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Page 16
The same national characteristics that of old made Great Britain the
chief contestant in all questions of maritime importance--with the
Dutch in the Mediterranean, with France in the East Indies, and with
Spain in the West--have made her also the exponent of foreign
opposition to our own asserted interest in the Isthmus. The policy
initiated by Cromwell, of systematic aggression in the Caribbean, and
of naval expansion and organization, has resulted in a combination of
naval force with naval positions unequalled, though not wholly
unrivalled, in that sea. And since, as the great sea carrier, Great
Britain has a preponderating natural interest in every new route open
to commerce, it is inevitable that she should scrutinize jealously
every proposition for the modification of existing arrangements,
conscious as she is of power to assert her claims, in case the
question should be submitted to the last appeal.
Nevertheless, although from the nature of the occupations which
constitute the welfare of her people, as well as from the
characteristics of her power, Great Britain seemingly has the larger
immediate stake in a prospective interoceanic canal, it has been
recognized tacitly on her part, as on our side openly asserted, that
the bearing of all questions of Isthmian transit upon our national
progress, safety, and honor, is more direct and more urgent than upon
hers. That she has felt so is plain from the manner in which she has
yielded before our tenacious remonstrances, in cases where the control
of the Isthmus was evidently the object of her action,--as in the
matters of the tenure of the Bay Islands and of the protectorate of
the Mosquito Coast. Our superior interest appears also from the nature
of the conditions which will follow from the construction of a canal.
So far as these changes are purely commercial, they will operate to
some extent to the disadvantage of Great Britain; because the result
will be to bring our Atlantic seaboard, the frontier of a rival
manufacturing and commercial state, much nearer to the Pacific than it
now is, and nearer to many points of that ocean than is England. To
make a rough general statement, easily grasped by a reader without the
map before him, Liverpool and New York are at present about
equidistant, by water, from all points on the west coast of America,
from Valparaiso to British Columbia. This is due to the fact that, to
go through the Straits of Magellan, vessels from both ports must pass
near Cape St. Roque, on the east coast of Brazil, which is nearly the
same distance from each. If the Nicaragua Canal existed, the line on
the Pacific equidistant from the two cities named would pass, roughly,
by Yokohama, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Melbourne, or along the coasts
of Japan, China, and eastern Australia,--Liverpool, in this case,
using the Suez Canal, and New York that of Nicaragua. In short, the
line of equidistance would be shifted from the eastern shore of the
Pacific to its western coast, and all points of that ocean east of
Japan, China, and Australia--for example, the Hawaiian Islands--would
be nearer to New York than to Liverpool.
A recent British writer has calculated that about one-eighth of the
existing trade of the British Islands would be affected unfavorably by
the competition thus introduced. But this result, though a matter of
national concern, is political only in so far as commercial prosperity
or adversity modifies a nation's current history; that is, indirectly.
The principal questions affecting the integrity or security of the
British Empire are not involved seriously, for almost all of its
component parts lie within the regions whose mutual bond of union and
shortest line of approach are the Suez Canal. Nowhere has Great
Britain so little territory at stake, nowhere has she such scanty
possessions, as in the eastern Pacific, upon whose relations to the
world at large, and to ourselves in particular, the Isthmian Canal
will exert the greatest influence.
The chief political result of the Isthmian Canal will be to bring our
Pacific coast nearer, not only to our Atlantic seaboard, but also to
the great navies of Europe. Therefore, while the commercial gain,
through an uninterrupted water carriage, will be large, and is clearly
indicated by the acrimony with which a leading journal, apparently in
the interest of the great transcontinental roads, has lately
maintained the singular assertion that water transit is obsolete as
compared with land carriage, it is still true that the canal will
present an element of much weakness from the military point of view.
Except to those optimists whose robust faith in the regeneration of
human nature rejects war as an impossible contingency, this
consideration must occasion serious thought concerning the policy to
be adopted by the United States.
The subject, so far, has given rise only to diplomatic arrangement and
discussion, within which it is permissible to hope it always may be
confined; but the misunderstandings and protracted disputes that
followed the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, and the dissatisfaction with the
existing status that still obtains among many of our people, give
warning that our steps, as a nation, should be governed by some
settled notions, too universally held to be set aside by a mere change
of administration or caprice of popular will. Reasonable discussion,
which tends, either by its truth or by its evident errors, to clarify
and crystallize public opinion on so important a matter, never can be
amiss.
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