Note return — COMMERCIAL POLICY.

Although the plan, so long and so fondly cherished in Europe, and now revived in France, must, for the reasons here assigned, be abandoned, on this account we ought not to be deterred from availing ourselves of such facilities as the locality affords. The geographical position of the isthmus of Panama is too interesting to be any longer disregarded. "When the Spanish discoverers first overcame the range of mountains which divide the western from the Atlantic shores of South America," said a distinguished statesman,23 "they stood fixed in silent admiration, gazing on the vast expanse of the Southern ocean which lay stretched before them in boundless prospect. They adored—even those hardened and sanguinary adventurers adored—the gracious providence of Heaven, which, after lapse of so many centuries had opened to mankind so wonderful a field of untried and unimagined enterprize." The very same point of land where, in 1515, the Spaniards first beheld the Pacific, is the spot formed by nature for the realization of those advantages which their cautious policy caused them to overlook. The Creator seems to have intended it for general use—as the highway of nations; and yet, after a period of more than three centuries, scarcely has the solitude which envelopes this interesting strip of land been broken. Is Europe or America to blame for this?