ded to apply to the British establishment at the Balize.
This qualification is to be ascribed to the fact that, in virtue of
successive treaties with previous sovereigns of the country, Great
Britain had obtained a concession of the right to cut mahogany or
dye-woods at the Balize, but with positive exclusion of all domain
or sovereignty; and thus it confirms the natural construction and
understood import of the treaty as to all the rest of the region
to which the stipulations applied.

It, however, became apparent at an early day after entering upon the
discharge of my present functions that Great Britain still continued in
the exercise or assertion of large authority in all that part of Central
America commonly called the Mosquito Coast, and covering the entire
length of the State of Nicaragua and a part of Costa Rica; that she
regarded the Balize as her absolute domain and was gradually extending
its limits at the expense of the State of Honduras, and that she had
formally colonized a considerable insular group known as the Bay
Islands, and belonging of right to that State.

All these acts or pretensions of Great Britain, being contrary to the
rights of the States of Central America and to the manifest tenor of her
stipulations with the United States as understood by this Government,
have been made the subject of negotiation through the American minister
in London. I transmit herewith the instructions to him on the subject
and the correspondence between him and the British secretary for foreign
affairs, by which you will perceive that the two Governments differ
widely and irreconcilably as to the construction of the convention and
its effect on their respective relations to Central America.

Great Britain so construes the convention as to maintain unchanged all
her previous pretensions over the Mosquito Coast and in different parts
of Central America. These pretensions as to the Mosquito Coast are
founded on the assumption of political relation between Great Britain
and the remnant of a tribe of Indians on that coast, entered into at a
time when the whole country was a colonial possession of Spain. It can
not be successfully controverted that by the public law of Europe and
America no possible act of such Indians or their predecessors could
confer on Great Britain any political rights.

Great Britain does not allege the assent of Spain as the origin of her
claims on the Mosquito Coast. She has, on the contrary, by