o the present, it has been a
fertile source of discord and misunderstanding between the two
governments; and from 1850 to 1858 its provisions were thrice made the
basis of a proposal to arbitrate as to their meaning: their modification
and abrogation have been alike contingently considered, and their
imperfect and vexatious character have been repeatedly recognized on
both sides. Even the present administration is laboring with the
difficulty, and seeking some honorable way to free the treaty from its
embarrassing features, or entirely abrogate it. President Buchanan, in
1858, characterized and denounced the treaty as "one which had been
fraught with misunderstanding and mischief from the beginning;" and the
leading statesmen of the country have felt that it was entirely
inadequate to reconcile the opposite views of Great Britain and the
United States towards Central America.

The Honorable James G. Blaine, late Secretary of State under the
lamented Garfield, in his diplomatic correspondence with Lord Granville,
in 1881, in summing up his review of the negotiations concerning this
treaty, says: "It was frankly admitted on both sides that the
engagements of the treaty were misunderstandingly entered into,
improperly comprehended, contradictorily interpreted, and mutually
vexatious."

An examination of the diplomatic correspondence and the Congressional
Records of the years 1852-3-4 reveals what may perhaps be unknown
history to many of my readers; that Great Britain within one year after
she signed and ratified the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, and agreed therein
NOT "to colonize, fortify, or exercise control over, any part of Central
America," did seize upon, colonize and partially fortify and exercise
control over the five islands in the Bay of Honduras, called the Bay
Islands; and that she did this in derogation of the declarations of the
"Monroe Doctrine," and in direct violation and contempt of the Treaty,
which she had so recently entered into; that this same national
cormorant immediately surveyed and made a new geographical plan of
Central America, in which she extended her province of Balize from the
river Hondo, on the north, to the river Sarstoon on the south, and from
the coast of the bay westward to the falls of Garbutts on the river
Balize; or five times its original size; and then modestly claimed that
her possessions were not in Central America, and therefore not within
the provisions of the Clayton-Bulwer Tre