combine against us on any and every question of American policy as the interests of their European dominators might dictate, the situation would have been fraught with unpleasant possibilities. No antiquated superstition had to be invoked to indicate our true interests here, no shibboleth to arouse flagging partisanship, often miscalled patriotism, and hence not one word during all this trying period was said about the Monroe Doctrine. Right in their general contention, the United States did not need to be bolstered up by it. Alas that the course of the United States in this chapter of history should have given one serious and lasting cause of regret, the tarnish on our national honor resulting from the execution of Maximilian and his generals ! I Since its formation in 1844, Santo Domingo (the Dominican Republic) had maintained the uneven tenor of its way; and in 1861 certain of the revolutionists, led by General Pedro Santana, endeavored to bring about a retransfer of the sovereignty of the Republic to Spain, in the hope that thus a more stable government might be attained. Secretary Seward expressed the sentiments of the United States as to this affair by saying that we should view with grave concern and dissatisfaction movements in Cuba toward Spanish authority in Santo Domingo. However, Spain sent troops thither. A long, bloody, and fruitless strife ensued, and the Spanish finally withdrew. Disturbances in Santo Domingo continued. President Grant, in his second annual message, December 5, 1870, recommended its annexation, presenting as his opinion that, if it were not annexed to the United States, "a free port will be negotiated for by European nations in the Bay of Samana." He said: "The acquisition of Santo Domingo is an adherence to the Monroe Doctrine; it is a measure of self-protection; it is asserting our just claim to a controlling influence over the great commercial traffic soon to flow from west to east by way of the Isthmus of Darien." No vote was ever taken on the above recommendation. Congress was at that time engaging in a bitter wrangle and indulging in much personal abuse of the President, and questions of state were sidetracked on account of personal and partisan rancor. Santo Domingo and Haiti remain to-day in much the same condition in which they were at the time of the Grant message. The barbarous condition of this rich and beautiful island, whose sunset skies are no redder from the fading light of day than are her fields from the blood of her sons slain in useless, cruel, inhuman strife, is a terrible commentary upon the imbecility and impotency of our foreign policy. How long will the murderous barbarism of Santo Domingo endure-forever? VOL. II-26 Even if we have no statesmen, only politicians; no leaders, only time-servers; no foreign policy, only the frayed remnants of a discredited national superstition, ought not at least the American people to have instinct and common sense and decency enough to redeem from barbarism, once for all, this island so near our shores ? Why cite the Monroe Doctrine as warrant for annexing Santo Domingo to the United States? Our obligations to humanity are surely higher authority than an academic theory which exists without reason or sanction of any kind, save alone the fiat of a great government. Santo Domingo and Haiti should be placed under the protection of a civilized power, in order that on this unhappy island civilization may at last take root and thrive, yes, and abide, — there is the reason for annexation. II Another appeal to the Monroe Doctrine was made after the British Parliament, in 1867, passed the British North America Act, which bound into one confederation the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. (Within the next few years the provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba, and Prince Edward Island were admitted into the Confederation.) The Dominion Parliament was established at Ottawa, and a democratic and liberal government was guaranteed throughout the Confederation (capable of extension, under appropriate conditions, to all British North America), with the right of suffrage and substantially all the constitutional privileges which citizens of the United States possess, excepting the right of electing the executive. Naturally the Monroe Doctrine croakers saw in this proceeding a "grave infringement of our rights." It was asserted that this legislation was against the “manifest destiny" of these provinces, which, if left to their own devices, would eventually become, it was said, a part of the United States. A resolution was introduced in Congress expressing great uneasiness at "such a vast conglomeration of American states, established on the monarchial principle, such a proceeding [the Confederation] being in contravention of the traditionary and constantly declared principles of the United States, and endangered their most important interests;" and Mr. Seward felt called upon to state that "British Columbia, by whomsoever possessed, must be governed in conformity with the interests of her people and of society upon the American continent." Such rubbish as this was bandied about in the newspapers. Statesmen of a certain type were, of course, against England; and anemic philosophers, bowed beneath the dust of a thousand quarto volumes, expounded "general principles," "traditions," and similar foolishness, in an attempt to prolong the nine days' sensation. It does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Seward, or to any one else, to proclaim the doctrine that Venezuela, Santo Domingo, Haiti, Colombia, and every other State of Latin America "by whomsoever possessed, must be governed in conformity with the interests of her people and of society upon the American continent." If the United States were to take this position with reference to these southern communities, and enforce it, such a course would demonstrate broad statesmanship and sound policy. But to take this position with reference to Canada is to utter balderdash of an especially transparent type. British North America was, and is, a highly civilized government of a representative democratic type, monarchial in name rather than in fact, and any perturbation of our representatives over its establishment was entirely needless. Our 'uneasiness" in regard to the latent possibilities of the British North American Confederation disclosed us in the unenviable attitude of opposing the legitimate development of a great civilized community at the North, while fostering barbaric deviltry at the South, and why? Are our hearts wrong? Do we love savages and hate civilized men? Are we cravens; do we fear to have prosperous and happy neighbors on this continent? No! But in our blind and fatuous worship of a fetish we have ceased to reason, hugging to our hearts an outworn tradition of the past, recking little neither the appeal of the future nor the crying needs of the present. The world has moved since 1823, when the European monarchies were mostly absolutisms and the Latin-American countries gave promise of becoming genuine republics. Now most of the European nations have representative parliaments and constitutional guaranties, while the Latin-American countries have become military despotisms; yet we are still blindly clinging to the doctrine that applied before the reversal of conditions had taken place. "Tempora mutantur, et [non] nos mutamur in illis." III In 1866 Chili and Peru, as allies, were at war with Spain. The war had grown out of outrages committed upon Spanish citizens in Chili and Peru. For these outrages the allies had refused all redress, confidently expecting, in virtue of the Monroe Doctrine (or their interpretation of it), the support of the United States. In March of 1866 Valparaiso was bombarded by the Spanish fleet. CSecretary Seward wrote to Mr. Kirkpatrick, our envoy to Chili, on June 2, 1866, that the United States would "maintain and insist with all the decision and energy which are compatible with our existing neutrality that the republican system which is accepted by any one of those [Latin-American] States shall not be wantonly assailed, and that it shall not be subverted as an end of a lawful war by European powers." [One of the strange features of this correspondence and of the rank and file of pronouncements issuing from Washington is the persistence with which these Latin-American military despotisms are referred to as "republican" or "republics." If Chili and Peru were republics, that fact alone would of course constitute a prima facie bond of sympathy between us and them. But the word "republic" is a misnomer when applied to a murderous military dictatorship. Moreover, an attempt to arouse sympathy for a dangerous and irresponsible despotism when in difficulty with a European power, by conveying the idea, at least by implication, that it is a democracy being oppressed by an absolutism, is misplaced, if not disingenuous. When the United States says that "the republican system which is accepted by any one of those States shall not be wantonly assailed,” meaning, by "States," South American dictatorships, it apparently contemplates by its prohibition only attack from without. But these "republican" systems (if they ever existed) have been not only "assailed," but utterly destroyed; and the work of destruction has proceeded from within, not from without. It would be absurd to claim that the "republican" systems of South America are or ever have been endangered by the European powers. Furthermore, in every case where European powers have intervened, the Latin-American despotisms have been the aggressors; and the interventions have been for the protection of the nationals of the interveners against tyrannyor anarchy. IN CHAPTER IV APPLICATIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS OF THE N recent years one of those interminable boundary disputes so common in South America afforded the pretext for a well-known ebullition of the Monroe Doctrine. A controversy between Venezuela and Great Britain, as to the dividing line between the former country and British Guiana, had been dragging along the tortuous path of diplomacy for half a century. Every country in South America has had a dozen such disputes in regard to frontiers wholly unsurveyed and mostly uninhabited. Until about the period of Cleveland's first administration Venezuela had been usually too busy over its revolutions to enter seriously into this matter. With Colombia, too, as well as with Great Britain, Venezuela had had boundary disputes over territory wholly unknown to the successive dictators or their military henchmen, and with regard to which there were not and never had been any records, or anything in the nature of a map except lines drawn from the imagination. But the English were improving Guiana, and gradually advancing the methods of civilization deeper and deeper into the border-land. The writer does not purpose to narrate the history of the diplomatic correspondence between Venezuela and Great Britain upon this question. There was not, and there never had been, a definitely established boundary; and each side made such claims as it conceived its interests or its rights justified. The matter lay quiescent for long periods; it was only agitated between revolutions, and then always by Venezuela. Many of her demands were preposterous in the extreme, for instance, that of January 31, 1844, claiming that Great Britain should recognize the Essequibo River as the boundary line. Whenever Venezuela made a demand, or committed a trespass, or perpetrated an outrage, she hastened to lay her side of the story before the United States, secure in the belief that the State Department would give her an attentive hearing. As early as 1876 Venezuela was at work trying to get the United States to become her ally in this matter; and in 1881 Mr. Evarts, Secretary of State under President Hayes, had informed the Venezuelan minister that "this government could not look with indiffer |