and liable to capture by any power.
To neither of these propositions could the United States assent. An
effective closure of ports not in the possession of the Government, but
held by hostile partisans, could not be recognized; neither could the
vessels of insurgents against the legitimate sovereignty be deemed
_hostes humani generis_ within the precepts of international law,
whatever might be the definition and penalty of their acts under the
municipal law of the State against whose authority they were in revolt.
The denial by this Government of the Colombian propositions did not,
however, imply the admission of a belligerent status on the part of the
insurgents.

The Colombian Government has expressed its willingness to negotiate
conventions for the adjustment by arbitration of claims by foreign
citizens arising out of the destruction of the city of Aspinwall by the
insurrectionary forces.

The interest of the United States in a practicable transit for ships
across the strip of land separating the Atlantic from the Pacific has
been repeatedly manifested during the last half century.

My immediate predecessor caused to be negotiated with Nicaragua a treaty
for the construction, by and at the sole cost of the United States,
of a canal through Nicaraguan territory, and laid it before the Senate.
Pending the action of that body thereon, I withdrew the treaty for
reexamination. Attentive consideration of its provisions leads me to
withhold it from resubmission to the Senate.

Maintaining, as I do, the tenets of a line of precedents from
Washington's day, which proscribe entangling alliances with foreign
states, I do not favor a policy of acquisition of new and distant
territory or the incorporation of remote interests with our own.

The laws of progress are vital and organic, and we must be conscious of
that irresistible tide of commercial expansion which, as the concomitant
of our active civilization, day by day is being urged onward by those
increasing facilities of production, transportation, and communication
to which steam and electricity have given birth; but our duty in the
present instructs us to address ourselves mainly to the development of
the vast resources of the great area committed to our charge and to
the cultivation of the arts of peace within our own borders, though
jealously alert in preventing the American hemisphere from being
involved in the political problems and complications of distant
gover