t welcome, and I thank you for the honor
conferred upon me by this reception in the legislative body which is
charged with the government of this republic. You have truly said, sir,
that I am deeply interested in the affairs of the people of Panama. At
the time of the events which led to your independence, I studied your
history carefully and thoroughly from original documents, in order to
determine in my own mind what the course of my country ought to be. From
that study have resulted a keen sense of the manifold injuries and
injustices under which the people of Panama have suffered in years past,
a strong sympathy with you in your efforts and aspirations toward a
better condition, a fervent hope for your prosperity and welfare.

It is with the greatest pleasure that I have heard the expressions of
friendship for my country, because of my feeling toward you and because
of the special relations which exist between the two countries. We are
engaged together in the prosecution of a great, a momentous
enterprise--an enterprise which has been the dream not only of the early
navigators who first colonized your coasts, but of the most progressive
of mankind for four centuries. Its successful accomplishment will make
Panama the very center of the world's trade; you will stand upon the
greatest highway of commerce; more than the ancient glories of the
isthmus will be restored; and there lies before you in the future of
this successful enterprise wealth, prosperity, the opportunity for
education, for cultivation, and for intercourse with all the world such
as has never before been brought to any people. The success of the
enterprise will unite the far-separated Atlantic and Pacific coasts in
my country; it will give to us the credit of great deeds done, and make
the Atlantic and Pacific for us as but one ocean; and the success of
this enterprise will give to the world a new highway of commerce and the
possibility of a distinct and enormous advance in that communication
between nations which is the surest guaranty of peace and civilization.

The achievement of this work is to be accomplished by us jointly. You
furnish the country, the place, the soil, the atmosphere, the
surrounding population among which the people who do the work are to
live and where the work is to be maintained. We furnish the capital and
the trained constructive ability which has grown up in the course of
centuries of development of the northern continent. T