petition in prices of all leading products, and there are products, such as the guano, the phosphates and nitrates, and the copper of Peru and Chile, that are stated by eminent authorities not to be able to bear the 15f. tonnage by the canal. They are goods that may as well be transported in sailing vessels.

And we must not forget that the Panama Company is placing too exaggerated a reliance on the growth of California, so far as business by the canal is concerned. The official publications speak of the growth of California as if the exports from that State were entirely dependent on water transportation.

M. de Lesseps forgets, so far as the United States are concerned, that there are numerous lines of railway competing with each other and carrying goods from the West to the Atlantic coast at ridiculously low rates, and, as Mr. Edward Atkinson has just shown in his latest publication, the tendency is towards a still further reduction in the tariffs.

However, allowing 5,000,000 tons for the business of the canal, and admitting the high price of 128. per ton, as it has been proposed, the company would have an annual revenue of £3,000,000. Let us see now what charges will have to be deducted :—

5 per cent. on £107,903,000 for interest

Even 10,000,000 tons would not pay expenses and the

fixed charges on the capital, with shares and debentures

That seems to us to be the best possible showing for M. de Lesseps, and that is, we once more repeat, assuming that the difficulties of holding the Chagres at the height, during great freshets, of 100 feet above the canal, do not prove to be, as stated by impartial experts, truly insurmountable; for we really think that the annual deficiency of £3,300,000 is not so important as the Chagres, which may in twenty-four hours destroy nearly all the work of the canal, or, at the very best, may require a tremendous annual outlay in dredging the canal from the detritus brought by it with the force of a tropical torrent.

Such, we think, is the financial outlook of the Panama Canal Company. Is it pleasant to contemplate?

CHAPTER XIV.

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FOLITICAL QUESTIONS.-NO. I. THE MONROE DOCTRINE."

Paramount interest of the United States in the canal.-Control of the canal the settled policy of that Government.-The ClaytonBulwer treaty an exception that proves the rule.-The Monroe doctrine, its English origin.-Opinion of the Saturday Review.— Jackson and the King of the Netherlands.-The treaty of 1846-8 between the United States and Colombia, its principal provisions. Instances in which America has intervened.—The new treaties proposed in 1868 and 1869: their political provisions.

OUR task with the study of the Panama Canal enterprise may be considered at an end, since we reviewed its financial prospects in our last chapter. But, as we said at the start, the consideration of this question of interoceanic communication would be incomplete without our taking into account its political bearings, and that is what we now propose to do. The matter is deserving of a long and detailed study, which, we regret to say, is alien to our present purpose in these pages. We shall have to rest contented with pointing out the various utterances of the United States and of Great Britain at different times; considering these political chapters merely as incidental to the main work of studying how the Panama Canal Company was formed, how it is working, and how it will probably end.

Whether this Panama Canal of M. de Lesseps fails or is completed under French auspices, the Government of the United States is bound, by the enormous interests of

what may be truly described as its Pacific empire, to try and obtain the preponderating control in it; and if that aim should be found to be difficult or impossible, then we think that that Government will try to construct another canal under its own absolute control.

The idea of having a canal under its own control has been more or less a fixed one in the history of the Government. The Clayton-Bulwer treaty is an exception, and, rightly or wrongly, the United States maintain that England has broken that treaty. And if England insists that the treaty is still in force, it is claimed that nothing can prevent the United States from arranging for its formal revocation; for indeed, whether the treaty is in force or is not in force, it seems certain that the United States Government do not want any "joint" or "multiple" control, which even here in Europe is the source of so many troubles.

It is common in Europe to laugh at the pretensions of the so-called "Monroe doctrine;" and to assert that the United States cannot get rid of the Bulwer-Clayton stipulations; and that the only way to get clear of all the difficulties is to neutralize the canal of Panama or any other American canal by the joint guarantee of all the Powers. We will try to show that those ideas are unwelcome, and indeed should be unwelcome, to America, and have as a rule been so from 1823 up to 1884, when the authorities at Washington negotiated a new treaty for building through Nicaragua a canal that should be under their own control.

We may at once begin by stating that it is the settled policy of the United States to have, as President Hayes said in 1880, "a canal under American control. The United States cannot consent to the surrender of this control to any European Power, or to any combination of

European Powers. . . . No European Power can intervene," for protection of capital of its citizens, "without adopting measures on this continent wholly inadmissible.”

This is no new theory. It is but a development of the well-known "Monroe doctrine," thus called because it is not a principle of international law, but a doctrine which such a powerful nation as the United States is bound to enforce, and will enforce, should occasion arise.

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Soon after the purchase of the Wyse concession by M. de Lesseps, such a Conservative paper as the Saturday Review, which is never over-favourable to anything concerning the United States, wrote on July 19, 1879, in relation to the canal, the following very just remarks: According to old rules of international law, there is no reason why the United States should claim a special concern in an undertaking which will be carried on at a distance of 1,000 miles from the nearest point of its territory; but the Americans have on former occasions successfully asserted a primacy on their own continent which they are strong enough to maintain. Napoleon III., in the apparent height of his power, was compelled, by the mere remonstrances of the American Government, to withdraw his army of occupation from Mexico, and no private adventurer will be allowed, without the permission of the United States, to prosecute an enterprise on American soil which may involve political consequences. The canal is to be placed under the protection of the Government of Colombia, which may perhaps not always be able to guarantee the security of the works, and which can certainly not maintain its own independence against any considerable foreign Power. In his former undertaking M. de Lesseps was only prevented by the vigilance of Lord Palmerston from obtaining possession of a considerable territory in Egypt, which