has attempted to circumscribe and restrict and restrain the free action of this government. When was it that Great Britain seized the possession of the terminus of this canal? Just six days after the signing of the treaty which secured to us California! The moment England saw, that by the pending negotiations with Mexico, California was to be acquired, she collected her fleets and made preparations for the seizure of the port of San Juan, in order that she might be gatekeeper on the public highway to our new possessions on the Pacific. Within six days from the time we signed the treaty, England seized by force and violence the very point now in controversy. Is not this fact indicative of her motives? Is it not clear that her object was to obstruct our passage to our new possessions? Hence I do not sympathize with that feeling which the senator expressed yesterday, that it was a pity to have a difference with a nation so friendly to us as England. Sir, I do not see the evidence of her friendship. It is not in the nature of things that she can be our friend. It is impossible she can love us. I do not blame her for not loving us. Sir, we have wounded her vanity and humbled her pride. She can never forgive

us.

But for us, she would be the first power on the face of the earth. But for us, she would have the prospect of maintaining that proud position which she held for so long a period. We are in her way. She is jealous of us, and jealousy forbids the idea of friendship. England does not love us; she cannot love us, and we do not love her either. We have some things in the past to remember that are not agreeable. She has more in the present to humiliate her that she cannot forgive. I do not wish to administer to the feeling of jealousy and rivalry that exists between us and England. I wish to soften and allay it as much as possible; but why close our eyes to the fact that friendship is impossible while jealousy exists. Hence England seizes every island in the sea and rock upon our coast where she can plant a gun to intimidate us or to annoy our commerce. Her policy has been to seize every military and naval station the world over. Why does she pay such enormous sums to keep her post at Gibraltar, except to hold it "in terrorem" over the commerce of the Mediterranean? Why her enormous expense to maintain a garrison at the Cape of Good Hope, except to command the great passage on the way to the Indies? Why is she at the expense to keep her position on the little barren islands, Bermuda and the miserable Bahamas, and all the other islands along our coast, except as sentinels upon our actions? Does England hold Bermuda because of any profit it is to her? Has she any other motive for retaining it except jealousy which stimulates hostility to us? Is it not the case with all her possessions along our coast? Why, then, talk about the friendly bearing of England toward us when she is extending that policy every day? New treaties of friendship, seizure of islands, and erection of new colonies in violation of her treaties, seem to be the order of the day. In view of this state of things, I am in favor of meeting England as we meet a rival; meet her boldly, treat her justly and fairly, but make no

humiliating concession even for the sake of peace. She has as much reason to make concessions to us as we have to make them to her. I would not willingly disturb the peace of the world; but, sir, the Bay Island colony must be discontinued. It violates the treaty.

Now, Mr. President, it is not my purpose to say another word upon our foreign relations. I have only occupied so much time as was necessary to put myself right in respect to the speech made by the senator from Delaware. He advocates one line of policy in regard to our foreign relations, and I have deemed it my duty to advocate another. It has been my object to put the two systems by the side of each other that the public might judge between us.

Mr. Mason having continued the debate on Monday, March 14th, Mr. Clayton occupied a portion of that and the succeeding days in a reply to Mr. Douglas-to which, on Wednesday, the 17th of March, Mr. Douglas responded:

MR. PRESIDENT: I had a right to expect that the senator from Delaware, in his reply, would have ventured upon an argument against the positions which I had assumed in my former speech, and which he had assailed. It will be observed, upon a close examination, that he has evaded nearly every point in controversy between us, under the cover of free indulgence in coarse personalities. I do not complain of this. He had a right to choose his own course of discussion. Perhaps it was prudent in him to pursue the course which he adopted. I shall not follow his example, however. I may not have the same inducements that may have prompted him. If I had been driven from nearly every position I had assumed in debate-if nearly every material fact I had asserted had been negatived and disproved by official documents bearing my own signatures—if I had been convicted of giving one explanation of my conduct at one time, and at other times different and contradictory reasons, I might be prompted to seek refuge under personalities from the exposure that might be made. Sir, I pass that all by.

The senator, as a last resort, attempted to get up unkind feelings between my political friends and myself in regard to this debate. He endeavored to show that my speech was an assault upon every senator who took a different course. He went further, and charged that I, as a Presidential candidate, was pursuing this course in order to destroy and break down rivals in my own party. Sir, these insidious and disreputable assaults do not disturb my equanimity. The object is to enlist, from prejudice and unworthy motives, a sympathy in the course of discussion which he has attempted to maintain. But I appeal to the Senate if I assailed any senator upon this floor, either in regard to the Hise treaty or the Clayton and Bulwer treaty. I appeal to the Senate if I mentioned the name of any senator, or stated how any one man had voted. I did not disclose even how the vote

stood. No citizen in America would have known the vote of any senator on this floor from my speech, or from my participation in the recent discussion; and I have yet to learn that a vindication of my own course involves an assault upon those who chose to differ with me. I have not understood the speeches of the senator from Michigan (Mr. Cass) and of the senator from Virginia (Mr. Mason) and of other senators, who have spoken on this question, in opposition to some of my views, as an attack on myself. It was their duty to vindicate their own course with the reasons which prompted them; and it was my right and my duty to give the reasons which induced and compelled me to pursue the course that I did.

I do not choose to occupy the time of the Senate in a matter that partakes so much of a personal character. But the senator cannot avail himself of that argument in vindication of his course in suppressing the Hise treaty. He is not supported by that array of names which he has produced for that act. No one of the senators ever did sustain him, so far as I know, in suppressing the Hise treaty. That treaty was never submitted to the Senate for ratification. The Senate were never permitted to examine it. The treaty, to this day, has been withheld from the Senate. You will have to go elsewhere than to the files of this body to find that treaty. How can it be said that senators have sustained him in his rejection of the Hise treaty, when he had deprived the Senate of an opportunity of showing whether they were for or against it? Sir, he cannot have the benefit of those names which he has quoted to shelter him upon that point. Again, sir, he has quoted all the eminent names from General Jackson down to the present time, to support him in his refusal to accept of the exclusive control of the canal for his own country. Sir, he has no authority thus to quote them; he has no authority for saying that any one of those eminent statesmen were opposed to such a privilege as the Hise treaty showed that we could have acquired. It is true that when Central America granted a privilege to a company in the Netherlands to make this canal, the administration of General Jackson, under that state of facts, were content with asserting our right to an equal participation. It is also true that when a Frenchman had procured a charter for a railroad across the isthmus of Panama, and thus it had gone into the hands of foreigners, the administration of President Polk were content to assert our claim to an equal right. But it is not true that either of them ever refused to accept an exclusive privilege for this country when voluntarily tendered.

I am not going to occupy the attention of the Senate with an array of names for or against this proposition. I quoted no names in my first argument. I addressed myself to the merits of the question, and chose to decide it by arguments upon its merits, and not by the authority of great names. I would rather see the senator sustain his position now by arguments upon the merits of his own official action, and not by an appeal to the action of great men who lived at a different period, and whose acts were dependent upon entirely different circumstances.

One word more, and I proceed to the main point at issue. The senator has accused me of having attempted to make this a party question. How did I attempt it? In my speech of February last, to which he replied, he cannot find the term Whig or Democrat, or a political allusion, or a partisan argument. I explained my own principles of action as evinced in my votes; and I expressly stated that they were not sanctioned by either Whig or Democratic adminis trations upon some of the points. I did not invoke the aid of sympa thy of party. I was willing to stand upon the truth and the soundness of my own record, and leave the future to determine whether I was right or wrong on the question. Sir, partisan politics have been introduced by the senator, and not by me. The senator, in his speech in reply to me, endeavored to show that Democratic administrations had done this, and Democratic administrations had done that, and appealed to partisan authority, to sustain himself. I admit his right to introduce party questions, and to appeal to party names as authority. I have not done it, and I deny his right to charge it upon me. Sir, I invoked the aid of no partisan feeling or party organization for the support of the position I maintained. But when the senator showed that a majority of my own party, on the ratification of the Clayton and Bulwer treaty, had recorded their names in opposition to mine, he ought to have been content, without charging that I was making it a party question. It was not a very agreeable thing to me to be compelled to differ with three-fourths of the Senate, including a majority of my own political friends, and nothing but a sense of duty would have compelled me to take the responsibility of such a

course.

Now, let us go back to the real point. Why all these attempts to avoid the main issue? In the first place the senator denied that he was responsible for not sending the Hise treaty to the Senate, inasmuch as it had been rejected by Central America. Then, when I showed that the rejection of that treaty was procured by his own agent in obedience to his instructions, he denied the existence of the instructions. When I produced the instructions, and showed that the agent acted in obedience to what he believed to be their true meaning, the senator acknowledged his opposition to the treaty, and justified it upon the ground that it guaranteed the independence of Nicaragua. When I showed that he could not have objected to it on that ground, for the reason that at that very time he proposed a guaranty, in connection with Great Britain, of the independence of Nicaragua, he abandons that position, and is driven to the extremity of seeking refuge under what he chooses to consider obnoxious details. When I showed that his objections to the details could not avail him, because it was no reason for withholding the treaty according to the usages of the Senate, he then comes to the point that it was better to have a partnership privilege than an exclusive one. That brings us to the real question. Why could we not havo come to it at once? If he was right in his preference for a European

partnership over an exclusive privilege to his own country, why did he not avow the fact at once and justify his conduct, instead of wasting the time of the Senate in requiring me to prove facts which ought to have been confessed, and which have been proven by his own written testimony, in opposition to his own denial?

In his last speech the senator chose to persevere in representing me as the advocate of a canal to be made through Central America, with funds from the Treasury of the United States. I need not remind the senator that he had no authority, from anything I have said, to attribute to me such a purpose. I certainly did not assume any such position, while my remarks were calculated to negative such an idea. My position was this: that while negotiating for the right of way for a canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific, we should have accepted the offer to our own government of the exclusive right to control it, instead of a partnership with England and the other powers of the earth. The Hise treaty granted the privilege either to the United States or to an American company under our protection, at our option. I insisted that we had the same right to take it to ourselves that we had to take it jointly with other powers. It requires no further exertion of constitutional power to execute and maintain and regulate an exclusive privilege to America than it did to execute and maintain a partnership privilege with European powers. Hence his objections upon that score must fall to the ground. The simple question was, whether it would have been wise to accept that privilege. Sir, I think it would have been. I am not going to repeat the argument I made the other day upon that point. If it had been given to us, we could have opened the canal to the world upon such terms as we deemed proper. We could have withdrawn the use of it whenever a nation failed to respect our rights. It would have been a bond of peace instead of being an apple of discord between us and other nations; because when you bring all the great Powers of the earth into partnership, constant disputes will arise as to the nature and extent of the rights of the respective parties. The history of these negotiations proves this fact.

But, sir, let me ask the senator what he has gained by his rejection of the Hise treaty? He has given the world to understand by his speeches that he has accomplished two great objects: the one to open a canal between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans-the other to put a stop to British encroachments in Central America. Has he accomplished either of those objects? I ask what privilege he has gained to make a canal? He has not even secured the right of way for a canal, either jointly or separately. He is responsible for having defeated the project of a canal between the two oceans. He refused the grant of the right of way, because it gave the right to control the work exclusively to his own country. The treaty which he caused to be made, failed to receive the sanction of the Senate. Thus we are left without any right of way-without any charter, right, or privilege. Instead of accomplishing that object, he is responsible for