future wealth convinced him of the utmost importance to the United States of maintaining the route free from foreign influence. The canal was destined no doubt to be the main high way connecting the two distant sections of the country. In those early days the all but impassable deserts and unexplored mountain ranges of the West precluded the idea of a direct overland communication by rail to the Pacific coast, and consequently the importance attached to the Central American route was then much greater in the public mind than in later years.

Cognizant of these conditions and fully confident that the government at Washington, when once it had been led to appreciate the extent and motives of British aggressions in Central America, would ratify them, he proceeded, though unauthorized to do so, to conclude the articles of a new convention with the very willing Nicaraguan Congress. The treaty which he signed in June, 1849, gave to the United States, besides the usual privileges of such an agreement, the right to erect fortifications along the course of a proposed canal, and to hold and fortify the ports at either end of the route. In return for these privileges, the United States undertook to guarantee Nicaragua's sovereignty from sea to sea over all the territory she claimed. Such a compact, of course, not only completely ignored British claims at Greytown, threatening at once to draw England and the United States into a dispute, but it also involved an extravagant application of the Monroe Doctrine which was far too radical to meet with the views of President Taylor. A reaction from the aggressive foreign policy of the Polk administration had set in; Mr. Hise was recalled, and in his place Mr. E. G. Squier was despatched with all haste to Nicaragua to grapple with the situation.

Mr. Squier's instructions were extremely conservative. He was cautioned against all rash measures calculated to infringe upon the rights of others or needlessly to provoke hostility. He was assured that while the government was at all times ready and willing to maintain the "Monroe Doctrine," that doctrine was not inconsistent with the idea and purpose that an interoceanic canal should "concede equal

rights of transit to all nations," and that it "should not be hampered by any restrictions, either from local government or the company building it." Mr. Squier at once drew up a treaty with Nicaragua which granted the United States a right of way from sea to sea, and the United States in return guaranteed Nicaragua's right of sovereignty over the route and at both terminal ports; the right was reserved to Nicaragua to make similar treaties with any other nation or nations that cared to share this open right of way. Obviously, by entering into such a compact with the United States, Nicaragua again violated her treaty of the year before with England, and in guaranteeing Nicaragua's sovereignty over both ports at either terminus of the proposed canal, the United States necessarily stamped her disapproval upon the British seizure of Greytown.

While Mr. Squier was negotiating this very liberal treaty, the English resolved to strengthen even more firmly their grasp upon Nicaragua and the canal route by obtaining landed interests at the Pacific terminus of the canal. A British expedition, accordingly, started for the Gulf of Fonseca, in the territory of Honduras, which was the supposed future Pacific entrance to the inland waterway, for the purpose of seizing the islands in this gulf,-points of the greatest strategic value. Mr. Squier hurried to Honduras, and in order to forestall these British encroachments, he hastily concluded a preliminary treaty with Honduras (September, 1849), whereby, pending final negotiations, the Island of Tigre, in the Gulf of Fonseca, was ceded to the United States for a limited period. Now, strangely enough, Mr. Squier's hasty mission to Honduras had scarcely been accomplished, when the British expedition appeared, and upon the transparent excuse of an unpaid debt seized this same Tigre Island (October, 1849). Thus, in their struggle for the control of the territory through which the interoceanic canal was likely to pass, the two powers came face to face, and as the English commander refused to surrender his newly acquired island, it seemed that war was inevitable. In the meantime, the British had been no less active along the Atlantic coast; under pretext of definitely fixing the boun

daries of the Mosquito kingdom, its domain had been considerably enlarged. The extent and character of the Hise treaty (though never ratified by the United States) had become known to England just before this time, but fortunately the subtle forces of diplomacy had already been utilized to avert an armed conflict, which the publication of the Hise treaty would certainly have precipitated; suddenly the news of the Tigre Island incident came to intensify the existing excitement in the United States.

In 1850 the American people had just come to a realizing sense of the fact that Great Britain and the United States were rivals for a controlling influence in Central America. The United States had occupied itself in reclaiming its vast domains and in creating new states in the wilderness which lay beyond the Mississippi; without thought of the effect upon the world at large, or a care for the "balance of power in the Americas, territorial expansion westward had steadily continued. Texas was absorbed into the Union, and California, an empire in itself, was added to the growing body of the nation. Oregon and Washington were definitely marked out, and a lasting check was thereby placed upon British hopes of further expansion on the Pacific coast. Contact with the western ocean awakened thoughts of Oriental commerce, and here, for the first time, the influences were felt that had been operating to draw apart the two great powers, and that had made them rivals in Central America. Great Britain enjoyed monopoly of Indian and Asiatic trade, and when once that source of her commercial vitality was jeopardized, her disfavor and enmity were aroused.

The success of American arms in Mexico had in a measure intoxicated the people, and every advance in territorial gain seemed more than ever to prove the truth in those early prophecies that "a manifest destiny" would eventually place the whole continent under the American flag. This eagerness for territorial aggrandizement was no more than the outcome of a race between the North and South for extension of the slaveholding and free-soil area of the United States; but British statesmen saw in this mania for expan

sion only a surer prospect of the extension of the United States north into Canada and south into Mexico and Central America. In the interest of her American colonial possessions, Great Britain sought to oppose such advances. The British Government foresaw the importance to England of a neutral Central American canal, and it anticipated the movements of the United States that should seek to place Central America under North American dominion, and deprive England of those joint proprietary rights in the canal which her trade interests demanded.

When the British first laid claim to Mosquitia, the American people, unmindful, continued to attend to their own domestic affairs; but when the British reoccupied the east coast of Nicaragua, and seized Greytown, the United States became aroused. The causes that for years had been silently operating to estrange the two nations now came to the surface, and a spirit of jealousy shadowed the popular mind in both England and the United States, and no doubt influenced both governments. The American people resented these recent acts of British aggression in Nicaragua, which they believed to have been inspired through feelings of enmity toward the United States. The mutual feelings of suspicion and distrust were enhanced by the determination of Great Britain to stand by the assumptions of the Mosquito chief who obstructed the building of an American canal through his territory. The belief had become general throughout the country and especially in the Southern states, that an open waterway through Nicaragua was absolutely essential to the integrity and welfare of the United States. The demand for a neutral canal had become so urgent, its importance so vital, that the people themselves were ready to risk war for it if need be; then came the British seizure of Tigre Island, which completed the chain of events that had brought about the bitter jealousies of the two nations. The danger of war in 1850 had become alarming.

Mr. Clayton, the Secretary of State, fully appreciated✔ the gravity of the situation. As a practical statesman, he believed that the benefits arising from a great com

mercial enterprise belonged rather to a state of peace than to a state of war, and perhaps already realizing, above and beyond the excitement and passions of the moment, that an interoceanic canal should be as free as the high seas themselves, he proceeded to open the way with the English Minister at Washington toward the negotiation of a treaty, which would not only be the means of preventing an immediate war, but which would also outline those practical and conservative suggestions which he believed it would be necessary to adopt to insure the completion of this great work.

The conclusion most earnestly sought was to induce England to withdraw from Greytown, for in that occupancy the Secretary saw the certainty of armed conflict. On this point it was known that American sentiment was fixed and irreversible. In return for such a concession, however, Mr. Clayton was willing to share with England in the political control and use of the canal, for he saw no reason why any one country should enjoy exclusive rights and privileges in what was designed to be an international highway, which, to be profitable and to subserve the purposes of its creation, must be always open and always neutral. In this spirit of friendship, and desirous of making the canal a "bond of interest and peace" between the two nations, rather than a "subject for jealousy," he approached Mr. Crampton, the British Minister in Washington, and invited his coöperation in considering the terms of a treaty that would harmonize British and American interests.

The danger in the situation was two-fold; first, England had seized new territory upon the American continent in open defiance of the "Monroe Doctrine," which, in itself, might be considered by Congress as a casus belli; and, secondly, the territory so seized was the country about the mouth of the San Juan River, which, of course, meant nothing less forbidding than English ownership of the Atlantic. entrance to the proposed canal, a condition of affairs manifestly intolerable to the United States.

To induce England to yield all her rights in Nicaragua would have been a most desirable consummation, but to oust