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