I thank you for your kind welcome to me and for the friendship to my
country expressed in that 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. The work is
difficult and delicate; the two peoples, the Anglo-American and the
Spanish-American, are widely different in their traditions, their laws,
their customs, their methods of thinking and speaking and doing
business. It often happens that we misunderstand each other; it often
happens that we fail to appreciate your good qualities and that you fail
to appreciate ours; and that with perfectly good intentions, with the
best of purposes and kindliest of feelings, we clash, we fail to
understand each other, we get at cross purposes, and misconception and
discord are liable to arise. Let us remember this in all our
intercourse; let us be patient with each other; let us believe in the
sincerity of our mutual good purposes and kindly feelings, and be
patient and forbearing each with the other, so that we may go on
together in the accomplishment of this great enterprise; together bring
it to a successful conclusion; together share in the glory of the great
work done and in the prosperity that will come from the result.
Mr. President and gentlemen, let me assure you that in the share which
the United States is taking and is to take in this work, there is and
can be but one feeling and one desire toward the people of Panama. It is
a feeling of friendship sincere and lasting; it is a feeling of strong
desire that wisdom may control the deliberations of this assembly; that
judgment and prudence and love of country may rule in all your councils
and may control all your actions; it is a desire and a firm purpose that
so far as in us lies, there shall be preserved for you the precious boon
of free self-government. We do not wish to govern you or interfere in
your government, because we are larger and stronger; we believe that the
principle of liberty and the rights of men are more important than the
size of armies or the number of battleships. Your independence which we
recognized first among the nations of the earth, it is our desire to
have maintained inviolate. Believe this, be patient with us, as we will
be patient with you; and I hope, I believe, that at some future day we
shall all be sailing through the canal together, congratulating each
other upon our share in that great and beneficent work.