And State Papers 713 



should be built without unnecessary or improper 

 delay, it was no less clearly shown to be our pur- 

 pose to deal not merely in a spirit of justice but in 

 a spirit of generosity with the people through whose 

 land we might build it. The Hay-Herran treaty, if 

 it erred at all, erred in the direction of an over- 

 generosity toward the Colombian Government. In 

 our anxiety to be fair we had gone to the very verge 

 in yielding to a weak nation's demands what that 

 nation was helplessly unable to enforce from us 

 against our will. The only criticisms made upon 

 the Administration for the terms of the Hay-Herran 

 treaty were for having granted too much to Colom- 

 bia, not for failure to grant enough. Neither in 

 the Congress nor in the public press, at the time 

 that this treaty was formulated, was there complaint 

 that it did not in the fullest and amplest manner 

 guarantee to Colombia everything that she could 

 by any color of title demand. 



Nor is the fact to be lost sight of that the rejected 

 treaty, while generously responding to the pecuniary 

 demands of Colombia, in other respects merely pro- 

 vided for the construction of the canal in conformity 

 with the express requirements of the act of the Con- 

 gress of June 28, 1902. By that act, as heretofore 

 quoted, the President was authorized to acquire from 

 Colombia, for the purposes of the canal, ' 'perpetual 

 control" of a certain strip of land; and it was ex- 

 pressly required that the "control" thus to be ob- 

 tained should include "jurisdiction" to make police 

 and sanitary regulations and to establish such judi- 

 1 VOL. XIV 



