258 RECOLLECTIONS OF FORTY YEARS. 



per cent., so that the trade of the world should have 

 its share in the advantages of this great and useful 

 enterprise." 



To Madame Delamalle, Paris. 



" ALEXANDRIA, April 21, 1855. 



"You tell me that several financiers are trying to 

 put themselves forward in connection with the canal ; 

 but what makes me so independent of them is that 

 the position is that of being charged with the exclu- 

 sive 'powers of the Viceroy, whom I have always at 

 my back, as being after all master in his own house- 

 hold, whereas if he had given me the concession before 

 the formation of the company, he would, so to speak, 

 have abandoned his rights, and I should not have 

 been so strong to resist the importunings of specu- 

 lators and governments. 



u When I conceived the idea of asking for powers 

 instead of a concession, I did not know that the same 

 thought had occurred to Prince Louis Napoleon at the 

 time when he was bestowing a good deal of attention 

 upon the means of making the Interoceanic American 

 Canal. In 1842, while a prisoner at Ham, he gave a 

 great deal of consideration to this question, and he 

 afterwards asked an officer of the French navy who 

 was starting for Central America to examine the 

 ground and let him know whether the scheme was a 

 practicable one. The officer did so, and his report 

 was embodied by the Prince in a very interesting 



