112 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



mercial enterprise belonged rather to a state of peace than 

 to a state of war, and perhaps already realizing, above and 

 beyond the excitement and passions of the moment, that an 



Iinteroceanic canal should be as free as the high seas them- 

 selves, he proceeded to open the way with the English Min- 

 ister at Washington toward the negotiation of a treaty, which 

 would not only be the means of preventing an immediate war, 

 but which would also outline those practical and conserva- 

 tive suggestions which he believed it would be necessary to 

 adopt to insure the completion of this great work. 



The conclusion most earnestly sought was to induce Eng- 

 land to withdraw from Greytown, for in that occupancy the 

 Secretary saw the certainty of armed conflict. On this point 

 it was known that American sentiment was fixed and irre- 

 versible. In return for such a concession, however, Mr. 

 Clayton was willing to share with England in the political 

 control and use of the canal, for he saw no reason why any 

 one country should enjoy exclusive rights and privileges in 

 what was designed to be an international highway, which, to 

 be profitable and to subserve the purposes of its creation, 

 must be always open and always neutral. In this spirit of 

 friendship, and desirous of making the canal a " bond of in- 

 terest and peace " between the two nations, rather than a 

 "subject for jealousy," he approached Mr. Crampton, the 

 British Minister in Washington, and invited his cooperation 

 in considering the terms of a treaty that would harmonize 

 British and American interests. 



The danger in the situation was two-fold ; first^England 

 had seized new territory upon the A-merican continent in 

 open defiance of the "Monroe Doctrine," which, .in itself, 

 might be considered by Congress as a casus belli ; and, sec- 

 ondly, the territory so seized was the country about the 

 mouth of the San Juan River, which, of course, meant noth- 

 ing less forbidding than English ownership of the Atlantic 

 entrance to the proposed canal, a condition of affairs mani- 

 festly intolerable to the United States. 



To induce England to yield all her rights in Nicaragua 

 would have been a most desirable consummation, but to oust 



