expected evil, and we discover to our surprise that men are everywhere ready to interchange benefits. The instinct of justice teaches us that nations are equal in rights, as the individuals who compose them are by nature equal. Before the law of nations the smallest and the weakest state stands the equal of the largest and strongest. A bully among nations is as wicked and detestable as a bully among men. To multiply the facilities of intercourse is to multiply the agencies of peace. Whoever opens a new highway, by land or sea, is a benefactor of men; and if he places it under the protection of the nations by an international act, he gains a victory no less glorious than the greatest achievement of arms. Our own country was the first to move in that direction. A great European publicist, Sir Travers Twiss, in a paper read two years ago before the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations, said: "The New World has in this matter taken the lead of the Old World, and the Treaty of Washington of the 19th of April, 1850, has consecrated a principle applicable to all such enterprises in which the commerce of the world is interested. This principle is, that those great industrial works shall be exempt from all injury consequent upon disputes between particular nations, when they appeal to the arbitrament of the sword for the settlement of such disputes." The treaty thus mentioned is known as the Clayton-Bulwer Convention, made between the United States and Great Britain, in respect to the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Nicaragua, and declared that the two governments were determined to give their support and encouragement to such persons or company as might first offer to commence the same with the necessary capital, the consent of the local authorities, and on such principles as accord with the spirit and intention of this convention; declaring also that "neither the one nor the other will ever maintain for itself any exclusive control over the said ship-canal"; that "vessels of the United States or Great Britain traversing the said canal shall, in case of war between the contracting parties, be exempted from blockade, detention, or capture, by either of the belligerents; and this provision shall extend to such a distance from the two ends of the said canal as may hereafter be found expedient to establish "; that "they will guarantee the neutrality thereof, so that the said canal may forever be open and free"; that they will "invite every state with which both or either have friendly intercourse to enter into stipulations with them similar to those which they have entered into with each other"; and that "having not only desired, in entering into this convention, to accomplish a particular object, but also to establish a general principle, they hereby agree to extend their protection by treaty stipulations to any other practicable communications, whether by canal or railway, across the isthmus which connects North and South America, and especially to the interoceanic communications, should the same prove to be practicable, whether by canal or railway, which are now proposed to be established by the way of Tehuantepec or Panama.” Though this convention of thirty years ago has borne no other fruit, it has consecrated a principle which should stand forever hereafter firmly imbedded in the law of nations. Under its sanction let a great water-way be opened from ocean to ocean; let it marry the waters of Europe to the waters of Asia; let it bring manifold increase to the commerce and comforts of men, not for this age only, but for all coming ages; let the flags of the nations salute each other as they pass and repass; but let the blood of man never redden its stream or the waves of its inflowing seas! So let us add another to the agencies of civilization, and take one more stride toward " the good time coming." And if the illustrious Frenchman, whose genius and indomitable will have opened the gates of the East through the sands of Egypt, shall yet open the gates of the West through the Cordilleras of Darien, he will earn a new title, greater even than the old, to the admiration and the gratitude of the generations to come. |