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Page 17
This question, from an abstract, speculative phase of the Monroe
Doctrine, took on the concrete and somewhat urgent form of security
for our trans-Isthmian routes against foreign interference towards the
middle of this century, when the attempt to settle it was made by the
oft-mentioned Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, signed April 19, 1850. Great
Britain was found then to be in possession, actual or constructive, of
certain continental positions, and of some outlying islands, which
would contribute not only to military control, but to that kind of
political interference which experience has shown to be the natural
consequence of the proximity of a strong power to a weak one. These
positions depended upon, indeed their tenure originated in, the
possession of Jamaica, thus justifying Cromwell's forecast. Of them,
the Belize, a strip of coast two hundred miles long, on the Bay of
Honduras, immediately south of Yucatan, was so far from the Isthmus
proper, and so little likely to affect the canal question, that the
American negotiator was satisfied to allow its tenure to pass
unquestioned, neither admitting nor denying anything as to the rights
of Great Britain thereto. Its first occupation had been by British
freebooters, who "squatted" there a very few years after Jamaica fell.
They went to cut logwood, succeeded in holding their ground against
the efforts of Spain to dislodge them, and their right to occupancy
and to fell timber was allowed afterwards by treaty. Since the
signature of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, this "settlement," as it was
styled in that instrument, has become a British "possession," by a
convention with Guatemala contracted in 1859. Later, in 1862, the
quondam "settlement" and recent "possession" was erected, by royal
commission, into a full colony, subordinate to the government of
Jamaica. Guatemala being a Central American state, this constituted a
distinct advance of British dominion in Central America, contrary to
the terms of our treaty.
A more important claim of Great Britain was to the protectorate of the
Mosquito Coast,--a strip understood by her to extend from Cape Gracias
� Dios south to the San Juan River. In its origin, this asserted right
differed little from similar transactions between civilized man and
savages, in all times and all places. In 1687, thirty years after the
island was acquired, a chief of the aborigines there settled was
carried to Jamaica, received some paltry presents, and accepted
British protection. While Spanish control lasted, a certain amount of
squabbling and fighting went on between the two nations; but when the
questions arose between England and the United States, the latter
refused to acquiesce in the so-called protectorate, which rested, in
her opinion, upon no sufficient legal ground as against the prior
right of Spain, that was held to have passed to Nicaragua when the
latter achieved its independence. The Mosquito Coast was too close to
the expected canal for its tenure to be considered a matter of
indifference. Similar ground was taken with regard to the Bay Islands,
Ruatan and others, stretching along the south side of the Bay of
Honduras, near the coast of the republic of that name, and so uniting,
under the control of the great naval power, the Belize to the Mosquito
Coast. The United States maintained that these islands, then occupied
by Great Britain, belonged in full right to Honduras.
Under these _de facto_ conditions of British occupation, the United
States negotiator, in his eagerness to obtain the recession of the
disputed points to the Spanish-American republics, seems to have paid
too little regard to future bearings of the subject. Men's minds also
were dominated then, as they are now notwithstanding the intervening
experience of nearly half a century, by the maxims delivered as a
tradition by the founders of the republic who deprecated annexations
of territory abroad. The upshot was that, in consideration of Great
Britain's withdrawal from Mosquitia and the Bay Islands, to which, by
our contention, she had no right, and therefore really yielded nothing
but a dispute, we bound ourselves, as did she, without term, to
acquire no territory in Central America, and to guarantee the
neutrality not only of the contemplated canal, but of any other that
might be constructed. A special article, the eighth, was incorporated
in the treaty to this effect, stating expressly that the wish of the
two governments was "not only to accomplish a particular object, but
to establish a general principle."
Considerable delay ensued in the restoration of the islands and of the
Mosquito Coast to Honduras and Nicaragua,--a delay attended with
prolonged discussion and serious misunderstanding between the United
States and Great Britain. The latter claimed that, by the wording of
the treaty, she had debarred herself only from future acquisitions of
territory in Central America; whereas our government asserted, and
persistently instructed its agents, that its understanding had been
that an entire abandonment of all possession, present and future, was
secured by the agreement. It is difficult, in reading the first
article, not to feel that, although the practice may have been perhaps
somewhat sharp, the wording can sustain the British position quite as
well as the more ingenuous confidence of the United States negotiator;
an observation interesting chiefly as showing the eagerness on the one
side, whose contention was the weaker in all save right, and the
wariness on the other, upon whom present possession and naval power
conferred a marked advantage in making a bargain. By 1860, however,
the restorations had been made, and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty since
then has remained the international agreement, defining our relations
to Great Britain on the Isthmus.
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