192 



CONGRESS. (THE ISTHMIAN CANAL.) 



eral party of Colombia had declared its hostility 

 to the contract with the Panama Canal Company, 

 and that the corporation in reality had nothing 

 to sell for the $40,000,000 which it now asks for 

 the canal. He said: 



" Now I have established it in a formal way, 

 in protests that have been issued and notified to 

 the Panama Canal Company, notified to the 

 Colombian Government, the opposing government, 

 notified to the United States, that the Liberal 

 party in Colombia, now professing to have, and 

 having, the support of the great majority of that 

 people, will never ratify these agreements that 

 \v. are bidding $40,000,000 for. 



"Mr. President, we might as well throw the 

 money into the sea as to appropriate it to this 

 broken-down company that is now speeding to its 

 last moments of existence when it knows that this 

 bribe to Sanclemente of $1,000,000, which he paid 

 in gold, is not going to hold good, that they can 

 not realize anything from it, and that the Colom- 

 bian people after 1904, two years from now, will 

 repudiate the whole thing and claim the property, 

 as they have a perfect right to do. 



" They commit an act of bankruptcy in falling 

 from $109,000,000 to $40,000,000 in a proposition 

 to sell that property. There is not a bankrupt 

 court in the United States, nor in France, nor in 

 the world that would sustain a sale made by an 

 acknowledged bankrupt or by one who becomes a 

 bankrupt and files his petition for a discharge 

 when he claimed to hold a property worth $109,- 

 000,000 and had sold it for $40,000,000. 



" And yet upon technicalities our learned 

 friends in the minority of this committee insist 

 that that is a valid transaction and binding, not 

 only upon Colombia but upon the clean conscience 

 of this great and noble republic. I repudiate it. 

 I deny the impeachment against my country that 

 it is capable of entering into as questionable a 

 contract as that. 



" Now, Mr. President, I have presented the 

 points I desired to present to show that this con- 

 tract is not of the value of a last year's bird's-nest. 

 It is void, and not only void, but it is fraudulent, 

 and the Colombian people represented by the Lib- 

 eral Government repudiate it and give us notice 

 that they intend in future to repudiate it. Are 

 we still to persist in paying $40,000,000 to the 

 Panama Canal Company for a contract that is 

 thus assailed and proved to be not merely void, 

 but fraudulent; for that is what these men 

 charge ? 



" Now, sir, that war is going on. It has been 

 flagrant every day since that transaction took 

 place and since that Congress adjourned. They 

 did resolve before they went out that the presi- 

 dency was vacant, and thereupon the President of 

 the provisional Government assumed that he was 

 in lawful authority. From that day to this he 

 has so contended. He has had his armies in the 

 field and fought heavy battles, in which there have 

 been great losses on both sides. 



" This controversy in a minor way represents, 

 not in principle, but in the action of the people 

 concerned, that great and terrific controversy in 

 which we were concerned in 1861-'62. They fight 

 with desperate determination, and they are at it 

 to-day. The latest accounts in the newspapers, 

 by telegraph, on yesterday were that the Gov- 

 ernment, or the Conservatives, as they are called, 

 were attacking the Liberals, who are fortified in 

 Panama, and that those outside the walls had 

 7,000 troops and those inside the walls had about 

 .000. There are 10.000 or 12,000 men to-day en- 

 frayed in battle originating out of these unlaw- 

 ful acts, about which we are quietly legislating. 



with a view of paying the company that have 

 got up the row $40,000,000 for their interference. 

 That is the situation to-day. 



" There is another fact connected with that 

 war which I want to call to the attention of 

 the American people. I have the honor of being 

 listened to by a faithful and splendid Democrat, 

 almost the only one who is here. The Senate is 

 not my audience. I wish it distinctly under- 

 stood that I am speaking to the American peo- 

 ple, and through them I will speak to the Senate. 



" I have presented now these facts, but I want 

 to connect another one with it as another cause 

 of the war. Why are these men called Liberals 

 and Conservatives? It is an old political divi- 

 sion, commencing on the first outbreak after the 

 revolution in Mexico, and it has followed all the 

 Spanish-American States after their first organ- 

 ization. The revolutions in those different gov- 

 ernments found the bonds of Church and state 

 irrevocable in all these Spanish provinces, and 

 they revolted at that. Mexico in. consequence 

 of it had 52 presidents in fifty years, and Panama 

 has had about that number of governors in sixty 

 years. There are few states, if any, exempt; per- 

 haps Chile and perhaps Argentina. There are 

 few states, if any, in South America or in North 

 America or in Central America that have escaped 

 this same conflict that is raging to-day in Co- 

 lombia. The division of parties is the Liberal 

 and the Church party, or Conservatives. 



" I read to the Senate the other day a paper 

 from Pope Leo XIII, a concordat made w r ith Co- 

 lombia in 1888. It is in the Record here. It is 

 established as a part of the fundamental govern- 

 ment of that republic, not an established Church 

 Leo would not have it that way but an inde- 

 pendent Church represented by the Holy See and 

 negotiating in its political capacity with Colom- 

 bia as an independent republic. The two govern- 

 ments came to an agreement and made a com- 

 pact, which is set forth in that concordat. 



" The establishment of that concordat so long 

 after Panama and Colombia had their strugiile- 

 to maintain independence was a serious blow at 

 the Liberal party in that country. They felt that 

 the liberties for which they had actually been 

 fighting for years and years were to be blotted 

 out by the concordat. There it is in its hideous 

 monstrosity, which permits a man and a woman 

 who are duly married according to the laws of 

 the United States and who have gone to Co- 

 lombia, either of them, to marry some other per- 

 son without any judicial decree of separation, if 

 that marriage between them was not celebrated 

 by the authority of the Catholic Church; and if 

 the poor woman, for instance, was deserted in 

 this way and the man married another woman in 

 accordance with the rites of the Catholic Church, 

 the only concession to be made at all was that 

 the issue by her should be considered to be lijiiti- 

 mate. and he should take care of them until -he 

 married again in accordance with the rules of the 

 Church. 



"When you come to education the public- 

 schools are not only under the patronage but 

 under the control of the priesthood, and the 

 bishop of each district fixes all the school-books, 

 secular and ecclesiastical. 



" Not only s=o, but the Government is pledged 

 that if any man makes a lecture or writes an 

 article or utters an opinion contrary to the 

 tenets of the established Church or of the inde- 

 pendent Church connected with Colombia by the 

 concordat he is liable to criminal punishment. 

 and the Government is bound to punish him 

 and engages to do it. Not only so, but there is 



