On Monday evening President Roosevelt returned from a hurried visit
to Panama. He reached Colon on November 14th, crossed the Isthmus next day, inspected the Canal, and then visited Panama City, and was received publicly by the President. An account of his journey will be communicated to Congress in a special Message. The event is significant, for it is the first time that an American President during his term of office has deliberately left his own country. Once, indeed, as the Times points out, President Grant, when yachting off the New England coast in a fog, strayed by accident into the territorial waters of a British Colony. But the matter was hushed up, for the United States seems to have adopted as ' part of her unwritten Constitutional law the old provision in the British Act of Settlement. President Roosevelt in this as in other matters is an innovator, and his action, and the way it has been received, show that the American people are getting less susceptible about their "unwritten law." It is to be hoped that this change of opinion may prepare the way for the much-needed reform of the Constitution.
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