected with the construction of the canal had been grossly
misrepresented; the estimates of expense; the reports of the
engineering difficulties to be overcome; the dangers from the
climate; the bills of mortality; everything, in short, was enveloped
in a cloud of lies. So great was the shock to publi