obtained his warm approval, but that when he came to know the details more accurately he recognized in them principles of foreign intervention repugnant to the policy of the United States. The treaty engaged the Government of the United States to combine with that of Great Britain in urging a certain course of conduct on a foreign state. This could not be allowed; it was not consistent with the common practice of his country. The object, indeed, was good, and he hoped it might be attained in another shape, It might be prosecuted by a direct and distinct negotiation between Great Britain and Nicaragua, in which Her Majesty's Government would, if necessary, have the good offices of the President.

General Cass then passed some reflections on the Clayton-Bulwer treaty; he had voted for it, and in doing so he believed that it abrogated all intervention on the part of England in the Central American territory. The British Government had put a different construction on the treaty, and he regretted the vote he had given in its favor. He did not, however, pretend that the British Government should now unconditionally abandon the Mosquitos with whom they had relations of an ancient date; it was just and consistent with the practice of the United States that those Indians should be secured in the separate possession of lands, the sale of which should be prohibited, and in the enjoyment of rights and franchises, though in a condition of dependency and protection. The British Government had already removed one impediment to the execution of the Bulwer-Clayton treaty by the cession of their claims on Ruatan; two difficulties now remained, the frontier of Belize and the delimitation and settlement of the Mosquito tribe. If the frontier could be defined, and if the Mosquitos could be placed in the enjoyment of their territory by treaty between Great Britain and Nicaragua, in which the concessions and guarantees of the latter in favor of the Indians should be associated with the recognition of the sovereignty of Nicaragua-so I understood the general-then the Bulwer-Clayton treaty might be a permanent and satisfactory settlement between the contracting parties. The United States desired nothing else but an absolute and entire neutrality and independence of the Central American region, free from the exercise of any exclusive influence or ascendency what

ever.

The Secretary of State terminated a rather desultory conversation on these matters by stating that his present remarks were to be regarded as of a merely general and speculative nature. The Senate had not yet pronounced; as soon as the decision was known and the resolutions taken they should be transmitted to your lordship through Mr. Dallas, and communicated to myself.

General Cass, before I took my leave, offered me an emphatic assurance of good will to the Government of Great Britain, and expressed the satisfaction which he hoped to find in his correspondence with Her Majesty's mission.

I have, &c.,

The EARL OF CLARENDON.

NAPIER.

No. 14.]

44.-Lord Napier to Lord Clarendon.

[Extract.]

WASHINGTON, May 6, 1857. (Received May 25.) On receiving your lordship's dispatch of the 17th ultimo on the 24 instant, informing me that Her Majesty's Government had not found it expedient to ratify the Central American treaty in its altered shape, and instructing me to propose the conclusion of a new treaty embodying all the resolutions of the United States Senate, with the single addition framed as a safeguard for British interests in the Bay Islands, I determined not to carry your lordship's orders into execution without previously soliciting an interview with the President. His excellency did me the honor to appoint an early day for this purpose, but an attack of illness prevented me from availing myself of his goodness, and it was not until this afternoon that I was enabled to pay my respects to his excellency. I found the President fully informed of the grounds on which Her Majesty's Government had based their resolution, and of their desire to enter into new engagements, but I think he entertained an impression that the reason alleged by Her Majesty's Government did not really express the whole or the most cogent motive of their objections, and he was not apprised of the terms of the simple qualification which Her Majesty's Government propose to add to the treaty as modified by the Senate.

I placed your lordship's instructions in the hands of the President. He assured me that he was now quite convinced that the non-ratification of the Honduras treaty formed the true and only motive for the rejection of that negotiated by your lordship with Mr. Dallas; that he could hardly understand the importance attached to this point by Her Majesty's Government; that he deeply regretted their determination, and that it was the last ground on which he had anticipated any reluc tance.

The President thought Her Majesty's Government had acted unwisely in neglecting this opportunity to close the Central American discussions and place the relations of the two countries on a satisfactory basis at a moment when the public feeling was so friendly on either side of the Atlantic.

After reading the article proposed by Her Majesty's Government he told me, not without some appearance of regret, that unless he changed his opinion, of which he saw little prospect, he could not assent to a stipulation which would involve the recognition by his government of a treaty between Great Britain and Houduras relative to the Bay Islands, and if he did accept such a stipulation it would infallibly be rejected by the Senate.

I argued that whatever there was repugnant to the feelings of the Senate in reference to slavery, or whatever there was unacceptable in regard to trade or government in the treaty of August 27, 1856, might be subjected to some change, and I offered to bring his views on this subject under your lordship's notice, but his excellency held out no hope; his objection pointed to the recognition of any treaty at allto the bare allusion to it. Great Britain and Honduras might frame any settlement they pleased for the future government of the islands; it was their business, not that of the United States. The United States could not take cognizance of those arrangements in any degree, however remote and indirect.

Finding the President quite firm in this position, I shifted the discus

sion to the relations of the two countries in case of the official rejection of your lordship's present proposal, remarking that we should fall back on the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, a basis which, if not fixed by arbitration or in some other way, would break up under our feet.

The President denounced the Clayton-Bulwer treaty as one which had been fraught with misunderstanding and mischief from the beginning; it was concluded under the most opposite constructions by the contracting parties. If the Senate had imagined that it could obtain the interpretation placed upon it by Great Britain, it would not have passed. If he had been in the Senate at the time, that treaty never would have been sanctioned. With reference to arbitration (which I had only thrown in as a suggestion of my own), he observed that he could not give any opinion at present. The President also inveighed against the success of treaties, affirming that they were more frequently the cause of quarrel than of harmony, and that, if it were not for the interoceanic communications, he did not see there was any necessity for a treaty respecting Central America at all.

The EARL OF CLARENDON.

NAPIER.

45-General Cass to Lord Napier.

WASHINGTON, May 29, 1857.

MY LORD: I have received your lordship's note of the 6th instant, communicating the resolution of the British Government to advise the Queen not to ratify the treaty of the 17th October, 1856, respecting the affairs of Central America, and which had been modified by the Senate of the United States, and in its modified form submitted for the consideration and action of your government. I have laid before the President this note, together with the accompanying projet of a new treaty, and I have received his instructions to make known to you his views upon the subject.

The Clayton-Bulwer treaty, concluded in the hope that it would put an end to the differences which had arisen between the United States and Great Britain concerning Central American affairs, had been 1endered inoperative in some of its most essential provisions by the different constructions which had been reciprocally given to it by the parties; and little is hazarded in saying that had the interpretation since put upon the treaty by the British Government, and yet maintained, been anticipated it would not have been negotiated under the instructions of any Executive of the United States nor ratified by the branch of the government intrusted with the power of ratification.

A protracted discussion, in which the subject was exhausted, failed to reconcile the conflicting views of the parties; and as a last resort a negotiation was opened for the purpose of forming a supplementary treaty which should remove, if practicable, the difficulties in the way of their mutual good understanding, and leave unnecessary any further discussion of the controverted provisions of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. It was to effect this object that the Government of the United States agreed to open the negotiations which terminated in the treaty of October 17th, 1856, and though the provisions of that instrument, even with the amendments proposed by the Senate, were not wholly unobjectionable either to that body or to the President, still, so important

did they consider a satisfactory arrangement of this complicated subject that they yielded their objections and sanctioned, by their act of ratification, the convention as amended. It was then transmitted to London for the consideration of Her Britannic Majesty's Government, and having failed to meet its approbation has been returned unratified. The parties are thus thrown back upon the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, with its disputed phraseology and its conflicting interpretations; and, after the lapse of seven years, not one of the objects connected with the political condition of Central America, which the United States had hoped to obtain by the arrangement, has been accomplished.

Under these circumstances your lordship informs me that the British Government, appreciating the differences which this subject has caused "between the two countries," have determined to propose to the United States the conclusion of a new treaty, and in conformity with your instructions this proposition is accompanied with the projet of a convention which, if ratified by the President and Senate of the United States, it is engaged will be ratified by Her Britannic Majesty.

The draft presented is identical in its language with the treaty of October, as ratified by the Senate, except that to that clause of the second separate article which provides for the recognition of the Bay Islands "as under the sovereignty and as part of the Republic of Honduras" there is added the provision:

Whenever and so soon as the Republic of Honduras shall have concluded and ratified a treaty with Great Britain by which Great Britain shall have ceded, and the Republic of Honduras shall have accepted, the said islands, subject to the provisions and conditions contained in the said treaty.

This provision is a substitute for the provision relating to the same subject contained in the rejected treaty, and which referred to a subsisting convention with Honduras for the cession to that republic of the Bay Islands. Taken in connection with this convention, of which your lordship was good enough on the 10th instant to communicate a copy to this department, upon my application, that provision, whilst declaring the Bay Islands to be "a free territory under the sovereignty of the Republic of Honduras," deprived that country of rights without which its sovereignty over them could scarcely be said to exist. It separated them from the remainder of Honduras, and gave them a government of their own, with their own legislative, executive, and judicial officers, elected by themselves. It deprived the government of Honduras of the taxing power in every form, and exempted the people of the Bay Islands from the performance of military duty, except for their own defense, and it prohibited the republic from providing for the protection of these islands by the construction of any fortifications whatsoever, leaving them open to invasion from any quarter. Had Honduras ratified this treaty, she would have ratified the establishment of an "independent" state within her own limits, and a state at all times liable to foreign influence and control. I am not, therefore, surprised to learn from your lordship that "Her Majesty's Government do not expect that this treaty, in its present shape, will be definitively sanctioned by that republic."

But, while this expectation may be justified by the event, it is certain that the new provision, like the former one, contemplates the cession of the Bay Islands to Honduras, only upon certain "conditions," and that these conditions are to be sanctioned by this government. The proposition, therefore, though changed in form, is the same in substance with that which was recently rejected by the Senate of the United States, and a just respect for the Senate would prevent the President from now consenting to its insertion in a new treaty. The action of that body,

moreover, met his cordial approbation, because it is his firm conviction that the Bay Islands are a part of the territory of Honduras, and justly subject to its government and to no other authority. Entertaining this opinion, it would be impossible for him to sanction any arrangement by which their restoration may be made dependent upon conditions either already prescribed or left to be prescribed hereafter. The case of these islands, as your lordship is aware, stands out in bold relief from all the other subjects embraced in the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. That instrument provided that neither of the parties should "colonize" any portion of Central America; and yet more than a year after its ratification, the colony of the Bay Islands was established by an act of the British Government. The United States have always considered that proceeding a violation of the treaty, even with the British construction of it; and the claim for its justification that the Bay Islands are dependencies of the Belize settlement cannot, it is believed, be maintained with success upon either American or British authority. It is directly at variance with the description given by Sir Charles Grey, the secretary of state for the colonies, in 1836, of the boundaries of the Belize settlement; and, from the discussions between the two governments which took place in London in 1854, it cannot be doubted that it was opposed also to the deliberate opinion of Lord Aberdeen, then at the head of the British cabinet.

Independently, however, of these considerations, there is another view of the subject which interposes insuperable obstacles to the desired action of the United States upon this treaty. The character or the extent of the concessions which England may demand of Honduras is nowhere defined in that instrument. Any grant, however inconsistent with the independence or the rights of that republic, if not inconsistent with the expresss provisions of the treaty, may be demanded by Great Britain, and, if rejected, what then will be the condition of the parties? Great Britain would retain the possession of these islands, with the implied concurrence of the United States, and this valuable group, overlooking one of the great avenues of communication of the world, and in the freedom and security of which the United States have a far deeper interest than any other nation, might thus eventually become a permanent portion of the British Empire. That the United States should decline to make themselves a party to such an arrangement can surely occasion neither surprise nor disappointment to the people or statesmen of Great Britain. I am, therefore, directed by the President to announce to your lordship that he cannot accept the projet of a treaty which, agreeably to your instructions, you have presented for his consideration. But, while feeling it his duty so to decide, he fully reciprocates the desire of your government to cement the amicable relations of the two countries, and, during his administration, no effort shall be wanting on his part to prevent any interruption of that friendly intercourse which both Great Britain and the United States have so many powerful motives to promote.

I have, &c.,

LEWIS CASS.