And State Papers 693 



enabled to lay before the Senate a treaty providing 

 for the building of the canal across the Isthmus 

 of Panama. This was the route which commended 

 itself to the deliberate judgment of the Congress, 

 and we can now acquire by treaty the right to con- 

 struct the canal over this route. The question now, 

 therefore, is not by which route the Isthmian Canal 

 shall be built, for that question has been definitely 

 and irrevocably decided. The question is simply 

 whether or not we shall have an Isthmian Canal 



When the Congress dkected that we should take 

 the Panama route under treaty with Colombia, the 

 essence of the condition, of course, referred not to 

 the government which controlled that route, but 

 to the route itself; to the territory across which 

 the route lay, not to the name which for the mo- 

 ment the territory bore on the map. The purpose 

 of the law was to authorize the President to make 

 a treaty with the power in actual control of the 

 Isthmus of Panama. This purpose has been ful- 

 filled. 



In the year 1846 this Government entered into a 

 treaty with New Granada, the predecessor upon the 

 Isthmus of the Republic of Colombia and of the 

 present Republic of Panama, by which treaty it 

 was provided that the Government and citizens of 

 the United States should always have free and open 

 right of way or transit across the Isthmus of Pan- 

 ama by any modes of communication that might 

 be constructed, while in return our Government 

 guaranteed the perfect neutrality of the above-men- 



