repeated and
successive treaties renounced and relinquished all pretensions of her
own and recognized the full and sovereign rights of Spain in the most
unequivocal terms. Yet these pretensions, so without solid foundation
in the beginning and thus repeatedly abjured, were at a recent period
revived by Great Britain against the Central American States, the
legitimate successors to all the ancient jurisdiction of Spain in that
region. They were first applied only to a defined part of the coast of
Nicaragua, afterwards to the whole of its Atlantic coast, and lastly to
a part of the coast of Costa Rica, and they are now reasserted to this
extent notwithstanding engagements to the United States.

On the eastern coast of Nicaragua and Costa Rica the interference of
Great Britain, though exerted at one time in the form of military
occupation of the port of San Juan del Norte, then in the peaceful
possession of the appropriate authorities of the Central American
States, is now presented by her as the rightful exercise of a
protectorship over the Mosquito tribe of Indians.

But the establishment at the Balize, now reaching far beyond its
treaty limits into the State of Honduras, and that of the Bay Islands,
appertaining of right to the same State, are as distinctly colonial
governments as those of Jamaica or Canada, and therefore contrary to the
very letter, as well as the spirit, of the convention with the United
States as it was at the time of ratification and now is understood by
this Government.

The interpretation which the British Government thus, in assertion
and act, persists in ascribing to the convention entirely changes
its character. While it holds us to all our obligations, it in a
great measure releases Great Britain from those which constituted the
consideration of this Government for entering into the convention. It
is impossible, in my judgment, for the United States to acquiesce in
such a construction of the respective relations of the two Governments
to Central America.

To a renewed call by this Government upon Great Britain to abide by and
carry into effect the stipulations of the convention according to its
obvious import by withdrawing from the possession or colonization of
portions of the Central American States of Honduras, Nicaragua, and
Costa Rica, the British Government has at length replied, affirming that
the operation of the treaty is prospective only and did not require
Great Britain to aba