And State Papers 7 11 



ways be respected, we shall expect that these rights 

 be exercised in a spirit befitting the occasion and the 

 wants and circumstances that have arisen. Sover- 

 eignty 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 na- 

 tions than they have been, would be permitted, in a 

 spirit of Eastern isolation, to close the gates of in- 

 tercourse 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. 



The principle thus enunciated by Secretary Cass 

 was sound then and it is sound now. The United 

 States has taken the position that no other govern- 

 ment is to build the canal. In 1889, when France 

 proposed to come to the aid of the French Panama 

 Company by guaranteeing their bonds, the Senate 

 of the United States in executive session, with only 

 some three votes dissenting, passed a resolution as 

 follows : 



That the Government of the United States will 

 look with serious concern and disapproval upon any 

 connection of any European government with the 

 construction or control of any ship canal across the 

 Isthmus of Darien or across Central America, and 

 must regard any such connection or control as in- 

 jurious to the just rights and interests of the United 

 States and as a menace to their welfare. 



