110 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



daries of the Mosquito kingdom, its domain had been con- 

 siderably enlarged. The extent and character of the Hise 

 treaty (though never ratified by the United States) had 

 become known to England just before this time, but fortu- 

 nately the subtle forces of diplomacy had already been utilized 

 to avert an armed conflict, which the publication of the Hise 

 treaty would certainly have precipitated ; suddenly the news 

 of the Tigre Island incident came to intensify the existing 

 excitement in the United States. 



In 1850 the American people had just come to a realizing 

 sense of the fact that Great Britain and the United States 

 were rivals for a controlling influence in Central America. 

 The United States had occupied itself in reclaiming its vast 

 domains and in creating new states in the wilderness which 

 lay beyond the Mississippi ; without thought of the effect 

 upon the world at large, or a care for the " balance of power " 

 in the Americas, territorial expansion westward had steadily 

 continued. Texas was absorbed into the Union, and Cali- 

 fornia, an empire in itself, was added to the growing body of 

 the nation. Oregon and Washington were definitely marked 

 out, and a lasting check was thereby placed upon British 

 hopes of further expansion on the Pacific coast. Contact 

 with the western ocean awakened thoughts of Oriental com- 

 merce, and here, for the first time, the influences were felt 

 that had been operating to draw apart the two great powers, 

 and that had made them rivals in Central America. Great 

 Britain enjoyed monopoly of Indian and Asiatic trade, and 

 when once that source of her commercial vitality was jeopard- 

 ized, her disfavor and enmity were aroused. 



The success of American arms in Mexico had in a measure 

 intoxicated the people, and every advance in territorial gain 

 seemed more than ever to prove the truth in those early 

 prophecies that " a manifest destiny " would eventually place 

 the whole continent under the American flag. This eager- 

 ness for territorial aggrandizement was no more than the 

 outcome of a race between the North and South for exten- 

 sion of the slaveholding and free-soil area of the United 

 States; but British statesmen saw in this mania for expan- 



