The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1904-01-06
PRESIDENTS LATITUDE OF
CONSTRUCTION CRITICISED
from the Chicago Record-Herald.

From the Chicago Record Herald.
WILL state a few of the reasons for
the faith that is in me- as to the
great superiority of the Nicaragua
route and the honest fear that almost
everybody has that the Panama route is
impossible as a practical route.
I have only been anxious to be right in
my votes as a senator on these questions
and that our country in working out this
great scheme, which no other American
country is able to accomplish. and no Eu-
ropean or Asiatic country will be permit
ted to attempt should be clean" and de
cent and without the reproach of in
trigue or of neglect of the rights of others
or of combinations with political or other
leaders of parties or sects In any country
to ride down opposition or to Cypress the
owners and claimants of honest rights
with confiscation and denial of Justice
If one man, whose opinions would be OF as
| little value as mine are, II he were not
President, can reverse and brush away
| as chaf the conclusions of all great ana
| scientific men who have studied these
questions thoroughly during the past two
centuries and can crush all who dare to
question his wisdom, it is time to look
more deeply into this matter and see
whether he can also crush the statute
laws and rights of congress.
! I think that the appeal to party disei-
pline to force his opinions on the country
and his measures of aggression on foreign
countries, in addition to his power as COM
mander in chief of the army and navy
which he uses with a dreadful latitude
of construction, is so strong proof of
heart failure in the present wild move
| ments that l am encouraged to hope that
there are still some barriers that we may
RELY upon to protect the peace and save
the commerce of the country. | regret
that party discipline is to be used as a
domestic police force to protect THE tran
sit'' in Panama and to guard the interests
of the New Panama Canal company. That
we will get a canal. If one can be built at
Panama, 1 have no doubt, for the Presi-
dent has said so. Yet this result Is not
so clearely certain or so safe, as II he
should obey the spooner law.
The Spooner amendmept to the house
bill did not substitute the Panama route
for the Nicaragua route. 1t only gave
a preference in the selection of routes
to the Panama scheme, upon certain con-
ditions that are now impossible The
giving of this preference, as stated and
regulated in the Spooner amendment, did
not replace the Nicaragua route or con-
denim it with even a shadow of disap-
prevail On the contrary, that law is as
firm and decisive as to the merits of the
Nicaragua route as the Hepburn bill, the
language of which in this respect was
copied from that bill The Spooner law
orders the President to cause the 18TH
milan canal commission to excavate and
construct the Nicaraguan canal If Co
lombia should fail within a reasonable
time to ratify treaty with the United
States making certain concessions and
stipuIations prescribed in the Spooner
act.
From the beginning it has been the
proud mission of our government and
people, under providence that is as
peculiar to them as the founding of the
kingdom of Messiah was to the seed of
Abraham, that we should lift up the
western gate between the oceans. But,
like them, we have been fought back and
retarded In our work by great nations,
and by the worst and basest intrigues,