Travis : History of the Clayton-Biikuer Treaty 1 5 1 exclusively American control represented a later conception of policy ; but that the enduring interests of the United States and of the world at large may be best preserved by an open and neutral transit, which it was the great design of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty to assure. In his discussion of the development of American policy with refer- ence to Central America, the author, in our opinion, hardly does justice to the administration of President Polk. He states (p. 44) that when the Nicaraguan Secretary of State, in November 1848, sent to Washing- ton an account of the British aggressions then taking place, Mr. Buchanan " did not even take the trouble to reply to it "; and that when the Su- preme Director of Nicaragua sent "a direct and pathetic entreaty to President Polk," he was "no more fortunate than his Secretary of State had been in securing the assistance of the United States. " These ex- pressions scarcely represent the real situation, which is disclosed by the author himself further on (p. 58), where he shows that the administration had already sent Mr. Hise, as charge d'affaires, to Central America with instructions which really laid the foundation of our later policy in that region. Mr. Hise was instructed not only to negotiate treaties with the Central American states, but also to use his influence to induce them to form a union, with a view to resist foreign aggression. He was also charged fully to investigate the British encroachments on the Mosquito Shore, and with this direction there was coupled the distinct intimation that the United States would not acquiesce in them. The administration was anything but uninterested and negligent in regard to the interoceanic route through Central America ; and only three years previously it had made the treaty with New Granada in relation to the Isthmus of Panama. The least felicitous chapter in the volume is that entitled " Contem- porary Conditions," namely, the conditions under which the Clayton- Bulwer treaty was negotiated. These are set forth very fully, but with a frequency of repetition that underestimates the reader's memory for words as well as for matter. It is stated, for example, in immediate succession, that the slavery agitation in the United States had become so heated that "it gave color to nearly all our political discussions " and exercised an influence on our "foreign policy" (p. 86); that the feeling was so in- tense that "talk of disunion was freely indulged in by the more radical elements of both parties," the "danger of disunion and civil war" be- ing "so imminent" that there was a general acquiescence in the Com- promise of 1850 (p. 87); and that the domestic affairs of the country were " in a most critical state," the " agitation of the slavery ijuestion " having "taken on a sectional character and become so bitter as to threaten the dissolution of the Union " (p. 87). Other examples might readily be produced. Sometimes they seem to be due to restating the same matter on the authority of different writers ; and occasionally there creeps in an inconsistency. For example, it is stated on page 61 that the Hise treaty with Nicaragua, which was signed after Taylor became Presi- dent, "might have led to serious consequences had it not been for the conservative tendencies of the administration in power when the treaty
