PANAMA TOLLS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1392, 19 March 1912, Page 4

PANAMA TOLLS.

The Panama Canal Tolls Bill has not yet completed its passage through the United States Congress, but there is probably no further danger that the American Government's idea of discriminating in favour of American shipping will become low. The protests that were made in America, as well as in England, were probably what caused President Taft and his Secretary of War to change their minds. The position is governed by a clause in the Hay-Pavncefote Treaty, under which Britain and America agreed that "the canal shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce and war of all nations

. . . . on terms of entire equality." _ The United States Executive conceived the idea that by charging equal tolls to the ships of all nations and then handing back to American shipping companies by way of subsidies the amount of the tolls so paid by them, it could both keep tho Treaty and secure all the advantages of doing what the Treaty expressly bound it not-to do. Accordingly the President said in a Message to Congress : , ■ We own the canal. It was our money that built it. We hnve the right to charge tolls for its use. Those tolls must be the same to everyone; but when we are dealing with our own shins-, tho practice of many CioyeqiinenU of subsidising their own. merciinnt vessels is so well established in general that n subsidy equal to the tolls, an equivalent remis>io'.i of tolls, can not be hold tobe a discrimination in the US2 of the cunal.

It is only fair to say that some of the American newspapers protested without loas of time against this proposal. The Mew York Journal of Commerce called it "an ' unworthy subterfuge," and spoke of Me. Taft's "unbecoming tone of arrogance." The New York Post also commented on the disingenuous character of the scheme. On the other side of the Atlantic, the chorus of disapproval was emphatic. The London Outlook said:

It is obvious that, if this barefaced robbery is to bo used ngajnst Ijritisli vessels of commerce, the question mnv require the effectivo consideration of British vessels of war. Or will the Radical Government tolerate the tearing up of a. Treaty intended to guarantee our trade and commerce against being crushed out of existence, or at least out of profitable competition—which is the same thing—by grand larceny of this description? Besides our home trade with the East of Asia, tho whole of the Canadian trade between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts would bo rendered incapable of meeting United States competition.

The Manchester Guardian and the Morning Post regarded the, announcement as all the more disquieting in view of previous examples of America's rather peculiar interpretation of her Treaty obligations, and the Saturday Review treated the President's proposal as an evasion of the Treaty and a menace to British trade. At length the Administration at Washington gave way. Secretary Stimson announced that he had. reached the conclusion that it would be "unnecessary and unwise as a matter of policy for the United States to refund tolls to be paid by American vessels passing through the Panama Canal." He qualified this back-down with the assertion that the United States had "both legal and moral rights" to refund to American vessels the whole or part of the tolls. That, however, is a view which the world at large is not at all likely to take. It is hardly to bo expected that after this the House of Representatives or Senate will try to reinstate the obnoxious proposal. Its withdrawal is satisfactory to New Zealand as well as other countries, as the intended discrimination would have been indirectly prejudicial to our trade.