THE MONROE DOCTRINE.*

[COMMUNICATED.]

PROFESSOR HART contributes a valuable history of the Monroe Doctrine and of the principles upon which it was announced from the foundation of the Republic in 1775-6 to the present date. He seems to deprecate the term, although using it as the title of his book :— "There is a perpetual netional policy which needs no authority from President Monroe or any late public man to make it necessary or valid. It is the daily common-sense recognition of the geographic and political fad that the United States of America is by fact and by right more interested in American affairs, both on the northern and southern continents, than any European Power can possibly be. What is called the Monroe Doctrine, in all its varieties and ramifica- tions, is only an attempt to apply this simple principle to changing needs and conditions."

The "Holy Alliance" of Prussia, Austria, and Russia was formed in Paris on September 26th, 1815, based upon "the precepts of holy

religion and the precepts of justice, charity, and peace," and aimed at mutual defence against the menace of Napoleon, then Europe's prisoner at St. Helena, who had been "twice overwhelmingly defeated and deposed." Relieved from these apprehensions in 1821 by Napoleon's death, the Alliance turned its attention to the rising "spirit of popular government," and on November 22nd, 1822, at

Verona adopted three articles in the form of a treaty between its throe members (signed by them), in which they bound themselves (1) "to put an end to representative government " ; (2) to "suppress the liberty of the Press " ; and (3) to " sustain in their respective States those measures which the clergy may adopt with the aim of amelioratin; their own interests so intimately connected with the preservation of the authority of Princes."

"Spain, on the advice of Alexander of Russia," asked the Allied Powers to intervene in her behalf against her South American colonists, who between 1818 and 1822 were successively declaring their inde- pendence, and who (in the oases of several of them) had been recognized by the United Stites in 1822. A plan was then evolved by the Allied Powers for a "formal Congress" on American affairs, to which the United States and England were to be invited. "The proposal was doomed from the beginning by the holding back of England," whose foreign affairs were then in the care of George Canning, "an experi- enced diplomat of lofty views, and the first English statesman to realize the future power of the United States and the value to England of a good understanding." "He was disposed to recognize the Latin- American Republics, and, if necessary, to oppbso by force an invasion of America by third parties to the struggle." He urged upon the United States the propriety of a joint declaration by England and that country which would bring to an end the schemes of the Holy Alliance, for it was as obvious then as it is to-day that the sea power of Great Britain and of the United States rendered an invasion of the Americas impossible against their opposition. Throughout the whole of the diplomatic discussions which occurred Canning strongly pressed the necessity of action by the Government of the United States, insisting that "the United States were the first Power estab- lished on that continent and now confessedly the leading Power. Could Europe expect this indifference ? " (Canning to Rush, the United States Minister in London, on September 18th and 26th, 1823).

Canning's plan was for joint action, and at a Cabinet_ meeting held in Washington on November 7th, 1823, this had the support not only of the President but also of all the members except John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State (having charge of foreign affairs) and after- wards President (1825-1829). Adams favoured separate action by the United States, on the ground that she alone had a right to object to the interference of foreign Powers in the affairs of the South American Republics, a point of view to which he succeeded in bringing over the President and the Cabinet as a whole. Professor Hart quotes the well- known passage from Canning's speech of December 12th, 1823, in Parlia- ment, in which Canning, defending himself for not checking the interven- tion in Spain early in that year, said : "I looked another way—I sought material for compensation in another hemisphere. Contemplating Spain, such as our ancestors had known her, I resolved that if France had Spain it should not be Spain 'with the lndie4.' I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old." The "intervention in Spain" herein referred to was the invasion by France at the instance of the Holy Alliance with the object of reinstating the Bourbon King upon the throne from which revolutionists were in the process of ejecting him. The Presidential Message was delivered to Congress in December, 1823. It is quoted in full by Professor Hart. Its essential

clauses are :—

"With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately Connected, and by causes which must be -obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers. The political system of the-Allied Powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America. .

We owe it, therefore, to candour and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those Powers, to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any part of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European Power we have not interfered and shallnot interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence

• The Monroe Doctrine : as tnierpre5aLion. By Albert Bushnell Hart, Professor -4t1 the 43blence of Government In Vadveralty. Boston : sLIttle, Brown, 5nd Co. L$1.75.1

we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknow- ledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them or controlling in any other manner their destiny by an European Power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition towards the United States."

It is worthy of note that as "the political system" of the three "Allied Powers" was "essentially different" from that of America in 1823, so also did the political system of two of them (Prussia and Austria) continue to August, 1914, and does continue to this day; while the system of the third has been gradually developing in the direction of that system which prevails in the United States and Great Britain, the system, that is, of government by the people through their represen- tatives in Legislative Assemblies. It is this principle of government, as opposed to the "authority of Princes," which more than all else is at stake in the Great War, a principle upheld to-day by England as it was by her great Minister Canning in the days of Monroe.

The application of the Doctrine to American conditions as they have arisen from time to time has not been uniform. Professor Hart recites them in detail. Its principle was successfully applied to the case of Cuba without deviation until Cuba became independent in 1898, and to Russian colonization schemes in the North-West ; it probably had its influence in bringing about the sale of Alaska by Russia to the United States in 1867. It was invoked by Buenos Ayres (as Argentina was then called) in 1831 against England in respect of the Falkland Islands ; but the United States rejected Argentina's claim, only, how- ever, on the ground that the islands belonged to Great Britain. It undoubtedly influenced the negotiations between the United States and Great Britain in respect of the Isthmian Canal, from 1835 to their final settlement by the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1901.

The invasion of Mexico by France in 1861 was an attempt by Napoleon III. to extend his political system to a portion of the Western Hemisphere, and it aimed at the annexation of that country to France, or at the establishment in it of a monarchy friendly to France. At that time there was no protest from the United States, and no mention of the Doctrine in any of the letters which pealed between the French and American Governments. The "uncertainties of the Civil War" which . was then raging are, perhaps, a sufficient explanation of the omission. After the battle of Gettysburg (July, 1863), when the star of the Northern States seenied to be in the ascendant, however, Secretary Seward, speaking for Lincoln'a Cabiiaet, made a significant protest, and in the following April the House of -Representatives in Congress by its unanimous vote recorded its opposition to the erection of a Monarchical Government upon the ruins of any Republican Govern. ment in America. After the termination of the Civil War (April, 1865) General Grant, with an army of one hundred thousand Union troops, was sent to the Rio Grande. Secretary Seward (November 6th, 1865) protested to France against the continued support of Maximilian by the French Army, and on February 12th, 1866, demanded its with- drawaL Orders to that effect having been issued by Napoleon III., Maximilian's authority collapsed, he was executed soon after and foreign influence came to an end. In 1895 the principle of the Doctrine was asserted by President Cleveland in respect of the dispute between Venezuela and Great Britain over the boundary-line between Venezuela and British Guiana. Lord Salisbury assented to the President's interposition, and arbitration followed.

The influence of the Doctrine upon the settlement of many other questions is described at length by Professor Hart, and need not be recapitulated here. In his Message to Congress declaring the Doctrine President Monroe said "Our policy in regard to Europe. . . is not to interfere in the internal affairs of any of its Powers," a policy which was long supposed to be an essential clement of the Doctrine. It has not been strictly adhered to. President Taylor in 1849 sent a Commissioner to Hungary "with power to declare our willingness to recognize her independence in the event of her ability to sustain it." Assuming that in the progress of development the " policy " extends to Asia and Africa, it was violated in the case of Liberia (1847 and onward), in the case of Congo affairs (Berlin, 1884-5), the Boxer rebellion (1900), at Algeciras (1906), and as to Manchuria (1909-10).

• Intervention by the United States in the affairs of Asia reached ita climax in 1893 by the annexation of the Philippines, the inost northerly of which is not more than a hundred miles distant from the Japanese island of Formosa. We learn that "the present attitude of Japan toward Asia is, in effect, very like that of the United States eighty years ago toward America. The Japanese wish to prevent the creation of centres of irritation in Asia, because the contests of European nations there would in future disturb the security of Japan " ; and we are also told that the Japanese have learned that "the United States may not precisely apply the Monroe Doctrine to them, but does apply exactly the same basic principle." "A Japanese station in America cannot be allowed, but we [tho United States] hold the large group of the Philippines with its eight million people, just off the Asiatic coast and near neighbour to Japan."

California maintains an unchanging opposition to Japanese immi- gration, which is not less strong than the opposition of British Columbia and other British Colonies to Asiatic immigration in generaL May there not be a solutien of all these conflicting aims and inconsistent policies when the great settlement is reached ? Professor Hart tells us that "from the first there was a strong protest in the United States against annexation and then against permanent holding as a depen- dency." Is it not within the Power of statesmanship to invent such a plan for a Japanese protectorate of the Philippines as would be accept- able to American capitalists who have investments in them, and to those who hope that the islands will ultimately be independent, and in return for which concession Japan would heartily co-operate with Great Britain and the United States in efforts to restrain Asiatics from emigrating ? Surely it is worth while to eliminate all "centres of

irritation" in so far as it is possible to do so. S. IL IL