The President did not hesitate, therefore, in his message to Congress, to refer to these overtures as having recently been made by the British Government in a friendly spirit, which he cordially reciprocated. He could do no more than this, whatever might be his hopes for the success of Sir William's mission, until he had received the further explanations concerning it which he had been led to expect, and which he was prepared to consider in the kindest and most respectful manner. The general remarks contained in the outline of November 30 must have been molded into some specific form, in order to enable this government to arrive at a practical decision upon the questions presented to it. This I understood to be the view of your lordship and Sir William Ouseley, as well as that of the President and this Department. Indeed, it was wholly in conformity with this view that Sir William Ouseley was understood to have called at Washington on his way to Central America. Had he proceeded directly to his destination, and there, by separate treaties with the Central American republics, given substantial effect to the Clayton-Bulwer convention, according to the general tenor of the American construction of that instrument, the Central American controversy would then have been fortunately terminated to the satisfaction of both governments. But since this government, in a spirit of comity, which the President fully appreciates, was asked to co-operate in accomplishing this result, it was surely not unreasonable that it should know specifically the arrangements which it was expected to sanction.

The general objects in view, we were acquainted with and approved, but there was no draft of a treaty, no form of separate article, no definition of measures. The Bay Islands were to be surrendered, but under what restrictions? The Dallas-Clarendon treaty was to be modified, but what were the modifications? The rights of British subjects and the interests of British trade were to be protected in Ruatan, but to what extent and by what conditions? Honduras was to participate more largely in the government of the Bay Islands than she was allowed to do by the convention of 1856, but how far was she to be restrained and what was to be her power?

These and other similar questions naturally arose upon the general overtures contained in your lordship's note of November 30, and seemed naturally enough to justify the hope which was entertained of some further explanation of these overtures. In all my conversations with your lordship on the subject of Sir William's mission, subsequent to the meeting of Congress, this expectation of some further and more definite communication concerning it was certainly taken for granted, and until time was given to receive such a communication, you did not press for any answer to your lordship's note of November 30. In the beginning your lordship seemed to think that some embarrassment or delay in prosecuting the mission might be occasioned by the expedition to Nicaragua which had been undertaken by General Walker, and by the Cass-Yrisarri treaty which had been negotiated with that republic by the United States; but the treaty was not disapproved by Her Majesty's Government and the expedition of Walker was promptly repressed, so that no embarrassment from these sources could be further apprehended. As the delay still continued, it was suggested by your lordship, and fully appreciated by me, that Her Majesty's Government was necessarily occupied with the affairs of Her Majesty's possessions in India, which then claimed its immediate attention to the exclusion naturally of business which was less pressing, and hence I awaited the expected instructions without any anxiety whatever. All this is precisely what your lordship very frankly describes in your lordship's communication to this

Department of April 12, 1858. "I addressed my government," your lordship says, "with a view to obtaining further explanations and instructions, and I informed you that it was not my desire to press for an official reply to the overtures of the Earl of Clarendon pending an answer from Loudon."

The explanations, however, anticipated by your lordship and by myself were not received, and about three months after the arrival of Sir William at Washington you expressed to me your regret that you had held out expectations which proved unfounded and which had prompted delay, and then for the first time requested an answer to the proposals of Her Majesty's Government, and "especially to that part of them relating to arbitration." It was even then suggested that the answer was desired because it was thought to beappropriate as a matter of form and not because the explanations which had been waited for were deemed wholly unnecessary. "I overlooked something due to forms," is your lordship's language in the note of April 12, "in my anxiety to promote a clearer understanding, and I eventually learned in an official shape that Her Majesty's Government, following their better judgment, desired, before making any further communication, a reply to their overtures, and especially to that part of them referring to arbitration. Should the new proffer of arbitration be declined, it was clearly not supposed in your note of February 15 that this result would have any tendency to interrupt Sir William's efforts; but in that event it was hoped," you informed me, that these efforts "would result in a settlement agreeable to the United States, inasmuch as in essential points it would carry the treaty of 1850 into operation in a manner practically conformable to the American interpretation of that instrument."

On the 6th of April I replied to your lordship's note of February 15, with a very frank and full statement of the views of this government upon all the points to which your lordship had referred. The renewed offer of arbitration mentioned in a dispatch of Lord Clarendon was explicitly declined for the same reasons which had occasioned its rejection before, but an earnest hope was expressed for the success of Sir William Ouseley's mission, and I was instructed formally to request from your lordship those further explanations concerning it, which had been promised in Lord Clarendon's note of November 20, for which both your lordship and myself had waited for three months in vain, and which, up to this time, have never been furnished to the American Government. The disappointment which the President felt at some portions of the correspondence which had occurred, and especially at the failure of Her Majesty's Government to inform him more fully than it had done, on the subject of the mission, was communicated to your lordship without the least reserve, but in the purposes of that mission, so far as he understood them, I was authorized to say that he fully concurred, and to add his sincere hope that they might be successfully accomplished.

"The President," I informed you, "has expressed his entire concurrence in the proposal for an adjustment of the Central American questions, which was made to him by your lordship last October, and he does not wish that any delay or defeat of that adjustment shall be justly chargeable to this government. Since, however, he is asked to co-operate in the arrangement by which it is expected to accomplish it, it is essential that he should know with reasonable accuracy what those arrangements are." It was in the hope of this adjustment, as well as with a view to the serious consequences which might flow from a naked repeal of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, that I made the observations on that subject which are contained in my letter to your lordship of April 6. No de

mand for this abrogation, your lordship is well aware, had then been made by Her Majesty's Government; but your lordship had several times suggested to me that such an alternative, if proposed by the United States, would be respectfully considered by Great Britain, and in your lordship's belief might in some form or other be finally adopted. You informed me, however, at the same time that in that event Great Britain would not be inclined to surrender its possessions in Central America, and would certainly continue to occupy the Bay Islands. In reply to this announcement, I informed your lordship that since it is well known that the views of this government are wholly inconsistent with these pretensions, and that it can never willingly acquiesce in their maintenance by Great Britain, your lordship will readily perceive what serious consequences might follow a dissolution of the treaty, if no provision should be made at the same time for adjusting the questions which led to it.

"If, therefore," I added, "the President does not hasten to consider now the alternative of repealing the treaty of 1850, it is because he does not wish to anticipate the failure of Sir William Ouseley's mission, and is disposed to give a new proof to Her Majesty's Government of his sincere desire to preserve the amicable relations which now happily subsist between the two countries."

Having thus complied with your lordship's request, and given that formal reply to the overtures embraced in Sir William Ouseley's mission which was desired by Her Majesty's Government, I confidently expected to receive within a reasonable time these additional instructions which appeared to have been delayed for this reply. Such, doubtless, was the hope, also, of your lordship. "The discussion has been deferred," you informed me in your note of April 12, "but the interests at stake have probably not suffered." The results of the negotiation between Nicaragua and the United States are not yet disclosed, and it is probable that Sir William Ouseley may proceed to his destination with more advantage when the nature of those engagements is fully defined.” “If the American Cabinet," you also said, "as may be inferred from your expressions, be well disposed toward Sir William Ouseley's mission, and will meet her Majesty's Government in a liberal spirit on matters of secondary moment, that mission may still conduct us to a happy termination." In further informing me that my communication would be transmitted to Her Majesty's Government, you added, "It remains with Her Majesty's Government to determine whether they can afford the more perfect information desired."

This was the state of the negotiation in April, 1858. The purposes of Sir William Ouseley's mission had been announced to the American Government and approved; reference had been made by Lord Clarendon to your lordship and Sir William Ouseley for further explanations; these explanations had been asked for from your lordship in repeated interviews, but your lordship had not received the necessary instructions to make them until a reply had been received to the general overtures embraced in your previous notes, and especially to that part of them relating to arbitration; this reply had been given, still approving the mission and rejecting the arbitration; and it had been sent to London for the consideration of Her Majesty's Government.

Under these circumstances, I need not describe to your lordship the surprise with which I received the copy of Lord Malmesbury's dispatch to your lordship, dated at Potsdam, August 18, which you were good enough to inclose to me. In this dispatch, instead of affording any more exact definition of the objects of Sir William Ouseley's mission, your

lordship is directed to inform me that Her Majesty's Government "have, in fact, nothing to add to the explanations given by Sir William and your lordship upon the subject." As no explanations whatever had been received from either Sir William or yourself since the communication of November 30, it is obvious that his lordship must labor under some misapprehension on this subject; and equally clear is it that when his lordship represents me as having declared in my note of the 6th of April that the Government of the United States could not agree to the abrogation of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, that he has failed to appreciate fully the views of the United States in reference to that abrogation. The declaration in my note of April 6 was certainly not against any abrogation of the treaty, but against considering the expediency of abrogating it at that particular time, and until hopes were at an end for a successful termination of Sir William Ouseley's mission. This waiver of a discussion on the subject of abrogation, in deference to the purposes of that mission, indicated very clearly, it seems to me, how much was expected by this government from Sir William Ouseley's mission. Yet even these efforts Lord Malmesbury seems to regard as having been rejected by the United States, and Her Majesty's Government, he concludes, have no alternative but that of leaving to the Cabinet of Washington to originate any further overtures for an adjustment of these controversies.

Surely, my lord, there must be some grave misapprehension in all this of the views entertained and expressed by this government upon the proposals embraced in your lordship's note of November 30, or else this government has labored under an equally serious error as to what was intended by Sir William Ouseley's mission. It is under this impression, and in order to prevent two great nations from failing in their attempts to adjust an important controversy from a mere question of form, or a mere misunderstanding of each other's views, that I have entered into this extended narrative. It is of no small consequence, either to the United States or Great Britain, that these Central American controversies between the two countries should be forever closed. On some points of them, and I have been led to hope on the general policy which ought to apply to the whole Isthmian region, they have reached a commond ground of agreement.

The neutrality of the interoceanic routes and their freedom from the superior and controlling influence of any one government, the principles upon which the Mosquito protectorate may be arranged, with justice alike to the sovereignty of Nicaragua and the Indian tribes, the surrender of the Bay Islands under certain stipulations for the benefit of trade and the protection of their British occupants, and the definition of the boundaries of the British Belize-about all these points there is no apparent disagreement except as to the conditions which shall be annexed to the Bay Islands' surrender, and as to the limits which shall be fixed to the settlements of the Belize. Is it possible that, if ap proached in a spirit of conciliation and good feeling, these two points of difference are not susceptible of a friendly adjustment? To believe this would be to underestimate the importance of the adjustment, and the intelligent appreciation of this importance which must be entertained by both nations.

What the United States want in Central America, next to the happiness of its people, is the security and neutrality of the interoceanic routes which lead through it. This is equally the desire of Great Britain, of France, and of the whole commercial world. If the principles and policy of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty are carried into effect, this obS. Ex. 194-10

ject is accomplished. When, therefore, Lord Malmesbury invites new overtures from this government upon the idea that it has rejected the proposal embraced in Sir William Ouseley's mission for an adjustment of the Central American questions by separate treaties with Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, upon terms substantially according with the general tenor of the American interpretation of the treaty, I have to reply that this very adjustment is all that the President ever desired, and that instead of having rejected that proposal he had expressed his cordial acceptance of it so far as he understood it, and had anticipated from it the most gratifying consequences.

Nothing now remains for me but to inquire of your lordship whether the overtures contained in your lordship's note of November 30, are to be considered as withdrawn by Her Majesty's Government, or whether the good results expected in the beginning from Sir William Ouseley's mission may not yet be happily accomplished.

I have, &c.,

LEWIS CASS.

58.-Lord Malmesbury to Lord Napier.

[Extract.]

FOREIGN OFFICE, December 8, 1858.

MY LORD: I have to inform your lordship that Her Majesty's Government have received with lively satisfaction the note which General Cass addressed to your lordship on the 8th of November. The friendly tone in which it is written, and the high appreciation which it displays of the importance of terminating the irritating discussions in which both our countries have been so long involved, cannot but tend to render that termination near at hand and permanent.

I feel it to be a duty to do justice to the accuracy with which General Cass has recapitulated the circumstances under which the controversy has been sustained, and the efforts hitherto employed to settle it have failed.

*

*

I am, &c.,

MALMESBURY.

59.-Convention between Great Britain and Guatemala. Signed at Guatemala April 30, 1859.

Whereas the boundary between Her Britannic Majesty's settlement and possessions in the Bay of Honduras and the territories of the Republic of Guatemala has not yet been ascertained and marked out; Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Republic of Guatemala, being desirous, with a view to improve and perpetuate the friendly relations which happily subsist between the two countries, to define the boundary aforesaid have resolved to conclude a convention for that purpose, and have named as their plenipotentiaries, that is to say:

Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Charles Lennox Wyke, esquire, Her Britannic Majesty's chargé d'affaires to the Republic of Guatemala, and his excellency the Presi dent of the Republic of Guatemala, Don Pedro de Aycinena, councillor of state and minister for foreign affairs;