ient for the conduct of the fisheries, and so in addition certain
"liberties" were granted, which allowed American fishers to land for the
purpose of drying fish and of doing other things not generally
permitted to foreigners. These concessions in fact amounted to a joint
participation with the British. The rights were permanent, but the
privileges were regarded as having lapsed after the War of 1812. In 1818
they were partially renewed, certain limited privileges being conceded.
Ever since that date the problem of securing the additional privileges
desired has been a subject for discussion between Great Britain and the
United States. Between 1854 and 1866 the American Government secured
them by reciprocity; between 1872 and 1884 it bought them; after 1888
it enjoyed them by a temporary modus vivendi arranged under President
Cleveland.

In 1902 Hay arranged with Sir Robert Bond, Prime Minister of
Newfoundland, a new reciprocity agreement. This, however, the Senate
rejected, and the Cleveland agreement continued. Newfoundland, angry at
the rejection of the proposed treaty, put every obstacle possible in the
way of American fishermen and used methods which the Americans claimed
to be contrary to the treaty terms. After long continued and rather
acrimonious discussions, the matter was finally referred in 1909 to the
Hague Court. As in the Bering Sea case, the court was asked not only
to judge the facts but also to draw up an agreement for the future. Its
decision, on the whole, favored Newfoundland, but this fact is of little
moment compared with the likelihood that a dispute almost a century and
a half old has at last been permanently settled.

None of these international disputes and settlements to the north,
however, excited anything like the popular interest aroused by one which
occurred in the south. The Spanish War made it abundantly evident that
an isthmian canal between the Atlantic and the Pacific must be built.
The arguments of naval strategy which Captain Mahan had long been urging
had received striking demonstration in the long and roundabout voyage
which the Oregon was obliged to take. The pressure of railroad rates on
the trade of the country caused wide commercial support for a project
expected to establish a water competition that would pull them down. The
American people determined to dig a canal.

The first obstacle to such a project lay in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty
with Great Britain. That obstacle Bla