Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 December 1900 — TREATY IS RATIFIED. [ARTICLE]

TREATY IS RATIFIED.

THE SENATE VOTES TO ACCEPT AMENDED AGREEMENT. Hay-Patmcefote Isthmian Canal Pact Now Provides for the Abrogation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, Made Fifty Years Ago. By a vote of 53 to 18 the Senate Thursday ratified the Has'-Pauncefote isthmian canal treaty. All amendments except those proposed by the foreign relations committee were , voted down. The two committee amendments, one abrogating all of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty and the other refusing to invite other powers to “adhere” to this treaty, were adopted. Upon the final roll call six votes in excess of the number needed to ratify were cast for the convention. The fifty-five votes for the treaty were made up as follows: Forty-two Republicans, eleven Democrats, one Independent (Jones, Nev.), and one Fusion (Turner, Yyash.). In one sense the result is counted an administration victory. For a week the efforts of the friends of the treaty and of the President and State have been devoted to securing ratification without amendments so obnoxious as to compel the President to refuse to submit: the treaty to Great Britain. Administration Senators claim that after —slt~th*> —trtrnty-iras—not —been- ■serionslychanged by the Senate. The Davis amendment, .they claim, gives a power which the United States would in any event have exercised in case of great emergency. If the-national defense requires the closing of the canal to an enemy’s ships, these Senators argue that we should have exercised the power and the right to close it, as all treaties are abrogated by war. The failure of the Senate to secure to the United States the right’to erect permanent fortifications, it is claimed, leaves "Tie great principle off he treaty in forcer In like vein it is argued that the abrogation and no invitation to “adhere” amendments put in are of small consequence. On the toiler hand, Senators who favored an all-American canal claim They" have won a decided victory. The right to close the canal against an enemy’s ships is the principal thing they have been struggling for, and that they have secured. They have also abcogated the lemnants of the old compact and thus gained for the United States a free hand in Central America. Agafh, they derive satisfaction from the fact that the United States \s not now to go to other powers and ask their consent to the construction of an American waterway. Thus both sides appear to be reasonably well satisfied.