alone had any legitimate authority in the matter.
We disregarded those opportunities from considerations alike of domestic
and foreign policy, just as, even to the present day, we have persevered
in a system of justice and respect for the rights and interests of
others as well as our own in regard to each and all of the States of
Central America.

It was with surprise and regret, therefore, that the United States
learned a few days after the conclusion of the treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo, by which the United States became, with the consent of the
Mexican Republic, the rightful owners of California, and thus invested
with augmented special interest in the political condition of Central
America, that a military expedition, under the authority of the British
Government, had landed at San Juan del Norte, in the State of Nicaragua,
and taken forcible possession of that port, the necessary terminus of
any canal or railway across the Isthmus within the territories of
Nicaragua.

It did not diminish the unwelcomeness to us of this act on the part of
Great Britain to find that she assumed to justify it on the ground of
an alleged protectorship of a small and obscure band of uncivilized
Indians, whose proper name had even become lost to history, who did not
constitute a state capable of territorial sovereignty either in fact or
of right, and all political interest in whom and in the territory they
occupied Great Britain had previously renounced by successive treaties
with Spain when Spain was sovereign to the country and subsequently with
independent Spanish America.

Nevertheless, and injuriously affected as the United States conceived
themselves to have been by this act of the British Government and by its
occupation about the same time of insular and of continental portions
of the territory of the State of Honduras, we remembered the many and
powerful ties and mutual interests by which Great Britain and the United
States are associated, and we proceeded in earnest good faith and with
a sincere desire to do whatever might strengthen the bonds of peace
between us to negotiate with Great Britain a convention to assure the
perfect neutrality of all interoceanic communications across the Isthmus
and, as the indispensable condition of such neutrality, the absolute
independence of the States of Central America and their complete
sovereignty within the limits of their own territory as well against
Great Britain as against the Unite