England did not formally withdraw her Mos quito protectorate, but with the neutralization of the canal it ceased to have any object, and was thought sure to drop. Before the ratifica tions were exchanged, however, Lord Palmers ton wrote to Bulwer that the British govern ment would interpret the treaty as not apnlv ing to Honduras or its dependencies.° This could include Mosquitia, and it was Clayton's duty to settle that point before proceeding; hut in fear of having his statesmanlike plan wrecked, and confident of no practical evil re sulting, he assumed that it referred only to the islands, did not press Bulwer for assent to this construction, concealed the three quoted words from the Senate and the attorney-general and the ratifications were exchanged 4 July. Great Britain had won a distinct diplomatic victory; she had secured a pledge from the United States not to occupy any position in Central America, while herself retaining the entire east ern coast of Nicaragua.
2. The ambiguous interpretation of the treaty satisfying neither power, Daniel Webster (q.v.), who succeeded Clayton in 1850, undertook nego tiations with Bulwer to modify it; but what each side most desired was what the other would not grant — recognition or abandonment of the bogus Mosquito claim to the mouth of the river. In 1851, to clear up the meaning of the word °dependency," Great Britain occupied Grey town; proclaimed afresh the Mosquito protec torate; and in November one of her men-of war fired on the Anierican vessel Prometheus for refusing to pay port dues at Greytown. England disavowed this, but the question which Clayton had shirked must be settled. About this time the English had started a project to build a ship railroad across Honduras; and to hold the approaches, their government reoccu pied (August 1852) a group of islands off the northern coast, called the Bay Islands, formerly part of Belize. American suspicion once more became hot ; and the new Pierce Senate in De cember ordered an investigation into the way the treaty had been kept, called for the papers and for the first time found how they had been tricked— not, however, by the English diplomat, but their own. In great wrath, they denounced the occupation of the islands and the Mosquito protectorate as an infraction at once of the treaty and the Monroe Doctrine, and Marcy, now Secretary of State, instructed Buchanan, Minister to England, to insist on the British evacuation of all English territory in Central America except Belize. Lord Clarendon re plied that Belize was not a part of Central America as understood by the treaty; that the Bay Islands were a part of Belize; that the treaty did not refer to Mosquitia, but only pro hibited further colonization; and that the Mon roe Doctrine was no part of international law.
Just then a quarrel between the Mosquito In dians and the American settlement south of Greytown led to a United States gunboat bom barding and burning the latter. Then William Walker (q.v.), with the aid of a Nicaraguan faction, became for a time the master of the state, ostensibly in the interest of the United States, whose slaveholding government at last received a representative from his ; and the British believed that this country intended to retain possession of Nicaragua. On the other hand, Costa Rican action against Nicaragua was laid to English incitement. Walker continued to make mischief till shot in 1860. Dallas, who succeeded Buchanan, drew up with Clarendon a treaty of 7 Oct. 1856, which came to grief on the question of the Bay Islands. In 1857 Buchanan became President, and supported his Secretary of State, Lewis Cass, in making a preferential canal treaty with Nicaragua: to which Great Britain objected as violating the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, and it was not rati fied. In the fall of that year, Buchanan an nounced his intention of proposing an entire abrogauon of the treaty and arranging a new one on a satisfactory basis. Lord Napier, now British Minister, proposed three alternatives: a mutual abandonment of the treaty and return to the status quo ante; submission of the question to arbitration; and the awaiting the issue of treaties pending between Great Britain and the Central American states. The last was ac cepted, and the results were satisfactory enough to prevent further trouble for more than 20 years. The Bay Islands were retroceded to Honduras on condition of not parting with them to any other nation; the Mosquito protectorate was abandoned, and a reservation set up for the Indians by Nicaragua, which was to pay them $5,000 a year or else the rights reverted to Great Britain; and Greytown became a free port un der Nicaraguan sovereignty. The conditional clauses of the renunciation were not pleasing to the United States, and in fact the money was never paid, partly because Nicaragua expected the United States to back its refusal ; but on the whole the settlement was accepted as a happy ending to the wrangle. Up to 1880, though the growing sentiment in favor of exclusive United States control of the canal sometimes fretted against the treaty, a host of treaties and other international actions were based upon its valid ity, and it was more than once appealed to when British acts (as the erection of Belize into the colony of °British Honduras" in 1%2) were assumed to violate it.