THE MONROE DOCTRINE AND THE ISTHMIAN CANAL.

MORE than twelve years have elapsed since the traditional faith of the American people in what is vaguely known, but vigorously clung to, as the "Monroe doctrine" was last invoked, and invoked with signal success, by the American Government, to sustain it in carrying out an important measure of foreign policy. Now that once again the "Monroe doctrine" has become the theme of politicians and of the press, it is of importance, not only that the origin and the true significance of this doctrine should be clearly and calmly set before the public mind, but also that the history of its previous applications to the practical policy of the United States should be briefly and yet sufficiently recited.

It has unfortunately grown almost into a mental habit with the American people to look at every question which comes under debate before them in a Presidential year from the point of view of its possible or probable relation to the aims and aspirations, either of individual candidates for the Presidency, or of one or another great party in the republic. This is, no doubt, an inevitable incident of popular government in all countries, and it marks, though not perhaps so deeply in the one case as in the other, the course of political history in England as well as in the United States. In both countries it is a thing to be deplored, especially in its influence upon the popular apprehension of questions affecting the foreign policy of the national Government. In the case now before us, for example, a very cursory glance at the general tenor of the discussions which have been provoked in the daily press by the message of President Hayes to Congress touching the projects of M. de Lesseps on the Isthmus of Panama, and by the resolutions concerning these projects which on one or the other political side of either House have been introduced into both chambers of Congress,

suffices to show that the wide and permanent national aspects of the issues raised in that message and in these resolutions have so far attracted much less attention than the possible advantages to be secured to one political party or to another by the affirmation of or by the refusal to affirm the "Monroe doctrine." As was to be expected, it seldom occurs to the disputants on either side to represent clearly to themselves or to their readers precisely what this "Monroe doctrine" may be, which they so eagerly endorse in some cases and in other cases so angrily denounce. It is fought over, in fact, quite as hotly and quite as blindly in America as the legendary will of Peter the Great in Russia. Yet there can be no doubt that, whether understood or misunderstood, the Monroe doctrine really, and not inaccurately, represents to observing foreign statesmen a deep, ineradicable, and most formidable instinct in the character of the American people, just as the legendary will of Peter the Great represents to observing foreign statesmen a deep, ineradicable, and most formidable instinct in the character of the Russian people.

It matters little whether the inspired despot who first thrust forward the power of the Muscovites, like a lance-head of Asia into the flank of Europe, did or did not bid his descendants aim steadily and unshrinkingly at the control of the Bosporus and the possession of the great world-capital of Constantine. From the moment that the millions of the Russian race came together into a common consciousness of their nationality, a law higher than the will of any Czar made this the inevitable aim, not of a dynasty, but of a race. In like manner, it is of slight consequence to inquire what the specific aim of President Monroe may have been when he introduced into his message to Congress, of December 2, 1823, the declarations which have since been known under the name of the "Monroe doctrine." From the moment when the American States, united into a single nation, got possession of the valley of the Mississippi, it became a law of their national growth that they should repel every attempt, under any form whatever made, to introduce a controlling European influence over any portion of that great American Mediterranean into which the Mississippi pours the gathered waters of the great West.

As a matter of historical fact there is little doubt that President Monroe himself but partially appreciated the force and scope of his own declarations. He was not a man of great abilities, and, as is clearly apparent from his book (which General Washington contemptuously called his "voluminous work ") on the "Conduct

of the Executive in the Foreign Affairs of the United States," he was a thorough partisan, and really quite incapable of rising above the level of immediate partisan motives, either in deciding upon his own political course or in forming a judgment as to the political course of other men. His famous declarations were imposed upon him by the course of events in Europe and by the superior will of his Secretary of State.

After the Congress of Verona, in 1822, the Legitimist Government of France, in close alliance with the absolute Government of Austria, undertook to organize an effective crusade for the suppression of what the "friends of order" regarded as a recrudescence of the destructive revolutionary ideas of 1789 throughout Europe and the dependencies of Europe. The armies of Austria were marched into Italy to put down the Liberal movements in Piedmont and in Naples. The armies of France, under the Duke of Angoulême, were marched into Spain in the spring of 1823, to reëstablish the tyranny of Ferdinand VII. Great efforts were made to seduce England into the projects of the alliance, and offers were even conveyed to the Court of St. James of an eventual coöperation of the Continental powers with Great Britain to curb first and then to crush the rising power of those revolted British colonies in the West, which, as the United States of America, had already extended their dominion far beyond the limits recognized by the treaties of 1783, and which were making serious inroads all over the world. upon the mercantile predominance of Great Britain after inflicting, in the war of 1812-'15, a by no means unimportant blow upon her naval prestige.

Had these offers not carried with them a necessity on the part of Great Britain of acquiescing in the steps which the allies proposed to take for reëstablishing the American empire of Spain, then already shaken to pieces by the revolutionary movements which, beginning in South America with the establishment of Joseph Bonaparte at Madrid, had extended to Mexico, it is by no means certain that the Government of George IV. might not have lent a listening ear to them. George Canning, then really at the head of the Cabinet, though nominally but Foreign Secretary, shared the alarm and disgust of the extreme Tories at the agitation for Parliamentary reform, and certainly regarded the democratic institutions of the United States with extreme aversion. But, in the liberated countries of Spanish America, England had found a new market from which for centuries she had been shut out by the

jealous policy of Spain. It was an epoch of colonial stock-gambling in London in the bonds of the Spanish-American states, and in enterprises of all kinds within the area of what had been the secluded and inaccessible domain of Castile and Leon in the New World.

Apart from all other considerations, the commercial importance to England of the independence of Spanish America determined the British Foreign Secretary to throw the whole weight of British power and British influence against the successful reëstablishment in the New World of that exclusive policy under which, for three centuries, Spain had closed the ports of either ocean from the Gulf of Mexico to Cape Horn against the traffic of the world. To this end Mr. Canning sought interviews with the then American Minister in England, Mr. Rush, of Pennsylvania, an amiable and intelligent man, and, communicating to him so much of what was going on between his own Cabinet and those of St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, and Vienna, as seemed to him well fitted to awaken the fears of the American people, urged him to promote some demonstration on the part of the American Government which might give the Continental powers reason to expect active opposition from the United States in the execution of their designs upon Mexico, New Granada, and the other Spanish-American states.

There was little or nothing in the attitude of revolutionary Spanish America toward the United States to suggest to an American Minister such a demonstration in their favor. Independent Mexico, under Iturbide, had shown no friendly regard for the United States. On the contrary, indeed, it was well known to the American Government of that day that the Mexicans regarded the cession both of Louisiana and of Florida to the United States as invalid acts, and that one of the projects of Iturbide, during his brief tenure of the imperial power in Mexico, had been to organize a serious demand upon the United States for the surrender to the Mexican Empire of the whole coast of the Mexican Gulf, from what is now the frontier of the State of Texas to the capes of Florida.

These are strange things to think of now, but it is necessary to bear them in mind when dealing with a question which, like this of the Monroe doctrine, goes down to the roots of our national being as a great power, and touches all the essential and enduring conditions of that being. Twenty years had barely passed away, at the time of which we are speaking, since the navigation of the Mississippi

had been obstructed by Spanish forts, and Spanish intrigues had been carried on with the Indians of what is now the valley of the great West, and American settlers maltreated within the territory of what are now the American States of Kentucky and Tennessee, by Spanish officers. A Senator of the United States had been found guilty of carrying on treasonable negotiations with English agents against the possessions of Spain. The cession of Florida to the United States by Spain, in 1821, was regarded, as we have said, with extreme anger by the Mexicans. There was nothing in the immediate past, therefore, and little in the apparent immediate future of the Spanish-American countries to prepossess the United States in favor of a policy intended chiefly to consolidate and develop the power of those countries. But it concerned the United States considerably that the commerce of these countries should not again be monopolized by Spain; for American goods and the American flag were then more widely known both on the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts of Spanish America than they are to-day; and it concerned the United States still more deeply to prevent the transfer to the New World of the mighty struggle between the arbitrary and the popular systems of government by which Europe had so long been convulsed.

When, therefore, Mr. Rush communicated to the American Secretary of State, Mr. John Quincy Adams, the substance of the conversations had by him with Mr. Canning, Mr. Adams at once saw in them, what neither Mr. Rush nor President Monroe seems to have seen, an opportunity not to be trifled with for notifying, not the Holy Alliance of the Continent alone, but Great Britain herself and the new Spanish-American states as well, that the system of the United States Government had been formed not for greatness only but for growth, and that the ages of European adventure in the New World had come to an end. It was with some difficulty that Mr. Adams brought the chief of his Government up to the point of taking the firm and advanced position upon which his own ardent and determined nature had instantly seized. Mr. Monroe saw clearly enough that the views which Mr. Adams had formulated and which he was asked to incorporate with his annual message, were by no means likely to gratify the British Minister. He dreaded the possible complications to result from giving expression to them, and he was anxious and uncertain as to the support which would be given him, particularly by the adherents of a great man then foremost among the rising public characters of the