The occupation of San Juan, or Greytown, by the British, and their proceedings upon the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua, where they had set up a trumpery Indian king, and by virtue of a “treaty” with him assumed a protectorate over the region, were a cause of growing uneasiness at Washington. In pursuance of her age-long policy of insuring her domination of the seas by occupying strategic points giving control of great routes of navigation, Great Britain had with a cool disregard of our rights and interests seized upon vantage-ground in Central America that would make her mistress of interoceanic communication. Holding Greytown, she was in complete control of any Nicaraguan canal, for the only practicable route was that which would make Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan River a part of the canal. Thus, upon the one hand, our freedom of action in respect to a canal was hampered, and, upon the other, England, notwithstanding her many excuses and protestations to the contrary, was manifestly establishing a colony in Central America. With a view to the removal of these sources of embarrassment and of difference between the two countries, Mr. Clayton, Secretary of State, pressed Great Britain to withdraw her pretensions to dominion over the Mosquito Coast. Her reply was a refusal, but an intimation was given that the British Government would be willing to enter into a treaty for a joint protectorate over the proposed canal. This was the germ of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, negotiated at Washington between Secretary of State Clayton and Sir Henry Bulwer, the British minister, and signed April 19, 1850. Article I of the treaty, here subjoined, is a declaratory and self-denying ordinance: