\L; ( 



THE INTEROCEANIC CANAL PROBLEM 123 



last, cannot be denied; yet the method employed by that 

 shrewd statesman, in all fairness to both sides, cannot be 

 characterized as dishonest. It was " clever " in so far as he 

 outwitted his antagonist by playing upon his fears and profit- 

 ing by his errors in judgment. Mr. Buchanan, then in 

 private life, wrote to a friend shortly before the conclusion 

 of the treaty, " If Sir Henry Bulwer can succeed in hav- 

 ing the first two provisions of this treaty ratified by the 

 Senate, he will deserve a British peerage." 



Outside the ranks of the administration's most stanch 

 supporters the treaty met with general condemnation. No 

 objection was raised against those provisions of the agree- 

 ment which called for international guarantee of the neu- 

 trality of the canal, but the fatal omissions in the instrument, 

 when detected, brought forth the severest criticism upon the 

 document, and on Mr. Clayton fell the accusations of a 

 cowardly weakness. "The Nicaragua treaty is even worse 

 than I had supposed," again wrote Buchanan in May, 1850. 



Buchanan's words were true and his criticism just. The 

 United States had pledged itself never to seek or exercise 

 exclusive control over any Central American canal, nor to 

 acquire any territory on the isthmus. Great Britain, on the 

 other hand, had received a recognition of her claims in 

 Honduras and all of its vaguely defined dependencies. 

 Without actual surrender of anything, England had really 

 secured an excellent footing for subsequent territorial ex- 

 pansion in Central America. 



Ill 



Aside from the misunderstandings under which the Clay- 

 ton-Bulwer treaty was concluded, both Sir Henry Bulwer 

 and Mr. Webster, the newly appointed Secretary of State 

 under President Fillmore, realized that the instrument was 

 imperfect, and, in many respects, far from satisfactory. 

 They accordingly entered upon negotiations looking to the 

 settlement of several important questions left open by 

 treaty. One of these questions was to determine the actual 



;ual 



