188 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



dent Grant, who first favored exclusiveness on the isthmus, has 

 indorsed these broad theories favoring the international charac- 

 ter of ship canals. Since the Grant administration, President 

 Cleveland and President McKinley have also supported this 

 traditional American policy. During that period of heated 

 controversy over the Clayton-Bulwer treaty from 1850 to 1860, 

 it was not the object of the United States to obtain exclusive 

 proprietary rights in the canal. On the contrary, it was to 

 the maintenance of the neutrality of the proposed route that 

 American argument was wholly directed. From 1860 to 

 1880 the only concern manifested in respect to isthmian 

 matters was lest Great Britain should violate her agreements 

 by acquiring Central American territory, thereby threatening 

 the neutrality of the route, and lest France might insist upon 

 monopoly of control at Panama. 



A glance at the history of the interoceanic transit problem 

 in Central America reveals the fact that all nations interested 

 in its solution, including the United States and the Central 

 American states themselves, have invariably insisted upon the 

 strict neutrality of any Central American canal. This con- 

 dition has at all times been demanded. In its treaties bear- 

 ing upon this subject the United States has fully recognized 

 this principle ; and in its diplomatic correspondence relating 

 thereto, it has so frequently reaffirmed these views that no 

 confusion or doubt can exist as to its position. This is finally 

 set forth in three canal treaties now in force; the Clayton- 

 Bulwer treaty with England, the Dickinson-Ayers treaty 

 with Nicaragua, and the treaty with Colombia of 1846. All 

 previous United States treaties and all preliminary drafts of 

 treaties with Central American states concerning a canal, kept 

 in view this principle of neutrality. In the Colombia treaty 

 the United States, by its <Z5th article, " guarantees positively 

 and efficaciously to New Granada, by the present stipulation, 

 the perfect neutrality of the before-mentioned isthmus, with 

 the view that the free transit from one to the other sea may 

 not be interrupted or embarrassed in any future time while 

 this treaty exists." 



The Dickinson-Ayers treaty with Nicaragua (1867) in its 



