CANAL, Interoceanic, The Project of the: A. D. 1889-1899. The Maritime Canal Company. Investigation of Nicaragua routes. "The failure of the Frelinghuysen-Zavala treaty [see above] was a severe disappointment to the friends of the canal project, but it did not discourage them. A company of private citizens, capitalists and promoters, was organized, which at length took the name of the Maritime Canal Company. Fair and full concessions were secured from the government of Nicaragua, while similar articles were also signed with the Republic of Costa Rica on account of imagined ownership of a portion of the territory through which the canal was to pass, though it has been shown subsequently, in the settlement of the boundary dispute between those two governments, that Costa Rica's rights in the matter were solely riparian. In due time Congress was called upon to grant a charter to the Maritime Company, which asked nothing more than this." The chartering act was passed by Congress in 1889, with an important amendment proposed by Judge Holman of Indiana, providing that "nothing in this act contained shall be so construed as to commit the United States to any pecuniary liability whatever for any account of said company, nor shall the United States be held in any wise liable or responsible in any form or by any implication for any debt or, liability in any form which said company may incur, nor as guaranteeing any engagement or contract of said company." But two years afterwards, the company having failed to enlist the necessary capital for its undertaking, an attempt was made to set aside the above provision and to persuade Congress to guarantee $100,000,000 of bonds, taking $70,000,000 of stock and making the government a partner in the enterprise. The proposal was rejected. Congress "did not guarantee the company's bonds. The company, without such guarantee, was unable to raise the necessary capital, either in the United States or abroad, and the financial crisis of 1893 so overwhelmed it that all active operations on the isthmus were suspended, and they have never been resumed. The same issue, the guaranteeing of bonds, has come up from time to time in succeeding Congresses, but not until the second session of the Fifty-fourth [1897] did it appear to have much chance of being decided in favor of the company. The opposition in the Senate, where it was first considered, was strong, and the arguments advanced against the bill were clear, sound and forceful. The advocates of the measure were pressing for a vote, but almost at the supreme moment a note was received from the State Department, accompanied by a communication from Minister Rodriguez, the representative of the Greater Republic of Central America, setting forth several unassailable objections of his government to the methods of procedure.