Never for a day after President Cleveland’s Venezuela message would the American people have been in a mood to sanction any canal undertaking under these vexatious and impossible conditions. We were quite done with the idea of a joint protectorate over an isthmian canal. The resolve had been taken to build a canal, and the conclusion reached that it must be a canal of our own construction and under our exclusive control.
Most fortunately, we found the Government of Great Britain in an assenting mood. Indeed, the contrast between the rasping quality of Lord Salisbury’s notes declining arbitration of the Venezuela boundary dispute and the candid, placable tone of Lord Lansdowne’s correspondence in the negotiations that led to the superseding of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty by the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty silenced, if it did not shame, those half-hearted Americans who had denounced Mr. Cleveland’s memorable message of December 17 as “the crime of the century” and a menace to the friendly relations between ourselves and our kinsmen of England. Following President McKinley’s message of December, 1898, in which he pointed out that the prospective expansion of American commerce and influence in the Pacific called more imperatively than ever for the control of the projected canal by the United States, Lord Pauncefote was instructed to acquaint himself with our attitude. He was informed that we desired at once to enter upon the necessary pourparlers, with a view to such modifications of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty as would remove all obstacles to our construction of the canal, which it was evident would not be undertaken by private capital. To this her Majesty’s Government assented, and a draft of the proposed convention was handed to Lord Pauncefote by Secretary Hay on January 11, 1899. This convention her Majesty’s Government, after due consideration, “accepted unconditionally as a signal proof,” said Lord Lansdowne, “of their friendly disposition and of their desire not to impede the execution of a project declared to be of National importance to the people of the United States.”
This was the first form of the Hay-Pauncefote convention, signed at Washington in February, 1900. Consideration by the Senate followed, but it was not ratified until December 20 of that year, and then with three amendments which proved to be unacceptable to Great Britain. As to the first of these amendments, declaring the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty to be “hereby superseded,” Lord Lansdowne, in his memorandum of August 3, 1901, objected that no attempt had been made to ascertain the views of his Government upon the entire abrogation of the former treaty, which dealt with several matters for which no provision had been made in the new instrument; and with rather startling frankness he pointed out that if the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty were wholly abrogated, “both Powers would, except in the vicinity of the canal, recover entire freedom of action in Central America, a change which might be of substantial importance.” That was enough to make the Senate open its eyes, for it was not exactly the purpose of our Government to confer upon Great Britain entire freedom of action in Central America.
The statesmanship and the diplomacy of John Hay found a way to reconcile these divergences and bring the negotiations to a successful end. He submitted a new draft of the treaty, providing by a separate article that the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty should be superseded, a method of accomplishing that important object more acceptable to Great Britain than procedure by Senate amendment. Lord Lansdowne’s comment upon this article of the draft was that “the purpose to abrogate the Clayton-Bulwer convention is not, I think, inadmissible if it can be shown that sufficient provision is made in the new treaty for such portions of the convention as ought, in the interests of this country, to remain in force.” The victory for American control and for the Monroe Doctrine was won. From that point the negotiations proceeded smoothly. Lord Lansdowne suggested the article, accepted by Secretary Hay, providing that the general principle of the treaty should not be affected by any change of sovereignty over the territory traversed by the canal. The question of our right to take measures for the defense of the canal presented no great difficulty.
To the first of the rules for the neutralization of the canal, as it appeared in Mr. Hay’s draft, Lord Lansdowne suggested an amendment which served to bring into the clear light of day both our purpose to secure exclusively American control over the canal, and Great Britain’s willingness to consent thereto. After the words “the canal shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce and of war of all nations,” his lordship proposed to add, “which shall agree to observe these rules,” and further on the words “so agreeing” after the clause declaring that there should be “no discrimination against any nation,” and so forth. To this, Mr. Hay informed him, there would be opposition “because of the strong objection to inviting other Powers to become contract parties to a treaty affecting the canal”; and he suggested as a substitute for Lord Lansdowne’s amendment “the canal shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce and of war of all nations observing these rules,” and instead of “any nations so agreeing” the words “any such nation.” The difference was vital, for all connotation of inviting formal agreements with other nations disappeared. Lord Lansdowne at once accepted this form of the amendment, which he wrote “seemed to us equally efficacious for the purpose which we had in view, namely, to insure that Great Britain should not be placed in a less advantageous position than other Powers, while they stopped short of conferring upon other nations a contractual right to the use of the canal.”
The minds of the two governments had now met. The amendments proposed on each site, with the modifications noted, were agreed upon. The treaty was reduced to final form, engrossed for signature, and on November 19, 1901, Lord Pauncefote had the honor to inform the Marquis of Lansdowne that on the preceding day he had visited the State Department and had “signed the new treaty for the construction of an interoceanic canal.” The Senate ratified the treaty on December 16 following.
Venezuela had opened the way for Panama. The hand withdrawn from broad areas east of the Orinoco had relinquished its lawful rights under the canal partnership, and in both cases at our instance. In the one, Lord Salisbury’s noble British contempt of our demands and our doctrine forced us into an unaccustomed attitude of firmness. In the other, the Marquis of Lansdowne’s open-minded, amicable, and statesmanlike disposition favored our interest, and left us free to give to the commerce of the world a channel of communication that had been the dream of centuries. We had expressly set up the principle of the Monroe Doctrine as the warrant of our interference for the protection of Venezuela, and Great Britain gave heed by submitting to impartial examination titles she had insisted upon enforcing as though they were beyond dispute. Ill-judged concessions contrary to the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine, made in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, we recalled by a substitute agreement with Great Britain which left us with a free hand for the construction and control of the canal as an exclusively American work. The vitality, the continuing and constant applicability, of the Monroe Doctrine at every stage of our National existence, as Mr. Cleveland put it, could hardly be more conclusively demonstrated than by the record of the American Government’s part in bringing about the agreement to arbitrate the Venezuela boundary dispute, and in replacing the outworn Clayton-Bulwer convention by the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty.
[7] THE CENTURY MAGAZINE, July, 1901.
“THE OREGON MUDDLE”
A CURIOUS PHASE OF THE HAYES-TILDEN CONTROVERSY