"The kind of equality which the negotiators intended-that is, an equality in which the treatment of American citizens is made the standard for the treatment of foreign citizens-had during all the history of the Isthmian Canal efforts been the standard sought for in negotiations and treaties. That kind of equality was the standard adopted by the public policy of the United States for all similar enterprises. It was customary; it was uniform; it was natural for negotiators of a treaty relating to a canal. Let me illustrate that by referring to the initial treaty on this subject, the treaty of New Granada of 1846. When the American negotiators making that treaty dealt with the subject of a railroad and canal, what kind of equality did they stipulate for? Why, this:

The Government of New Granada guarantees to the Government of the United States that the right of way or transit across the Isthmus of Panama upon any modes of communication that now exist, or that may be hereafter constructed, shall be open and free to the Government and citizens of the United States, and for the transportation of any articles of produce, manufactures or merchandise of lawful commerce belonging to the citizens of the United States; that no other tolls or charges shall be levied or collected upon the citizens of the United States of their said merchandise thus passing over any road or canal that may be made by the Government of New Granada or by the authority of the same than is, under like circumstances, levied upon and collected from the Granadian citizens.

"The message of President Polk transmitting this New Granada treaty of 1846 to Congress dwells especially upon the assurance to citizens of the United States of equal charges and equal facilities in the use of railroad and canal with citizens of New Granada.

"I go back again to the Clayton-Bulwer treaty of

1850. There is no doubt about the kind of equality which the negotiators considered it to be valuable to get, useful to get, natural to get.

"Article VIII provides that

It is always understood by the United States and Great Britain that the parties constructing or owning the canal shall impose no other charges or conditions of traffic thereupon than are just and equitable, and that the same canals or railways, being open to the citizens and subjects of the United States and Great Britain on equal terms, shall also be open on like terms to the citizens and subjects of every other State.

"You will perceive, sir, that the terms on which citizens of other countries were to be allowed to come in were not terms of the most-favored nations as among themselves. They were on like terms with those which existed between Great Britain and the United States; that is to say, each other country which came in and adhered to this ClaytonBulwer treaty was to have the rights of its citizens measured by the rights accorded to the citizens of the United States and to the citizens of Great Britain.

"We are asked to believe that starting with the Clayton-Bulwer convention, which gave to Great Britain unquestioned assurance of the larger and more valuable equality of her vessels with the vessels of American citizens, in a negotiation with a country which in all its history had insisted regarding all canals that the measure of equality should be the measure of service and of charges to its national citizens, abandoned the vantage ground of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty and gave up that basis of equality without one word in the negotiation, without

discussion, without its being asked, without its being mentioned without its knowing it, without the other, negotiators knowing it. But that is not all.

"It was not merely the immemorial policy of the United States and Great Britain regarding all canals; it was not merely the general public policy of the United States and Great Britain regarding all ports and waters, but it was the policy of the United States regarding trade the world over, and the champion and protagonist of that policy was John Hay. At the very time that he was negotiating the Hay-Pauncefote treaty he was appealing to the justice of all the nations of the world for the 'open door' in China; he was appealing to them in the interest of the world's commerce, in the interest of civilization to accord in all their possessions in China, what? Favorednation treatment? Oh, no; the same treatment that they accorded to their own citizens. Let me ask you to attend for a moment to things that John Hay wrote regarding this great design, the accomplishment of which will ever stand in the history of diplomacy as one of the proudest contributions of America to the progress of civilization. On September 6, 1899, he wrote to Mr. Choate in London:

The Government of Her Britannic Majesty has declared that its policy and its very traditions precluded it from using any privileges which might be granted it in China as a weapon for excluding commercial rivals, and that freedom of trade for Great Britain in that Empire meant freedom of trade for all the world alike. While conceding by formal agreements, first with Germany and then with Russia, the possession of "spheres of influence or interest" in China, in which they are to enjoy special rights and privileges, more especially in respect of railroads and mining enterprises. Her Britannic Majesty's Government has therefore sought to maintain at the same time what is called

the "open-door policy" to insure to the commerce of the world in China equality of treatment within said "spheres" for commerce and navigation.

"So he wrote all of the great nations of the world an appeal for equal treatment, an appeal for a specific stipulation to secure the equal treatment that no higher charges should be imposed upon the citizens of any other country in the ports and waters possessed by those great powers in China or for freight or passage over the railroads built and controlled by them than were imposed upon their own citizens. To that appeal all the great powers of the world responded in affirmance; and on the twentieth of March, 1900, Mr. Hay was able to issue his circular of instructions to all the ambassadors and ministers of the United States announcing the universal assent of the world to that great principle of equality-equality measured by the rights of the citizens of the nation granting it in all the Empire of China; yet we are asked to believe that John Hay denied, abjured, repudiated that policy of civilization in regard to the Panama Canal at the very moment that, through the same agents, he was enforcing the policy upon the same countries; and that he did it without knowing it.

"But, we are not left to inferences which must be drawn from the circumstances that I have mentioned or from declarations of public policy or from the uniform course and custom of treaty making regarding canals and regarding public waters and transportation. There is positive, and it appears to me conclusive, affirmative evidence that the negotiators did effectively proceed

in making this treaty in accordance with the honorable obligation of their country as the builder and maintainer of a public utility, as the champion of equal commercial rights the world over.

"We begin the consideration of the express provisions leading to the conclusion that the larger equality was intended with the communication of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty to the Senate. Of course, we are all familiar with the terms of the preamble preserving the general principle of Article VIII of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. Let me read them again, however, for convenience of reference:

The United States of America and His Majesty Edward the Seventh, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and of the British dominions beyond the seas, King, and Emperor of India, being desirous to facilitate the construction of a ship canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, by whatever route may be considered expedient, and to that end to remove any objection which may arise out of the convention of the nineteenth of April, 1850, commonly called the ClaytonBulwer treaty, to the construction of such canal under the auspices of the Government of the United States, without impairing the "general principle" of neutralization established in Article VIII of that convention. * * *

"Now we are told that the language of a treaty or of a contract or of a statute cannot be changed by the preamble; but what is the purpose of a preamble? 'The purpose is to afford a guide to the interpretation of the terms of the treaty or of the statute. When you start with the third article of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty and have a debate as to its interpretation, you turn to the preamble and you find there a guide intended by the makers of the treaty to enable you to reach the right interpretation upon the terms of the third article. But,