Now there are, in the mass, only two nations whose vessels trade with Central America, viz. the British and our own. By this quasi "blockade," ours are utterly excluded, the British only admitted. Will it be believed, when we seriously think of it, that American vessels are actually, at this present day, driven from American waters by British cruisers? It seems almost incredible such could be; yet it is the naked truth: and our Administration looks on and will not even answer whether or no it knows that such things are. Again; until the proposed shipcanal can be completed, no possible intercourse can be had, by our people, with the Central American Republics save by seacoast and shipping, under the ordinary comity of nations. But here the British Government step in, and declare, (as per letter above quoted,)" We will permit no canal or other means of transit to be built or established until our claims on Central America are acknowledged; and until then we will blockade the whole coast, keeping out American ships, and letting in our own ;" and our Government stands by, and beholds the blockade extending day after day, and mile after mile, over the whole coast on both oceans, to the utter ruin of our trade, to the deep injury of our citizens, and to the utter dishonor of the American name; and it will not move!

We leave our readers to invent a phrase black enough to designate our dishonor. With reference to the British, the question is easily solved. A blockade, like all other means of coercion recognized by nations, is subject to the laws of nations. The British, granting that they were justified in using it in the present instance, are compelled by the laws of nations to preserve it against all alike. But they have themselves broken the blockade, thereby rendering it null and void by the law of nations. Should they, after so breaking it, interfere with any American or other shipping for the purpose of preventing them from entering the ports so pretended to be kept in blockade, they are guilty of piracy, and should be hanged from their own yardarms as pirates. If a Secretary of State knows the laws of nations, he should know that.

"We published, in July last, an intercepted letter from Pavon, Chatfield's secretary, to the Servile ations against San Salvador and Honduras, for leaders, in which he tells them to push their operthe British squadron will soon be on the coast to assist them. We have now an example of the manner in which this assistance is rendered. A vessel anchors in the port of Honduras, with which State England has no quarrel, when the English commander forbids it from discharging its cargo, because it will be prejudicial to English interests,' and threatens a blockade if he is not obeyed." And this letter in proof:

(From the Gaceta del Salvador, Dec. 20.) COMMANDANCY OF LA UNION, Dec. 7, 1850. To the Minister of War of San Salvador :

SIR-At six o'clock on the afternoon of the 3d instant, the English steamer of war, Gorgon, came to anchor in the bay of Chiquirin, and yesterday left again for Acajubla. To-day, arrived the lieutenant of the Champion, who is now here. He states that the commander of the blockading force has prohibited the merchant vessel Tyson, anchored in the port of Tigre, from unloading eighteen tons of powder which it has on board, belonging to the Messrs. Tejada, of Grenada, Nicaragua. He has also informed the commandant of the Tigre, that if he permits the smallest quantity of the powder to be sent ashore, or to go into the interior, at the ports of Chismugo or Brea, he shall immediately blockade all the ports of Honduras on the Gulf of Fonseca.

I have esteemed it my duty to give you information of these proceedings, for the knowledge of the Government. (Signed) J. CACERES, Commandant.

"By the above note," continues this San Salvadorean editor, "and another which has come directly from the port of Brea, in the State of Honduras, we learn that Mr. English Consul Chatfield has prohibited merchants from discharging their cargo in that State, threatening her ports with blockade if such discharge is permitted. This most iniquitous and irregular proceeding is founded on the extravagant pretext, 'that the introduction of pow der in that State is prejudicial to the interests of her Britannic Majesty!""

while announcing the negotiation then pending with Russia, relating to the north-west coast of this continent, observed that the occasion of the discussions to which that incident had given rise, had been taken for asserting as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States were involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they had assumed and maintained, were thenceforward not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European power. The principle had first been assumed in that negotiation with Russia. It rested upon a course of reasoning equally simple and conclusive. With the exception of the existing European colonies, which it was in no wise intended to disturb, the two continents consisted of several sovereign and independent nations, whose territories covered its whole surface. By this their independent condition, the United States enjoyed the right of commercial intercourse with every part of their possessions. To To attempt the establishment of a colony in those possessions would be to usurp, to the exclusion of others, a commercial intercourse which was the common possession of all. It could not be done without encroaching upon the existing rights of the United States."

Yet these existing rights have been encroached upon, nullified, and utterly disregarded, twenty-six years after the American Government took the position above described. The United States do not now, and have not since the British occupation of San Juan, and cannot have while a single British officer or gun remains in Central America, the enjoyment of "the right of commercial intercourse with every part of their possessions." An American citizen journeying from San Francisco to New Orleans, has now to pass through a British police office, be examined, mauled, disarmed, manipulated by Jamaica negroes, and passed or not passed, like a bale of goods, just as the Greytown British policeman Sambo pleases. Further; the "establishment of a colony," of which Mr. Adams speaks with such determined aversion, has not only been "attempted," but is actually now successful. But Mr. Adams is not the Government now-neither are his principles.

So much for JOHN QUINCY ADAMS; now for another authority even more respected.

HENRY CLAY, IN POINT.

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HENRY CLAY, AGAIN-1820. We shall presently show evidence that Sir Henry Bulwer, a British Minister, rules our country more than we do. The very same state of affairs existed in 1820, when the British Government, desiring to extend its sway over the Southern American continent, managed to circumvent, surround, navigate, bewilder, humbug, subornate, and by some means or other-whether of money or assiduous flattery we do not know-use for its purposes the then Government in Washington. It is now publicly notorious that a British Minister manages every wire pulled in that same celebrated half-city, even to the bell-wires of the White House, and of Mr. Webster's hotel. of Mr. Webster's hotel. Upon an exactly similar occasion, Hon. Henry Clay, then in his prime of clear-headed and vigorous manhood, uttered these sentences, which, without the smallest anachronism, he might now repeat with remarkable effect:

"I deprecate this deference for foreign powers. A single expression of the British Minister to our present Secretary of State, I AM ASHAMED TO SAY, has moulded the policy of our Government towards have Bulwer.] Our institutions now make us free; South America. [Insert Central for South, and you but how long shall we continue so, if we mould our opinions on those of Europe? Let us break these commercial and political fetters; LET US NO LONGER WATCH THE NOD OF ANY EUROPEAN POLITICIAN; let us become real and true Americans, and place

ourselves at the head of the American system.

*

* There can be no doubt that Spanish America, whatever the form of government established in its various parts, will be animated by an American feeling, and guided by an American the new world, in contradistinction to that of Eupolicy. They will obey the laws of the system of rope."-Speech in Congress.

No, Mr. Clay, you may have been right there twenty-five years ago, but you are not now! The United States, the head of the new world, now obeys the dictates of Mr. Bulwer, but the Spanish Republics of Central America do not, and will not, obey the laws of Mr. Bulwer's system. They are true to Republicanism, but we are not. "Let us become real and true Americans" indeed! What outrageous nonsense to quote at this time of day. "Real and true Americans,"

We beg now to turn to the same authority over again. There has been no foreign policy in the country since Henry Clay gave up ruling it.

AGAIN-1826.

Extract from Mr. CLAY's Letter of Instructions to Messrs. POINSETT and SERGEANT, Delegates from the United States to the Panama Congress.

"From the north-eastern limits of the United

States in North America, to Cape Horn in South America on the Atlantic Ocean, with one or two inconsiderable exceptions; and from the same Cape to the 51st degree of north latitude in North America, on the Pacific Ocean, WITHOUT ANY EXCEPTION, the whole coasts and countries belong to sovereign resident American powers. THERE IS, THEREFORE, NO CHASM WITHIN THE PRESCRIRED LIMITS, IN WHICH A NEW EUROPEAN COLONY COULD NOW BE INTRODUCED WITHOUT VIOLATING THE TERRITORIAL RIGHTS OF SOME AMERICAN STATE. AN ATTEMPT TO ACQUIRE SUCH A COLONY, AND BY ITS ESTABLISHMENT TO ACQUIRE SOVEREIGN RIGHTS FOR

tion of the latter, after an examination and exhibition of the British claims and aggressions there, written in the quiet and methodic manner usual to lawyers, the following passage occurs. It is the summing up or judgment of this gentleman on the entire evidence before him. We could wish it had a little more of the fire of a rhetorician, but, with many of our readers, its plain and mature style will be much more preferable than outlandish metaphor, and threadbare trope. It will be remembered, too, that on the conclusions in this passage the entire policy of General Taylor's cabinet in Central America was based:

INADMISSIBLE ENCROACHMENT."

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en

But the British have since made a "chasm" on this very North American continent, and planted therein a new European colony, by violating the territorial rights of Nicaragua, an independent American Republic. Yet the "attempt to acquire such a colony, and by its establishment to acquire sovereign rights for a certain European power," viz.: England, has not been regarded as an croachment," but is quietly and coolly submitted to by the American nation. The American Executive has seen, and sees, day after day, this encroachment become a possession, then a colony, then an assumption of empire with boundaries, which "Her Majesty's Government proposes" to take and keep, and yet it will not move hand, foot or tongue.

We have now given the opinions, on the questions at issue, of two remarkable American statesmen, "real and true Americans" both. To conclude the list of authorities, it is now only necessary that we should refer to the opinions of Mr. Clayton, Secretary of State, at the time these transactions were first, of late, brought before the Executive. We quote his authority on two points, viz.: as to the right of the British to be in Central America; and as to his own belief and intention in framing the treaty with Mr. Bulwer, which he himself signed.

JOHN M. CLAYTON, IN POINT.

In the instructions, which we have already quoted, furnished by Mr. Clayton to the Chargé d'Affaires by him sent to Central

Mosquito King, BUT REALLY AS HER OWN, ARE tions were repeatedly and SOLEMNLY ACKNOWLFOUNDED IN REPEATED USURPATIONS, which usurpaEDGED AND RELINQUISHED BY HER during the domination of Spain on the American continent. Since that domination has ceased, those claims could have had no other foundation for renewal than the ve supposed weakness or indifference of the Governments invested with the rights of Spain in that quarter. These claims certainly can derive no warrant from the indifference of the Government of Nicaragua, as the letters of the Minister for Foreign Affairs of that State to this Department, above adverted to, abundantly show.

Against the AGGRESSIONS on her territory Nicaragua HAS FIRMLY STRUGGLED AND PROTESTED WITHOUT CEASING; and the feelings of her people the proclamation of her Supreme Director, on the may be judged from the impassioned language of 12th of November, 1848. The moment,' says he, has arrived for losing a country with ignominy, or for sacrificing with honor the dearest treasures to preserve it. As regards myself, if the power which menaces sets aside justice, I am firmly resolved to be entombed in the remains of Nicaragua, rather than survive its ruin.' The eloquent appeal of the Minister of Nicaragua," continued Mr. Clayton, "to his Government, is eviDISPOSITION OF AN INJURED PEOPLE to resist what dence, not less striking and impressive, of the they believed to be injustice and oppression. WILL OTHER NATIONS, INTERESTED IN A FREE PASSAGE TO AND FROM THE PACIFIC OCEAN, BY THE WAY OF THE RIVER SAN JUAN AND LAKE NICARAGUA,

TAMELY ALLOW THAT INTEREST TO BE THWARTED BY SUCH PRETENSIONS?

"AS IT REGARDS THE UNITED STATES THIS QUESTION MAY CONFIDENTLY BE ANSWERED IN THE NEGA

TIVE."

But it has not been answered in the negative; nor answered at all. The United States have "tamely," yes, very tamely, "allowed our interests to be thwarted by such pretensions of Great Britain," founded