And State Papers 695 



America vastly important to the commercial world, 

 and especially to the United States, whose posses- 

 sions extend along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, 

 and demand the speediest and easiest modes of com- 

 munication. While the rights of sovereignty of 

 the states occupying this region should always be 

 respected, we shall expect that these rights be ex- 

 ercised in a spirit befitting the occasion and the wants 

 and circumstances that have arisen. 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 inter- 

 course on 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." 



Seven years later, in 1865, Mr. Seward in differ- 

 ent communications took the following position: 



"The United States have taken and will take no 

 interest in any question of internal revolution in the 

 State of Panama, or any State of the United States 

 of Colombia, but will maintain a perfect neutrality 

 in connection with such domestic altercations. The 

 United States will, nevertheless, hold themselves 

 ready to protect the transit trade across the Isthmus 

 against invasion of either domestic or foreign dis- 

 turbers of the peace of the State of Panama. . . . 



