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656 The Nicaraguan Canal. The Tariff. largest place was given to the question of an interoceanic canal. Under the previous Administration a treaty had been concluded with Nicaragua for the construction by the United States and at its sole cost of a canal through Nicaraguan territory, to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This treaty had been submitted to the Senate; but no definitive action upon it had been taken. In some quarters the objection was made that it committed the United States to a scheme of joint action and political alliance with Nicaragua, while in others the stipulations of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty were urged as an obstacle to ratification. President Cleveland, soon after his inauguration, withdrew the treaty from the Senate; and in his annual message to Congress he declared his intention not to submit it again. Adhering, as he said, "to the tenets of a line of precedents from Washington's day, which proscribe entangling alliances with foreign States," he was "unable to recommend propositions involving paramount privileges of ownership or right outside of our own territory, when coupled with absolute and unlimited engagements to defend the territorial integrity of the State where such interests lie." He moreover affirmed that any highway that might be constructed across the isthmus "must be for the world's benefit, a trust for mankind, to be removed from the chance of domina- tion by any single Power, nor become a point of invitation for hostilities or a prize for warlike ambition " ; and he quoted with approval the words of Cass, while Secretary of State in 1858, that "What the United States want in Central America, next to the happiness of its people, is the security and neutrality of the interoceanic routes which lead through it." With regard to the question of the tariff, which was so soon to overshadow all other issues, the President said little. The fact that the revenue for the preceding fiscal year had exceeded the expenditure led him to recommend a reduction of taxes; but he added that "justice and fairness " dictated that, in any modification of existing laws, " the industries and interests which have been encouraged by such laws, and in which our citizens have large investments, should not be ruthlessly injured or destroyed"; that the subject should be dealt with "in such manner as to protect the interests of American labour," whose remune- ration furnished "the most justifiable pretext for a protective policy"; and that, " within these limitations, a certain reduction should be made in our customs revenue," particularly in respect of taxes "upon the imported necessaries of life." In these phrases, the advocates of a protective tariff scented no special danger. But there was another subject which President Cleveland, besides devoting to it the largest place in his message, discussed with a direct- ness and precision that none could mistake. This was the subject of currency reform, a cause with which, by reason of the high and inflexible resolution with which he maintained and advanced it, against opposition