that is honor and freedom and prosperity.




PANAMA CANAL TOLLS

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress,
March 5, 1914.]


GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

I have come to you upon an errand which can be very briefly performed,
but I beg that you will not measure its importance by the number of
sentences in which I state it. No communication I have addressed to the
Congress carried with it graver or more far-reaching implications as to
the interest of the country, and I come now to speak upon a matter with
regard to which I am charged in a peculiar degree, by the Constitution
itself, with personal responsibility.

I have come to ask you for the repeal of that provision of the Panama
Canal Act of August 24, 1912, which exempts vessels engaged in the
coastwise trade of the United States from payment of tolls, and to urge
upon you the justice, the wisdom, and the large policy of such a repeal
with the utmost earnestness of which I am capable.

In my own judgment, very fully considered and maturely formed, that
exemption constitutes a mistaken economic policy from every point of
view, and is, moreover, in plain contravention of the treaty with Great