nal plan or type must be determined, and it is the
duty of Congress to act and to fix, for once and for all time, the type
of canal, with the same courage and freedom from prejudice or bias as
was the case in the decision which finally fixed the route by way of
Panama.

Any amount of additional testimony and expert opinion will only add to
the confusion and tend to produce a more hopeless state of affairs. Let
Congress fix the type in broad outlines and leave it to responsible
engineers in actual charge to solve problems in detail, and to adapt
themselves to local conditions and to new problems which in the course
of construction are certain to arise. Let us take counsel of the past,
most of all from the experience gained in the construction of the Suez
Canal, an engineering and commercial success which challenges the
admiration of the world. We know how near it came to utter defeat by the
conflict of opinion, by the intrigue of conniving and jealous powers,
and last, but not least, by the ill-founded apprehensions and fears of
those who were searching the vast domain of conjecture and remote
possibilities for arguments to cause a temporary delay or ultimate
abandonment.

It is not difficult to secure the opinion of eminent authority for or
against any project when the facts themselves are in dispute, and when
the objects and aims are not well defined. The great Lord Palmerston,
the most bitter opponent of the Suez Canal scheme, in want of a more
convincing argument, seriously claimed that France would send soldiers
disguised as workmen to the Isthmus of Suez, later to take possession of
Egypt and make it a French colony. By one method or another Palmerston
tried to defeat the scheme in its beginning and to bring it to disaster
during the period of construction. It is a far from creditable story.
History always more or less repeats itself, whether it be in politics or
engineering enterprise, but in few affairs are there more convincing
parallels than in the canal projects of Panama and Suez. Lord Palmerston
and Sir Henry Bulwer, then the ambassador at Constantinople, did all in
their power to destroy public confidence in the enterprise, and they
were completely successful in preventing English investments in the
stock of the canal.[2]

It was the same Sir Henry Bulwer who, in 1850, succeeded by questionable
diplomatic methods in foisting upon the American people a treaty which
was contrary to their best interests and