Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1880-04-17
INTER- OCEANIC CANAL.
Report of the House Committee on Foreign
Affairs--History of the Clayton-Bulwer
Treaty and Why It Should be Abrogated.

Report OF the House Committee on Foreign
Affairs--History of the Clayton-Bulwer
Treaty and Why It Should be Abrogated.
WASHINGTON, April 16.-Representative Cox,
in his report from the committee on foreign
affairs relative to the inter.ocean canal and
Monroe doctrine, quotes at length from the
Presidents message upon the subject of March
9Th, 1850, and severely arraiRns the policy of
Clayton in seeking to induce Great Britain to
abandon her own unfounded claim upon
the territory of an independent
Spanish American State, and inviting her to
share with us the duty and privilege, peculiarly
our own, of protecting an inter Oceanic COM
munication of infinite interest and concern to
this country. Having blundered thus at the
outset, the report says, he went into tho most
complicated and ill arranged series of transac-
tions, the final outcome of which was a treaty
with Great Britain, April 10, 1850, known as
the Clayton-Bul treaty.
The report continues: Fortunately for the
country the Clayton-Bulwer treaty had scarcely
come into operation before it's Fundamental
provisions were violated by Great Britain by
the firing upon the American steamer Prone
theus, November 81, 1850, while she was goi ng
out of the port of San Juan de Nicaragua by
the English brig of war Express, then lying in
that port to enforce a British domin-
ion OF that part of Nicaragua.
Other similar infringements followed,
the most conspicuous of these, being the de-
iberate establishment by Great Britain on the
18th OF July, 1852, of new colony in Central
America, off the coast of Honduras under the
name of the Bay Islands, by and on account of
which Mr.. Cass, in the Senate in January,
1858, declared the treaty to have been virtually
nullifed by Great Britain.
The report then details the negotiations and
controversies between this government and
Great Britain growing out of these occurrences,
and the Intellectual efforts to effectuate new
treaty, coming down to 1860, and con-
tinues: The outbreak soon after this of our
unhappy domestic troubles and great
civil war, diverted public attention from Cen
trail American questions, and the i'll advised
Clayton-Bulwer treaty was gradually suffered
on both sides to lapse into an oblivion from
which it has but recently been evoked by per-
sons disposed to contrOvert the policy and pur-
pose of the United States with regard to any
protectorate of life and property over any part
of the Central American States on the Isthmus.
The circumstances in which this treaty was
originally negotiated have been pro-
foundry modified by the lapse
of thirty years and it appears
TO your committee to be entirely clear that as
an obstacle and possible peril in the way of
complete and pacific assertion of the sound.
down in the Presidents message of March 9Th,
1880, this treaty should now be finally and
formally abrogated. 1t has been shown to
have led only to great misunderstanding
and controversies with the power with
which we were unwisely led to
make it. 1t has always been equally in
operative. either to guarantee the independence
of the Central American States or to advance
the general interests of commerce. So long as
it has even a formal shadow of existence it
cannot but tend to cloud and obscure the SIM
pie, just and equitable policy of the United
States in regard to inter-oceanic transit. Your
committee therefore recommend the passage of
the following joint resolution
RESOLVED, By the Senate and House of Repre-
sentatives assembled, that the President of the
United States be and he is hereby respectfully
requested, if the same in his opinion be uot in
compatible with public interest, to take imme-
diate Steps for formal and final abrogation of
the convention of April 10, 1850, between the
United States and her Britsnic majesty, COM
monty called the ''ship canal treaty." or "Clay-
ton Bulwer treaty."