In Senate, April 22, 1850.
The following message from the President of the United States was received, read, and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations, and ordered to be printed in confidence for the use of the Senate:
I herewith transmit to the Senate, for their advice with regard to its ratification, a Convention between the United States and Great Britain, concluded at Washington on the 19th instant, by John M. Clayton, Secretary of State, on the part of the United States, and by the Right Honourable Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, on the part of Great Britain.
This Treaty has been negotiated in accordance with the general views expressed in my message to Congress in December last. Its object is to establish a commercial alliance with all great maritime States for the protection of a contemplated Ship-Canal, through the territory of Nicaragua, to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and, at the same time, to insure the same protection to the contemplated railways or canals by the Tehuantepec and Panama routes, as well as to every other interoceanic communication which may be adopted to shorten the transit to or from our territories on the Pacific.
It will be seen that this Treaty does not propose to take money from the public treasury to effect any object contemplated by it. It yields protection to capitalists who may undertake to construct any canal or railway across the isthmus, commencing in the southern part of Mexico, and terminating in the territory of New Granada. It gives no preference to any one route over another, but proposes the same measure of protection for all which ingenuity and enterprise can construct. Should this Treaty be ratified, it will secure in future the liberation of all Central America from any kind of foreign aggression.
At the time negotiations were opened with Nicaragua for the construction of a canal through her territory, I found Great Britain in possession of nearly half of Central America,
