tly recognizes the rights of sovereignty and
property which the State of Nicaragua possesses in and over the line of
the canal therein provided for. If the Senate doubt on that subject, it
will be clearly wrong to involve us in a controversy with England by
adopting the treaty; but after the best consideration which I have been
able to give to the subject my own judgment is convinced that the claims
of Nicaragua are just, and that as our commerce and intercourse with the
Pacific require the opening of this communication from ocean to ocean it
is our duty to ourselves to assert their justice.

This treaty is not intended to secure to the United States any monopoly
or exclusive advantage in the use of the canal. Its object is to
guarantee protection to American citizens and others who shall construct
the canal, and to defend it when completed against unjust confiscations
or obstructions, and to deny the advantages of navigation through it to
those nations only which shall refuse to enter into the same guaranties.
A copy of the contract of the canal company is herewith transmitted,
from which, as well as from the treaty, it will be perceived that the
same benefits are offered to all nations in the same terms.

The message of my predecessor to the Senate of the 10th February, 1847,
transmitting for ratification the treaty with New Granada, contains in
general the principles by which I have been actuated in directing the
negotiation with Nicaragua. The only difference between the two cases
consists in this: In that of Nicaragua the British Government has seized
upon part of her territory and was in possession of it when we
negotiated the treaty with her. But that possession was taken after our
occupation of California, when the effect of it was to obstruct or
control the most eligible route for a ship communication to the
territories acquired by us on the Pacific. In the case of New Granada,
her possession was undisturbed at the time of the treaty, though the
British possession in the right of the Mosquito King was then extended
into the territories claimed by New Granada as far as Boca del Toro. The
professed objects of both the treaties are to open communications across
the Isthmus to all nations and to invite their guaranties on the same
terms. Neither of them proposes to guarantee territory to a foreign
nation in which the United States will not have a common interest with
that nation. Neither of them constitutes an alli