Mexico. It is not necessary now to define that doctrine, but its history clearly shows that it at least opposes any intervention by European nations in the political affairs of American republics.

In 1823 Mr. Canning, with the concurrence of the cabinet of London, informed Mr. Rush that Great Britain could not see with indifference the intervention of foreign power in Spanish America, or the transfer to those powers of any of the colonies, and suggested a joint declaration to that effect by the United States and Great Britain. This suggestion grew out of the relations then existing between France and Spain, their attitude towards the South American republics then strug gling for independence, and the injuries to the colonies and commerce of Great Britain which would result from a successful prosecution of the policy of those two Governments. President Monroe did not adopt the proposal for a joint declaration; but in his message of December 2, 1823, after stating that it was our policy not to interfere with the internal concerns of European powers, speaking of the war which the revolted colonies were carrying on against Spain, and of contemplated interference by the "Holy Alliance" in behalf of the latter, said, in language which has gone into history under his name, thus:

But in regard to these continents circumstances are eminently and conspicuously different. It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent without endangering our peace and happiness, nor can any one believe that our southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition in any form with indifference.

This sentiment was received in England with enthusiasm. Mr. Brougham said:

The question in regard to Spanish America is now, I believe, disposed of or nearly so; for an event has recently happened than which none has ever dispensed greater joy, exultation, and gratitude over all the freedmen of Europe; that event which is decisive on the subject is the language held with respect to Spanish America in the message of the President of the United States.

Sir James Mackintosh said:

This evidence of the two great English commonwealths (for so I delight to call them, and I heartily pray that they may be forever united in the cause of justice and liberty) cannot be contemplated without the greatest pleasure by every enlightened citizen of the earth.

Mr. John Quincy Adams, who well knew what had led to these statements by Mr. Monroe, explained in a message to the House of Representatives on the 17th day of March, 1826, that there was no purpose of interfering with the existing European colonies in America; that the language was only a frank declaration that the United States could not look with indifference either upon an attempt by colonization to close any port of the continent against the commerce of the United States or upon concerted political interference from Europe in American affairs.

Thus the doctrine of non-intervention by European powers in American affairs arose from complications in South America, and was announced by Mr. Monroe on the suggestion of the official representative of Great Britain.

The doctrine so formulated by Monroe and expounded by Adams has since remained a cardinal principle of our continental policy. In several notable instances, especially in the case of the French attempt to set up imperial authority in Mexico, it guided our political action, and it is to-day firmly embedded in the American heart.

It is true that this doctrine refers to the political and not to the material interest of America; but no one can deny that to place the isthmus under the protection and guarantee of the powers of Europe, rather than under the protection of the leading power of this hemisphere, would seriously threaten and affect the political interest of that power. It is not to be anticipated that Great Britain will controvert an international doctrine, which she suggested to the United States, when looking to her own interest, and which, when adopted by this Republic, she highly approved; and it is but frank to say that the people of this country would be as unwilling that the pathway of commerce between the Pacific coast and our Eastern market should be under the dominion of the allied European powers as would be the people of Great Britain that the transit from one to another part of her possessions should be under such control.

Prior to the war of the Revolution, Great Britain had acquired strong positions from Halifax to Antigua, dominating the coast of the United States. She retained these positions after the peace of 1783, and continues to use them for offensive and defensive purposes. She has strengthened old strongholds and made new ones, while the United States has ever refused to avail herself of proffered commanding external military stations.

No well-informed statesman doubts the ability of this nation to raise a powerful navy. To raise such a navy might bring commercial advantages to the United States, but it is doubtful whether it would promote the peace of the world; and the United States desires that their citizens. may, without any armed assertion of right, be conveyed by water transit from their western to their eastern shores without passing under the guns of European powers.

These are our own views, and it is but frank to state them, while Her Majesty's Government is not called upon either to admit or deny them.

To considerations such as these Lord Granville, in his dispatch of November 10, 1881, answers that the position of Great Britain and the United States, in reference to the canal, is determined by the

engagements entered into by them respectively in the convention, which was signed at Washington on the 19th of April, 1850, commonly known as the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, and that Her Majesty's Government rely with confidence upon the observance of all the engagements of that treaty.

We are thus fairly brought to the consideration of the ClaytonBulwer treaty.

The treaty relates to communication between the oceans, and divides itself into two parts:

First, and principally, that which the treaty terms a "particular object," to wit, a then projected interoceanic canal in Central America by the Nicaragua route; and this is the only object stated in the preamble of the treaty, which says that the two Governments, "being desirous of consolidating the relations of amity which so happily subsist between them, by setting forth and fixing in a convention their views and intentions with reference to any means of communication by ship canal which may be constructed between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by the way of the river San Juan de Nicaragua and either or both of the lakes of Nicaragua or Managua to any port or place on the Pacific Ocean," to that end confer full powers on Mr. Clayton and Sir Henry Bulwer.

The first and principal object of the treaty is considered in the first seven articles.

Second. The subordinate object of the treaty is that treated of in the remaining or eighth article, which states that the two Governments having not only desired, in entering into this convention, to accomplish a particular object, but also to establish a general principle (and this is the principle), hereby agree to extend their protection by treaty stipulation to any other practicable communication" across the isthmus, "and especially to the interoceanic communications, should the same prove practicable, whether by canal or railroad, which are now proposed to be established by the way of Tehuantepec or Panama." This "general principle" or joint protection is to be effected, as stated, "by treaty stipulations."

Although this discussion relates to a canal by the Panama route outside of Central America, to which the eighth article refers, yet your attention is invited as well to the first and principal as to the second and subordinate purpose of the treaty.

First. While the primary object of the treaty, as will be seen, was to aid the immediate construction of a canal by what is known as the Nicaragua route it is equally plain that another and important object, which the United States had in view, was to dispossess Great Britain of settlements in Central America, whether under cover of Indian sovereignty or otherwise. The United States were tenacious that Great Britain should not extend further her occupation of threatening military or naval strategic points along their maritime frontier. To assure this, the parties to the treaty jointly agreed not to exercise dominion over, or fortify or colonize Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito coast, or any part of Central America. Great Britain, however, exercises dominion over Belize or British Honduras, the area of which is equal to that of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, and the impression prevails that since the conclusion of the treaty of 1850, the English inhabitants of that district have spread into the territory of the neighboring Republics and now occupy a large area of land which, under the convention, belongs to one or the other of the two Republics, but over which the Government of Her Majesty assumes to exercise control.

Such dominion seems to be inconsistent with that provision of the treaty which prohibits the exercise of dominion by Great Britain over any part of Central America. This makes it proper for me to say that the English privileges, at the time of the conclusion of the ClaytonBulwer treaty, in what has been known as the Belize, were confined to a right to cut wood and establish sawmills in a territory defined by metes and bounds. These privileges were conferred by treaties, in which Spanish sovereignty was recognized. On the successful revolution, the rights of Spain vested in the new Republics, and had not been materially changed when the Clayton-Bulwer treaty was concluded. That treaty was concluded April 19, and its ratification advised by the Senate May 22, 1850. On the exchange of the ratifications, Sir Henry Bulwer filed in this Department, under date of June 29, 1850, a declaration that the exchange was made with the understanding on the part of Her Majesty's Government that the treaty did not apply to Her Majesty's settlement at Honduras and its dependencies. Mr. Clayton answered, under date of July 4, 1850, that he so understood, but that he must not be understood to either affirm or deny British title therein.

It is to be observed that each of these declarations was made after the conclusion of the treaty by the joint action of the President and the Senate, and that the declaration was not made to or accepted by them. In 1859 Great Britain entered into a treaty with Guatemala, in which what had been called the settlement in the declaration made on the exchange of the ratification of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty was styled "Her Britannic Majesty's settlement and possessions."

In the treaty with Guatemala the boundaries were defined, and it was agreed that all on one side of the defined boundaries "belongs to Her Britannic Majesty." It is further understood that when the commissioners met to mark the boundary in accordance with the agreement, it was found that the subjects of Great Britain had occupied so much more of Guatemala than was supposed that the commissioner on the part of Her Majesty's Government refused to proceed, and this large area of land has since remained practically in the possession of Great Britain.

The United States have never given their assent to this conversion of the British "settlement" in Central America under Spanish-American Sovereignty into a British "possession" with British sovereignty. There is a vast difference between a settlement subject to the sovereignty of the Central-American Republic and a colony controlled by Great Britain.

Under the treaty of 1850, while it is binding, the United States have not the right to exercise dominion over or to colonize one foot of territory in Central America. Great Britain is under the same rigid restriction. And if Great Britain has violated and continues to violate that provision, the treaty is, of course, voidable at the pleasure of the United States.

Again, it is well known that the parties to the Clayton-Bulwer treaty anticipated that a canal by the Nicaragua route was to be at once commenced. Under the assumption of a protectorate of Mosquito, British authority was at that time in actual and visible occupation of one end of the Nicaragua route, whether with or without title is not now material, and it was intended by this treaty to dispossess Great Britain of this occupation. This object was accomplished in 1859 and 1860 by treaties between Great Britain, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, referred to in Lord Granville's dispatch of January 14, 1882. It was to this adjustment, which was one of the prime objects of the treaty, and not to the colonization of British Honduras, that Mr. Buchanan in his message of December 3, 1860, alludes as "an amicable and honorable adjustment of dangerous questions arising from the ClaytonBulwer treaty.

When the Clayton-Bulwer treaty was concluded it was contemplated that the Nicaragua Canal, to which the treaty principally had relation, would be at once commenced and finished with all possible speed by American and British capital under the impulse of the joint protectorate. This appears not only from the context of the treaty, but also from the history of the negotiations which lead to the treaty, and the relations which then existed between this Government and the Central American States.

On December 12, 1846, New Grenada, by a treaty of commerce, in consideration of certain guarantees, made the United States valuable grants relating to the Panama route, to which your attention will be directed when we consider the rights of this Republic in relation to the Panama route.

The discovery of gold in California soon made it important to find some rapid way of reaching it. Notwithstanding the progress of the Panama Railroad scheme, public feeling was running strongly in favor of a ship-canal large enough to accommodate ocean steamships. Influenced by this strong feeling the minister of the United States in Nicaragua, without instructions, negotiated a treaty with that Republic, which conferred upon certain citizens of the United States the valuable right to construct a ship-canal from San Juan on the Atlantic coast to the Pacific. Nicaragua claimed sovereignty over the whole of the line of the proposed canal, while Great Britain, as I have shown, claimed sovereignty over a portion of it occupied by the Mosquito Indians.

At the time of the concession by Nicaragua it would have been impossible to procure in the United States the capital necessary for the construction of a ship-canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Hence it was that, when Mr. Clayton learned of the concession, he at once informed Mr. Crampton, the British minister, saying that the United States did not propose to avail themselves exclusively of these privileges, but wished a canal constructed, and that the claim of Great Britain on behalf of the Mosquito Indians, which the United States could not admit, stood in the way. The Government of the United States, Mr. Clayton said, was persuaded that—

These considerations, if fairly laid before Her Majesty's Government, would induce Her Majesty's Government to make such an arrangement with regard to the Mosquito Indians as would prevent its being an obstacle to the design in question.

President Taylor was present at the interview, and "cordially concurred." Mr. Crampton reported the conversation to Lord Palmerston the 1st October, and on the 15th of the same month transmitted to him a copy of the concession by Nicaragua to the American company. The 22d November Mr. Abbott Lawrence officially informed Lord Palmerston that an American company, aided by the subscription of a large amount of British capital, had begun to construct the Panama Railroad, and had completed the contracts for iron for it. He transmitted to Lord Palmerston a copy of the guaranty in the treaty of 1846 with New Grenada, and invited Great Britain to join in the guaranty. In the same note he acquainted her Majesty's Government with the concession from Nicaragua to the American canal company, and said that the conflicting claims as to Mosquito threw an obstacle in the way of the work, and invited a conversation on the subject. It seems that several conversations were had, since on the 14th of the following December Mr. Lawrence addressed a formal note to Lord Palmerston, in which, after referring to them and again setting forth the concessions for the Panama Railroad and the Nicaragua Canal, and stating that the United States had "disclaimed all intention to settle, annex, colonize, or fortify the territory of Central America, which declaration had been met by a similar disclaimer on the part of Great Britain," and also that Her Majesty's Government "had intimated their willingness to join with the United States in their guaranty of neutrality," he asked, in substance, 1st. Whether Great Britain would enter into a treaty with Nicaragua similar to that negotiated by the United States? 2d. Whether Great Britain would enter into a treaty with New Grenada guaranteeing the neutrality of the railway then under construction. 3d. Whether the obstruction of the Mosquito Protectorate would be removed? This note was never answered formally in London, but negotiations were transferred to Washington.

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