“An inquiry [as to the true divisional line between the Republic of Venezuela and British Guiana] should, of course, be conducted carefully and judicially.... When report is made [by a Commission appointed by Congress] and accepted, it will, in my opinion, be the duty of the United States to resist by every means in its power, as a willful aggression upon its rights and interests, the appropriation by Great Britain of any lands, [etc., etc.,] ... which after investigation we have determined of right to belong to Venezuela.”—President Cleveland’s message to Congress, vide “Time’s,” December 18.
Of the whole territory in dispute, far the larger portion went to Great Britain, and some few persons who uttered cries of distress over the message of December 17 counted this as a rebuke and rebuff for President Cleveland. That was the very hardihood of perversity in taking a false view. Mr. Cleveland had declared that our Government was “without any convictions as to the final merits of the dispute.” The supreme, the vital point is that in the award of the Paris tribunal, accepted by both parties, law triumphed over force. The boundary line was traced, and titles with which Great Britain had vested herself by her own acts, heedless of the protests of Venezuela and rejecting her and our appeals for adjudication, were passed upon by an impartial arbitral tribunal according to evidence and the principles of public law. Whoever gained, whoever lost, that was quite immaterial from our point of view. The process of territorial expansion by stealthy encroachment, by unwarranted shifting of boundaries, and the alteration of maps and statistics, was at an end. The sovereignty of the lawful owner replaced that of the squatter. Venezuela was delivered from duress and from peril, no longer was her soil or her destiny under the menace of foreign control, and the situation created by the attempt of a power over the sea to extend the European system within this hemisphere, which Monroe declared to be dangerous to our peace and safety, and against which Mr. Cleveland had invoked the Monroe Doctrine, no longer existed. Mr. Cleveland had triumphed, the Monroe Doctrine had triumphed, peace had triumphed. General Harrison and Sir Richard Webster parted with expressions of mutual esteem, and the report of the proceedings of the Paris tribunal, in eleven folio parts, now on the shelves of the New York Public Library, was presented by the Marquis of Salisbury, while to Mr. Richard Olney was tendered not long ago the appointment as Ambassador at the Court of St. James’s.
The consequences of this successful and momentous assertion of the Monroe Doctrine may now be traced. Three times within the century of its declaration the doctrine was firmly asserted and maintained by the United States as the public system of the Western World, for it may with entire propriety be called our public system, as the concert of Europe is the public system of that continent. First, when President Monroe proclaimed it as a warning to the Holy Alliance, plotting the restoration to Spain of her revolted colonies in Latin America. Second, when Secretary Seward’s repeated protests against the establishment of an empire and an emperor, the Austrian Maximilian, in Mexico against the will of the people by French arms, were ominously reinforced by the despatch of General Sheridan to the banks of the Rio Grande with 80,000 disciplined and experienced troops, freed from active service by the ending of the war between the States, the French evacuation of Mexico speedily following. The absence of any mention of the Monroe Doctrine in Secretary Seward’s correspondence in respect to the French adventurer in Mexico is without significance. The spirit and the principle of Monroe’s declaration were the declared motives of his action. Third, when President Cleveland, by virtue of the doctrine, “intended to apply to every stage of our National life,” constrained England to submit her boundary dispute with Venezuela to a judicial settlement. The next application of the doctrine, the fourth in this series, all of primary importance, fell within the present century, when the substitution of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty for the Clayton-Bulwer convention of half a century earlier dissolved our partnership with Great Britain in an agreement to extend a joint protectorship over any transportation route across the isthmus, and so cleared the way for the building and exclusive control by ourselves of the Panama Canal.
The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was never popular in this country. It was entered into at a time, in 1850, when the discovery of gold in California, and the consequent tide of travel to the land of easily acquired riches, brought into view the need for facilities of transportation across the isthmus; and also, it should be said, when the responsible statesmen of the Nation were perhaps less mindful than at any other time since Monroe’s administration of the import and the saving force of the doctrine that bears his name. Nevertheless, the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty itself, after a fashion, a most illogical and inconsistent fashion, was on our part an attempt to apply the prohibitions of the doctrine against European colonization in this hemisphere. Great Britain was encroaching upon the territory of Central American States, and she stood in the way of the building of the canal. We negotiated the treaty to free ourselves from this embarrassment, and by that singular bargain, through the waiver of a right, we secured the recognition of a right; that is, we persuaded Great Britain to assent to Monroe Doctrine principles in Central America at the price of taking her as a partner in any undertaking for a transportation route across the isthmus, which was in itself contrary to the spirit of the doctrine.
The treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, ending our war with Mexico, was signed February 2, 1848. By its terms Mexico ceded to us the territory now included within the borders of the States of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and parts of Colorado and New Mexico. Great Britain strenuously opposed the cession to us of any territory on the Pacific coast. Failing to control the acts of Mexico in that respect, she took measures in her own way to offset our great territorial gain. Six days after signing the treaty she despatched her fleet from Vera Cruz to the coast of Nicaragua, and forcibly took possession of San Juan at the mouth of the river of that name. She set up a governor, erected fortifications, and changed the name of the place to Greytown. This gave her command of the only canal route then under consideration, for it was at a much later time that the Panama route came to the fore as more practicable. The seizure of San Juan was a move so plainly hostile to our interests that our Government at once sent a diplomatic representative to Nicaragua, and a treaty known as the Hise Treaty was negotiated in June, 1849, by which Nicaragua granted to the United States “the exclusive right and privilege” of constructing a canal or railway between the two oceans across Nicaraguan territory. This treaty was not sent to the Senate and was never ratified by either country.
The occupation of San Juan, or Greytown, by the British, and their proceedings upon the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua, where they had set up a trumpery Indian king, and by virtue of a “treaty” with him assumed a protectorate over the region, were a cause of growing uneasiness at Washington. In pursuance of her age-long policy of insuring her domination of the seas by occupying strategic points giving control of great routes of navigation, Great Britain had with a cool disregard of our rights and interests seized upon vantage-ground in Central America that would make her mistress of interoceanic communication. Holding Greytown, she was in complete control of any Nicaraguan canal, for the only practicable route was that which would make Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan River a part of the canal. Thus, upon the one hand, our freedom of action in respect to a canal was hampered, and, upon the other, England, notwithstanding her many excuses and protestations to the contrary, was manifestly establishing a colony in Central America.
With a view to the removal of these sources of embarrassment and of difference between the two countries, Mr. Clayton, Secretary of State, pressed Great Britain to withdraw her pretensions to dominion over the Mosquito Coast. Her reply was a refusal, but an intimation was given that the British Government would be willing to enter into a treaty for a joint protectorate over the proposed canal. This was the germ of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, negotiated at Washington between Secretary of State Clayton and Sir Henry Bulwer, the British minister, and signed April 19, 1850. Article I of the treaty, here subjoined, is a declaratory and self-denying ordinance:
The Governments of the United States and Great Britain hereby declare that neither the one nor the other will ever obtain or maintain for itself any exclusive control over the said ship canal; agreeing that neither will ever erect or maintain any fortifications commanding the same or in the vicinity thereof, or occupy, or fortify, or colonize, or assume, or exercise any domain over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast, or any part of Central America; nor will either make use of any protection which either affords or may afford, or any alliance which either has or may have to or with any State or people, for the purpose of erecting or maintaining any such fortifications, or of occupying, fortifying, or colonizing Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast, or any part of Central America, or of assuming or exercising dominion over the same; nor will the United States or Great Britain take advantage of any intimacy, or use any alliance, connection, or influence that either may possess with any State or Government through whose territory the said canal may pass, for the purpose of acquiring or holding, directly or indirectly, for the citizens or subjects of the one, any rights or advantages in regard to commerce or navigation through the said canal which shall not be offered on the same terms to the citizens or subjects of the other.
These stipulations applied only to a canal route across Nicaragua in Central America, not to Panama. But we carried our spirit of complacent self-denial to a further and extraordinary length in article VIII. The first clause of that article is here quoted:
The Governments of the United States and Great Britain having not only desired, in entering into this convention, to accomplish a particular object, but also to establish a general principle, they hereby agree to extend their protection, by treaty stipulations, to any other practicable communications, whether by canal or railway, across the isthmus which connects North and South America, and especially to the interoceanic communications, should the same prove to be practicable, whether by canal or railway, which are now proposed to be established by the way of Tehuantepec or Panama.