146 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



in a general European war would, in all probability, annul 

 the treaty of neutrality, and the strategic position of the 

 canal, commanding both oceans might be held by the first 

 naval power that could seize it." This would likely embroil 

 the United States in foreign wars. 



7. The United States is less likely to be engaged in 

 foreign wars than are the European powers. Therefore to 

 her should be entrusted the care of the canal. 



8. Other powers are extending their Central American trade, 

 while France is building a canal. The Clayton-Bulwer treaty 

 leaves the United States powerless to assert her just rights on 

 the isthmus, while these other powers are free to control the 

 situation. 



9. " One of the motives that originally induced this gov- 

 ernment to assent to the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, not distinctly 

 expressed in the instrument, but inferable from every line of 

 it, was the expected aid of British capital in the construction of 

 the Nicaraguan Canal. That expectation has not been real- 

 ized, and the changed condition of this country since 1850 

 has diminished, if it has not entirely removed from consider- 

 ation, any advantage to be derived from that source." 



Therefore the United States asks that "every part of the 

 treaty which forbids the United States fortffying the canal 

 and holding the political control of it in conjunction with 

 the country in which it is located should be cancelled ; " that 

 "every part of the treaty in which Great Britain and the 

 United States agree to make no acquisition of territory in 

 Central America should remain in full force ; " and that a 

 neutral zone about each terminus of the canal, of liberal 

 extent, should be preserved by agreement of the great powers 

 of the world. 



Ten days later, Mr. Blaine despatched another letter to Mr. 

 Lowell, upon the same subject. The argument of u Tempora 

 mutantur" was further elaborated. Mr. Blaine did not hold 

 the Clayton-Bulwer treaty to be a void, but rather a voidable, 

 instrument ; it had always been a cause of friction between 

 the two governments, a compact "misunderstandingly entered 

 into, imperfectly comprehended, contradictorily interpreted, 



