Page:The Panama Canal Controversy.djvu/12

 the more important of them, and to present to you a summary of the more material facts. It is difficult in a public lecture to make clear to the audience questions which arise on the construction of written documents which cannot be conveniently placed before them, but I shall endeavour to avoid this difficulty to some extent by exhibiting the leading passages on the screen behind me as I proceed. The matter has been much discussed in the United States, and to a less extent in this country, and I cannot pretend to add anything new to what has been already said by others. I shall be content if I succeed in making clear to you the main contentions on either side, and the reasons which have led me to the conclusion to which I have come.

With this preface, I turn to the difference between the two countries as to these Panama tolls. Briefly it is this—the United States claim that they have the right to discriminate between their own vessels and, those of this country, or, in other words, that they can remit tolls on American vessels without giving corresponding relief to British ships, or can charge lower tolls on their own vessels as compared with those imposed on the ships which fly the British flag. That is the full claim made by the Government of the United States, and the Panama Canal Act, passed by the; American Legislature in 1912, empowers the President to give effect to that claim if, and when, he shall think right to do so. His Majesty's Government, on the other hand, contend that the United States have bound themselves by the Treaty between the two nations of 1901, generally known as the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, to make no discrimination as against British vessels, and that the claim made by the United States and the powers conferred by the Canal Act are contrary to that Treaty in so far as they affect or may affect the shipping of this