In after years a large number of people on this side of the Atlantic, forgetting the object and aim of the treaty and the circumstances under which it was negotiated, thought that the United States conceded too much and violated the principle of the Monroe Doctrine in giving England a position and interest in America which she did not before possess. This opinion was held by some prominent statesmen at the time the treaty was negotiated, notably by Buchanan, who poured forth severe criticism and ridicule upon it. While it was before the Senate for ratification, he wrote to a friend: If Sir Henry Bulwer can succeed in having the two first provisions of this treaty ratified by the Senate, he will deserve a British peerage. The consideration for our concessions is the relinquishment of the claim to the protectorate of the Mosquito shore--so absurd and unfounded that it has been ridiculed even by the London _Times_. Truly Sir Henry has brought this claim to a good market when he found a purchaser in Mr. Clayton. The treaty altogether reverses the Monroe Doctrine, and establishes it against ourselves rather than European governments.[153] Let us see what the interests of the two signatory powers were at that time in Central America. The United States had recently acquired California by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and the rapid development of the Pacific states made the canal a question of greater importance to the United States than ever before. The great transcontinental railroads, which some fifteen years later established direct overland communication with the Pacific states, were then hardly thought of. England's interest in the canal, on the other hand, was rather a prospective one, but farsighted as usual, she had provided for future contingencies by occupying several years before, under the guise of a protectorate over the Mosquito Indians, Greytown at the mouth of the San Juan river, the Atlantic terminus of the canal. In addition to the Mosquito coast, England at this time held the Bay Islands and Belize, or British Honduras. The United States, it is true, had never recognized the claims of Great Britain to dominion over the Mosquito coast. These claims, which dated back to the eighteenth century, when British wood-cutters in search of mahogany, and smugglers entered the territory occupied by the Mosquito Indians and established cordial relations with them, had been abandoned by the treaty of 1786 with Spain, but were revived in 1841, when a ship of war was sent to San Juan del Norte to announce the protection of England over the lands of the Mosquito king and to raise the Mosquito flag.[154] In 1848 the English and Indians drove the Nicaraguans out of the town and changed the name to Greytown.