single power, nor become a point of invitation for hostilities or a
prize for warlike ambition. An engagement combining the construction,
ownership, and operation of such a work by this Government, with an
offensive and defensive alliance for its protection, with the foreign
state whose responsibilities and rights we would share is, in my
judgment, inconsistent with such dedication to universal and neutral
use, and would, moreover, entail measures for its realization beyond the
scope of our national polity or present means.

The lapse of years has abundantly confirmed the wisdom and foresight
of those earlier Administrations which, long before the conditions of
maritime intercourse were changed and enlarged by the progress of the
age, proclaimed the vital need of interoceanic transit across the
American Isthmus and consecrated it in advance to the common use of
mankind by their positive declarations and through the formal obligation
of treaties. Toward such realization the efforts of my Administration
will be applied, ever bearing in mind the principles on which it must
rest, and which were declared in no uncertain tones by Mr. Cass, who,
while Secretary of State, in 1858, announced that "what the United
States want in Central America, next to the happiness of its people,
is the security and neutrality of the interoceanic routes which lead
through it."

The construction of three transcontinental lines of railway, all in
successful operation, wholly within our territory, and uniting the
Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, has been accompanied by results of a
most interesting and impressive nature, and has created new conditions,
not in the routes of commerce only, but in political geography, which
powerfully affect our relations toward and necessarily increase our
interests in any transisthmian route which may be opened and employed