The rivalry between England and the United States along the Nicaraguan route became so acute and dangerous that a very important treaty was concluded between the two countries in 1850, when we may say that the Panama Canal question entered the domain of modern politics. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, so-called from Mr. John M. Clayton, the American Secretary of State, and Sir Henry Bulwer, British Minister at Washington, who negotiated it, held the field for fifty years, and became the subject of endless discussion between England and the United States.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Herodotus tells a story how the people of Knidos were forbidden by the Delphic oracle to make a canal through the isthmus, along which their Persian enemies could advance by land to attack them. The oracle said that if Zeus had wished the place to be an island he would have made it one. There is a curious resemblance between this story and that related in the text.
CHAPTER III.
THE CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY AND
THE SUEZ CANAL.
The treaty of 1850 was concerned primarily with a canal along the Nicaraguan route—that is, as the preamble expresses it, a canal "between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by 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." But as Article VIII. says, it established "a general principle" relating to any waterway across the isthmus between North and South America. The two contracting parties undertook in the treaty that neither should "obtain or maintain for itself any exclusive control over the said canal," or "maintain any fortifications commanding the same, or in the vicinity thereof," or "occupy, or fortify, or colonize, or assume, or exercise any dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast, or any part of Central America." This agreement, as I said, subsisted for fifty years, but it was scarcely concluded when it was found inconsistent with the growing importance and ambition of the United States, where a demand quickly arose for an American-owned canal.
Again there followed a series of schemes for canal construction at various points of the isthmus. For example, Dr. Edgar Cullen created some excitement in England in the early Victorian days by giving a very favourable account of the Caledonian route across the isthmus at Darien, in a lecture to the Royal Geographical Society. The doctor was received by the young queen and the Prince Consort, a corporation was formed, and an engineer sent out to make surveys from Caledonian Bay. A British and a French man-of-war were dispatched to the isthmus to make investigations. But the surveyor was driven from Caledonian Bay by local tribes, and so went on to Panama, giving a favourable report of that route on his return to England. But nothing came of these incidents, and the American Civil War in the early 'sixties diverted the attention of the United States from isthmian affairs. At the end of the war American interest revived, and public opinion set more and more against the idea of sharing a canal with any other Power. In 1869 President Grant gave the first public expression to the demand for an American canal under American control. "I regard it," he said, "as of vast political importance to this country that no European government should hold such a work." Later, in an article in the North American Review, he said, "I commend an American canal, on American soil, to the American people."
Just before the President's declaration of policy the United States had concluded an important treaty, known as the "Dickinson-Ayon Treaty," with Nicaragua, securing a right of way for a canal over the Nicaraguan route; and, just afterwards, President Grant appointed an Interoceanic Canal Commission which investigated four routes for a canal, and finally, in 1875, reported unanimously in favour of the Nicaraguan route from Grey town to the San Juan River, to Lake Nicaragua, through the Rio del Medio and Rio Grande valleys, to Brito on the Pacific coast.