In the third place, at the time the convention was agreed upon, Great Britain and the United States were the only nations prominent in the commerce of Central and South America. Since that time other nations not bound by the prohibitions of that treaty had become interested in Central America, and the republic of France had become sponsor for a new canal scheme. Yet by the treaty with England the United States was prevented from asserting its rights and the privileges acquired through treaty with Colombia anterior to the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. In the fourth place, the treaty had been made with the implied understanding that British capital would be available for the construction of a canal. That expectation had never been realized, and the United States was now able to construct a canal without aid from outside resources. In conclusion, Mr. Blaine proposed several modifications of the treaty which would leave the United States free to fortify the canal and to hold political control of it in conjunction with the country in which it might be located.[172] A few days after the dispatch was written, Lord Granville's answer to Mr. Blaine's first dispatch reached Washington, and on the 29th of November, Mr. Blaine wrote a second dispatch equally voluminous with the one of November 19. In this he reviewed the discussions which had taken place between 1850 and 1860 in regard to the treaty with a view to showing that it had never been satisfactory to the United States and had been the cause of serious misunderstanding. He failed, however, to make mention of the settlement of 1860 and the declaration of President Buchanan that the United States was satisfied with that adjustment. The full reply of the British government to Mr. Blaine's arguments was given in two dispatches dated respectively January 7 and 14, 1882. Lord Granville took exception to certain conclusions which Mr. Blaine had sought to establish by analogy with the conduct of Great Britain in regard to the Suez canal. His lordship fully concurred in what Mr. Blaine had said as to the unexampled development of the United States on the Pacific coast, but reminded him that the development of her majesty's possessions to the north of the United States, while less rapid, had been, nevertheless, on a scale that bore some relation even to that of the Pacific states. In the view of her majesty's government, the changes desired by the United States would not improve the situation as regarded the canal, while the declaration that the United States would always treat the waterway connecting the two oceans "as part of her coast-line" threatened the independence of the territory lying between that waterway and the United States. Her majesty's government believed that the only way to relieve the situation was to extend the invitation to all maritime states to participate in an agreement based on the stipulations of the convention of 1850.[173]