The Triumphant Life of Theodore Roosevelt edited by J. Martin Miller

THE CONVENTION ASSEMBLES 237
None can foretell the future ; but
there seems no reasonable cause to doubt that
under the poUcy already effectively inaugurated, the ia^titutions already implanted,
and the process already begun, in the Philippine islands, if these be not repressed and
interrupted, the Philippine people will follow in the footsteps of the people of Cuba;
that more slowly indeed, because they are not as advanced, yet as surely, they will
grow in capacity for self-government, and receiving power ;;s they grow in capacity,
will come to bear substantially such relations to the people of the United States as do
now the people of Cuba, differing in details as conditions and needs differ, but the
same in principle and the same in beneficent results.
CANAL PROBLEM IS SOLVED
In igoo the project of an isthmian canal stood where it was left by the Clayton-
Bulwer treaty of 1850. For half a century it had halted, with Gre.it Britain resting
upon a joint right of control, and the great undertaking of De Lesseps struggling
against the doom of failure imposed by extravagance and corruption. On the i8th of
November, iqoi, the Hay-Pauncefote treaty with Great Britain relieved the enter-
prise of the right of Briti.sh control and left that right exclusively in the United
States.
Then followed swiftly the negotiations and protocols with Nicaragua; the
isthmian canal act of June 2S, 1902; the just agreement with the French Canal Com-
pany to pay them the value of the work they had done; the negotiations and ratifica-
tion of the treaty with Colombia; the rejection of that treaty by Colombia in viola-
tion of our rights and the world's right to the passage of the isthmus; the seizure by
Panama of the opportunity to renew her oft-repeated effort to throw off the hateful
and oppressive yoke of Colombia and resume the independence which once had been
hers, and of which she had been deprived by fraud and force ; the success of the
revolution; our recognition of the new republic, followed by recognition from sub
stantially all the civilized powers of the world; the treaty with Panama recognizing
and confirming our right to construct the canal ; the ratification of the treaty by the
Senate; confirmatory legislation by Congress; the payment of the $50,000. oo