254 



REVIEW OF REVIEW'S. 



President Taft argued that the United 

 States was not meant to be included in 

 the phrase " all nations." The British 

 Government, through Sir Edward Gre}', 

 strongly dissented from this view. The 

 note went on to sa}- : — 



His Majesty's Government do not question the 

 right of the United States to grant subsidies to 

 United States shipping generally, or to any par- 

 ticular branches of that shipping, but it does 

 not follow, therefore, that the United States may 

 not be debarred by the Hay-Pauneefote treaty 

 from granting a subsidy to certain shipping in 

 a particular way, if the effect of the method 

 chosen for granting such subsidies would be to 

 impose upon British or other foreign shipping 

 an unfair share of the burden of the upkeep of 

 the canal, or to create a discrimination in re- 

 spect of the conditions or charges of traffic, or 

 otherwise to i)rejudic€ rights secured to British 

 shipping by this treaty. 



The American view of the trouble is 

 ably set forth by Dr. Albert Shaw, 

 in the American Revieiv of Reviews. 

 He says : — 



A CURIOUS DIPLOMATIC EPISODE. 



The first and also the second of the 

 Hay-Pauncefote treaties contained 

 stipulations that were quite preposter- 

 ous. \'\'e had alread)- proceeded ver\' 

 far with our plans for constructing a 

 canal, without the slight reference to the 

 so-called Clayton-Bulwer treaty of 

 1850. That treaty had never gone into 

 effect, and had been regarded b}- all 

 American authorities for more than a 

 generation as non-existent, except in the 

 historical sense. Nor had there been 

 any attempt on the part of Great Britain 

 to bring- that lapsed and extinct con- 

 vention into force. The British Govern- 

 ment had not questioned our right to 

 exercise full sovereignty over a strip of 

 territory which we might, as a Govern- 

 ment, acquire either in Nicaragua or on 

 the Isthmus of Panama. It remained 

 for a new x\merici\n Secretary of State, 

 as a matter of personal initiative, to re- 

 vive the old Clayton-Bulwer treaty and 

 project it across the path of our legisla- 

 tive programme as respects the canal. 

 We had negotiated for a canal zone in 

 Nicaragua, and were completing the pas- 

 sage of the Hepburn bill authorising the 

 construction of a canal. All this was 

 going forward with England's hearty 

 good wishes, and with the full under- 

 standing that no obstruction would 



come from an}' European sources, when 

 there suddenly appeared the first Hay- 

 Pauncefote treaty, ever\- line of which 

 was written by our own representative 

 This treaty assumed that we could not 

 construct this Government work ujion 

 our own soil without England's consent, 

 and that we ought not to ask such consent 

 unless we should renounce every special 

 benefit and advantage in the use of the 

 canal, and should also confer upon the 

 maritime jiowers of Euroi-ie its full poli- 

 tical and military control. 



OUR GRE.AT RENUNCIATION. 



Lord Pauncefote declared privalel) , 

 before his death, that neither he nor his 

 Government had ever thought of assert- 

 ing an\' such claims, and that the entire 

 instrument was a voluntary offering of 

 the American Secretar\- of Stale. There 

 is no explanation, except that truth is 

 stranger than fiction, and that in states 

 manship the most absurd things are 

 sometimes the things hardest to defeat. 

 The Senate supposed that Mr. Hay 'vas 

 engaged in a mere formality, and tliat 

 it had seemed to him a matter of polite- 

 ness to abrogate the Cla\'ton-Bulwer 

 treaty in writing, although American 

 Presidents and Secretaries of State had 

 repeated!)- declared that no such treaty 

 was in force. It was difficult to per- 

 suade the Senators to read the first Hay- 

 Pauncefote treaty. Naturally, when thev 

 discovered its contents the\- amended it 

 materially. There followed, after an 

 interval, the second Hay-Pauncefote 

 treaty. Mr. Hay was reluctant, but was 

 constrained to permit the United States 

 to exercise a certain measure of political 

 and militar)- control over the canal. He 

 was, however, still determined that as 

 respects all its jiractical uses, the other 

 maritime j^owers should have exactly 

 the same advantages as if the canal were 

 their own. 



NO REASON FOR ANY TREATY. 



It should have been obvious to 

 Senators that there was no reason for 

 discussing canal tolls at that time in a 

 treat)- with a foreign power. Nor had 

 there been any demand in England or 

 elsewhere for an expression of our in- 

 tentions regarding the charges we would 



