of all." The possibility of an assumed
occurrence is very remote from its reasonable probability. We have to
rely upon our own good faith and the watchful eyes of our officers.
Against possible contingencies, such as are implied in the assumed
destruction of the locks by dynamite or other high explosives, we can do
no more than take the same precautions which we take in all other
matters of national importance. We have to take our chances the same as
any other nation would; the same as commercial enterprise would.
Certainly the remote possibility of such an event, the still more remote
contingency that the injury would be serious or fatal to the operation
of the canal, should not govern in a decision to construct a canal for
the use of the present generation rather than for the generations to
come. No canal can be built free from vulnerable points; no forts, no
battleships, can be built free from such a risk. It would be folly to
delay the construction of a canal; it would be folly to sink a hundred
million dollars or more upon so remote a contingency as this, which
belongs to the realm of fanciful or morbid imagination rather than to
the domain of substantial fact and actual experience.

As a last resort, the opposition to a lock canal brings forward the
earthquake argument. It is a curious reminder of the early and bitter
opposition to the building of the Suez Canal; its enemies had to fall
back upon the absurd theory that the canal would prove a failure because
the blowing sands of the desert would soon fill the channel. It was
seriously proposed to erect a stone wall four feet high on each side of
the embankment to provide against this imaginary danger to the canal.
Another early objection to the Suez Canal was that the Red Sea level was
30 feet above the level of the Mediterranean, only set at rest in 1847
by a special commission, which included Mr. Robert Stephenson, the great
son of a great father, bitter to the last in his opposition to the
canal, which he considered an impracticable engineering scheme. There
was much talk about the assumed prevalence of strong westerly winds on
the southern Mediterranean coast, and the danger of constantly
increasing deposits of the Nile, it was said, would render the
establishment of a port impossible. It was necessary to place a war-ship
for a whole winter at anchor three miles from the shore to prove the
error of this assumption and set at rest a foolish rumor which came nea