Moreover, if the treaty was to British advantage, at least the United States had accepted it.
Great Britain, therefore, refused to admit that the treaty was not in full force.

Blaine then urged the building of an American canal across the Isthmus of Nicaragua, in defiance of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty--a plan which received the support of even President Arthur, under whom a treaty for the purpose was negotiated with the Republic of Nicaragua.
Before this treaty was ratified by the Senate, however, Grover Cleveland, who had just become President, withdrew it.

He believed in the older policy, and refused his sanction to the new treaty on the ground that such a canal "must be for the world's benefit, a trust for mankind, to be removed from the chance of domination by any single power." The crowning glory of Blaine's system, as he planned it, was the cooperation of the American republics for common purposes.

He did not share Seward's dream that they would become incorporated States of the Union, but he went back to Henry Clay and the Panama Congress of 1826 for his ideal.

During his first term of office he invited the republics to send representatives to Washington to discuss arbitration, but his successor in office feared that such a meeting of "a partial group of our friends" might offend Europe, which indeed was not improbably part of Blaine's intention.