I have come to you upon an errand which can be very briefly performed,
but I beg that you will not measure its importance by the number of
sentences in which I state it. No communication I have addressed to the
Congress carried with it graver or more far-reaching implications as to
the interest of the country, and I come now to speak upon a matter with
regard to which I am charged in a peculiar degree, by the Constitution
itself, with personal responsibility.
I have come to ask you for the repeal of that provision of the Panama
Canal Act of August 24, 1912, which exempts vessels engaged in the
coastwise trade of the United States from payment of tolls, and to urge
upon you the justice, the wisdom, and the large policy of such a repeal
with the utmost earnestness of which I am capable.
In my own judgment, very fully considered and maturely formed, that
exemption constitutes a mistaken economic policy from every point of
view, and is, moreover, in plain contravention of the treaty with Great
Britain concerning the canal concluded on November 18, 1901. But I have
not come to urge upon you my personal views. I have come to state to you
a fact and a situation. Whatever may be our own differences of opinion
concerning this much debated measure, its meaning is not debated outside
the United States. Everywhere else the language of the treaty is given
but one interpretation, and that interpretation precludes the exemption
I am asking you to repeal. We consented to the treaty; its language we
accepted, if we did not originate it; and we are too big, too powerful,
too self-respecting a nation to interpret with a too strained or refined
reading the words of our own promises just because we have power enough
to give us leave to read them as we please. The large thing to do is the
only thing we can afford to do, a voluntary withdrawal from a position
everywhere questioned and misunderstood. We ought to reverse our action
without raising the question whether we were right or wrong, and so once
more deserve our reputation for generosity and for the redemption of
every obligation without quibble or hesitation.
I ask this of you in support of the foreign policy of the
administration. I shall not know how to deal with other matters of even
greater delicacy and nearer consequence if you do not grant it to me in
ungrudging measure.