160 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



Nicaragua's territorial integrity was guaranteed, and the 

 United States placed itself in the position of protector of 

 the smaller republic. 



It may readily be surmised that the ratification of this 

 treaty would certainly have reopened the Clayton-Bulwer 

 controversy. It would necessarily have provoked a contest 

 between the Monroe Doctrine and the treaty obligations of 

 the United States. The Senate, however, was unwilling to 

 incur the risk of such a debate, and a vote of thirty-two yeas 

 to twenty-three nays left the treaty unconfirmed. A recon- 

 sideration was then ordered, and the matter, still unsettled, 

 continued over into the Cleveland administration. 



The new Democratic President entered his office with 

 ideas on this question differing radically from those of his 

 predecessor, or rather from those of his last four predecessors. 

 In his first message of December 8, 1885, Mr. Cleveland 

 took occasion to make public these views. Referring to the 

 Frelinghuysen-Zavala treaty, which he had previously with- 

 drawn from the Senate, he said : 



My immediate predecessor caused to be negotiated with 

 Nicaragua a treaty for the construction, by and at the sole cost 

 of the United States, of a canal through Nicaragua territory, and 

 laid it before the Senate. Pending the action of that body 

 thereon, I withdrew the treaty for re-examination. Attentive 

 consideration of its provisions leads me to withhold it from 

 re-submission to the Senate. 



Maintaining, as I do, the tenets of a line of precedents from 

 Washington's day, which proscribe entangling alliances with 

 foreign States, I do not favor a policy of acquisition of new and 

 distant territory or the incorporation of remote interests with 

 our own. 



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I am unable to recommend propositions involving paramount 

 privileges of ownership or right outside of our own territory, 

 when coupled with absolute and unlimited engagements to defend 

 the territorial integrity of the State where such interests he. 

 While the general project of connecting the two oceans by means 

 of a canal is to be encouraged, I am of opinion that any scheme 

 to that end to be considered with favor should be free from the 

 features alluded to. . 



