route was supposed by the two Governments most concerned to be the best available. The difficulties encountered by the French Company, formed under the auspices of M. de Lesseps in 1881, in constructing a sea-level canal across the Isthmus of Panama were thought to be insuperable, and it was only after the Treaty of 1901 that the scheme for a canal above sea-level was accepted by the Senate of the United States and the Panama route was finally determined on. This fact is material in the consideration of the Treaties of 1850 and 1901.
But though proposals for some canal date back to these early times, it was long before the matter appeared on the stage of practical politics: indeed that did not happen before the earlier part of the nineteenth century. At that time the rising power of the United States caused the project to become one of increasing interest to that nation, and accordingly from this date onwards we find declarations of policy made by the Government of the United States in regard to an inter-oceanic canal if constructed. I shall not refer to them here in detail, but it is important to notice that there is this significant feature common to all of them which is material to the present controversy: to wit, that always one condition insisted on as fundamental, is that free and equal right of passing through any canal must be secured to all nations without discrimination. This was declared by Henry Clay, the United States Secretary of State in 1826; it was affirmed by the resolution of the Senate of the United States on March 3, 1835; it was reiterated by President Jackson on January 9, 1837, by the House of Representatives in 1839, by President Polk in his message to the Senate of February 10, 1847, and by President Taylor on December 4, 1849. There is no need to multiply references, for it can be shown, I think, beyond dispute that the Canal policy of the
