England immediately protested against this exemption on the ground that it was in contravention of the treaty between the two countries. The story of how the United States came to be bound by a treaty with Great Britain in the building of an Isthmian canal goes back for more than half a century. The year 1850 found the North American continent, north of the Rio Grande, in the possession of the United States, England, and Russia. The United States had only recently finished its continental expansion, and each of the two countries needed a canal to connect their east and west coasts. England had long possessed a west coast in Canada, but the United States had only recently come into possession of a Pacific seaboard. When it came to consider the question of connecting its two coasts the United States found that Great Britain was holding the position of advantage in the Isthmian region. It held the Bahamas, Bermuda, Jamaica, the Barbados, Trinidad, the Windward and Leeward Islands, British Guiana and British Honduras; and held a protectorate over the "Mosquito Coast," now the east coast of Nicaragua. That protectorate covered the eastern terminus of the only ship canal then deemed possible. Under these conditions the United States concluded that it was necessary for the support of the Monroe doctrine that some sort of an understanding should be reached between the two countries. England assented to such an understanding only after Nicaragua and Costa Rica had given to the United States its consent to the building of a canal across its territory. These treaties with Nicaragua and Costa Rica were negotiated but never ratified, and were used as a club to force Great Britain to make a treaty. The result was the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, which provided that neither Government should ever obtain or maintain for itself any exclusive control over an Isthmian canal, and that neither Government should ever secure for itself any rights or advantages not enjoyed by the other in such a canal. The proposed canal was to be entirely neutral, and the treaty set forth that the two countries agreed jointly to protect the entire Isthmian region from Tehauntepec to South America, and that the canal always should be open to both countries on equal terms. The canal under this treaty was intended to be entirely neutral with reference to defense, with reference to tolls, and with reference to such other nations as might join in maintaining neutrality. When the United States decided to build the Panama Canal, it found the Clayton-Bulwer treaty wholly unsuited to its aims and desires. It therefore asked England to enter into a new convention; the Hay-Pauncefote treaty was the result. This document declared that its purpose was to remove any objections that might arise under the Clayton-Bulwer treaty to the construction of an Isthmian canal under the auspices of the Government of the United States without impairing the general principle of neutralization.