150 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



judging from the attitude of the commercial powers toward 

 the subject, that the other nations of Europe would have per- 

 mitted France to control the Panama Canal to their disad- 

 vantage. 



It is difficult to see, as contended by Mr. Blaine, wherein 

 the Clayton-Bulwer treaty gives promise of British capital 

 for the construction of the canal. English money had never 

 been solicited for the purpose. Mr. Webster, as Secretary of 

 State, two years after the ratification of the treaty, declared 

 that the necessary means could easily be obtained in this 

 country. There is no evidence to show that the United 

 States ever expected to draw upon English sources for a 

 proportion of the funds necessary for the building of the 

 canal. 



Lord Granville replied in two despatches, dated January 

 7 and 14, 1882. At the outset, he arraigned the principles 

 upon which Mr. Blaine had founded his arguments as 

 "novel in international law." Denying the charge of 

 Great Britain's control of the Suez route, he hastened 

 "cordially [to] concur in what is stated by Mr. Blaine as 

 regards the unexampled development of the United States on 

 the Pacific coast . . . but Her Majesty's Government can- 

 not look upon it in the light of an unexpected event, or 

 suppose that it was not within the view of the statesmen'who 

 were parties on either side of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. 

 The declarations of President Monroe and of his cabinet in 

 1823 and 1824 . . . show at least . . . twenty-six years 

 anterior to the treaty . . . there was a clear prevision of the 

 great future reserved to the Pacific coast. It is ... an 

 inadmissible contention that the regular and successful oper- 

 ation of causes so evident at the time . . . should be held to 

 have completely altered the condition of affairs to the extent 

 of vitiating the foundations of an agreement which cannot be 

 supposed to have been concluded without careful thought and 

 deliberation." Great Britain, as well as the United States, 

 has important interests connected with the waterway between 

 ,the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Such a canal, he urged, " is 

 |a work which concerns not merely the United' States or the 



