of June 15, 1824, he authorized his consul at Buenos Ayres to negotiate a commercial treaty with that Government. On the 1st of January, 1825, he notified other powers that England had determined to recognize the independence of Colombia, Mexico, and Buenos Ayres. In a speech in Parliament on the 15th of February, 1825, he explained and defended his conduct, blaming the United States, by implication, for pursuing "a reckless and headlong course," and claiming credit for following one "more strictly guarded in point of principle." "The whole question was one of time and mode."

Notwithstanding Canning's explanation, the principle of intervention on which he acted was not clear. Nothing in his act of recognition revealed a rule of any general value. He considered that " any other period or mode than that chosen would have been liable to some objection." Yet the period and mode he chose were strongly objected to throughout Europe, and met with energetic protest from Spain. Nearly two years more passed before he cleared up the mystery. Then, when driven to armed intervention in the affairs of Spain and Portugal, he made, on the 12th of December, 1826, a speech in Parliament which was perhaps the most celebrated of his life. At the very end of this speech he explained the "principle" on which he had acted in regard to the independence of the Spanish colonies, and the "time and mode" of recognition. It was the moment when a French army took possession of Spain:

If France occupied Spain, was it necessary, in order to avoid the consequences of that occupation, that we should blockade Cadiz? No! I looked another way. I sought materials of 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 Indies." I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.

The principle thus avowed by Canning added little to the European law of intervention; but the principle avowed by Monroe created an entire body of American jurisprudence. As an isolated act it meant little, but in Monroe's view it was not an isolated act; it was part of a system, altogether new and wholly American; and it was to be justified on grounds far wider than itself. The European law and practice of intervention, extending, as it did, its scope and energy with every new step in European development, could be met only by creating an American law and practice of intervention exclusive of the European within the range of its influence. This Monroe did not hesitate to do. With boldness which still startles and perplexes the world, he lopped off one great branch of European intervention and empire and created a new system of international relations. His opportunity was given by Canning, who, in the midst of his European difficulties in 1823, intimated that England would be well pleased to see the United States take ground even more advanced than in the recognition of the South American revolted States. Monroe lost no time in doubts or hesitations. In his annual message of December, 1823, he announced the principle that the new nations which his act alone had recognized as independent were by that act placed outside of the European system, and that the United States would regard any attempt to extend that system among them as unfriendly to the United States.

With the Governments who have declared their independence, and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States. It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their

*

*

political system to any portion of either continent without endangering our peaco and happiness. It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition in any form with indifference.

So sweeping a right of intervention had never been claimed unless by Russia in regard to the Greeks in 1821, and has never been exercised by any other single power; but the claim rested on the same general ground as that of the innumerable interventions of Europe. "Danger to our peace and happiness" was not essentially different from "danger to peace, honor, political power, and interests" which European nations had alleged as just reasons for intervention, and while the right of intervention on this ground was so energetically maintained, the right of deciding absolutely as to the time and mode of intervention was as energetically exercised by Monroe.

From that day to this the American people have always, and unanimously, supported and approved the Monroe doctrine. They needed. no reasoning to prove that it was vital to their safety. The enormous and rapidly increasing force developed by Europe in her system of joint action, from the treaty of Verona to the overwhelming authority, hitherto unknown to mankind, which was exhibited in the treaty of Berlin; the rapid extension of her system over the rest of the world, and the inevitable pressure of its expansion; her immense superiority in wealth and mechanical resources; the irresistible energy of her enormous naval and military armaments when concentrated, as under the Berlin treaty, in a single mass, left no doubt that America must abandon the hope of independence if she could not maintain a system of her own. Europeans, indeed, sometimes expressed fear of America, but their fears rested only on the assumption that America could stand apart. Even the celebrated historian Niebuhr complained because the Czar did not conquer the Turkish Empire and found Christian states in Asia Minor in order to balance the growing power of America. Europe did not, it is true, adopt Niebuhr's advice and colonize Asia Minor, but she conquered, or subdued under her system, all the rest of Asia, and used this accession of strength for her common objects. spread her system over all Asia, all Africa, all Australasia, and all Polynesia. America made no contest, even within America, except in regard to those countries or communities which expressly declared their will and their power to be American.

She

Within that limited range President Monroe attempted to build up an American system. He disclaimed the right or the intention to interfere with actual European possessions in America, so long as these communities were contented to remain European; but he claimed and exercised, under the broadest principle, the right to intervene in favor of communities that plainly displayed their wish and their power to be American; and, what was vital to the exercise of his claim, he asserted and used in its fullest extent the right to judge for himself, and finally, both as to "time and mode,"-both when and how-any par ticular community had proved its will and its right to claim admission into the American system. Against the opposition of all Europe, and at the risk of many and serious embarrassments, Monroe took and suc cessfully held ground which his successors have struggled with varying fortune to maintain.

The right of intervention lay necessarily at the bottom of the strife of forces, and the United States exercised it freely, although usually striving to exercise it for the common good of an American system. In the case of Texas, the United States Government, as is notorious, exercised the whole right of intervention against an American power; but

the case of Texas did not differ in principle from that of Colombia, except in being wholly an American and domestic affair. In both instances the intervention rested on the claim of the Executive and the Legislature to be absolute and final judge of the "time and mode" of interference. In no case were other governments expected to sanction the decision in order to give it validity.

In the case of Texas, however, we have to call attention to a subject on which the proposed action of Congress necessarily depends.

In a report made June 18, 1836, by Mr. Clay, from the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, in respect to the recognition of the independence of Texas (Senate Doc. 406, Twenty-fourth Congress, first session), are the following passages:

The recognition of Texas as an independent power may be made by the United States in various ways: First, by treaty; second, by the passage of a law regulating commercial intercourse between the two powers; third, by sending a diplomatic agent to Texas with the usual credentials; or, lastly, by the Executive receiving and accrediting a diplomatic representative from Texas, which would be a recognition as far as the Executive only is competent to make it. In the first and third modes the concurrence of the Senate in its executive character would be necessary, and in the second in its legislative character.

The Senate alone, without the cooperation of some other branch of the Government, is not competent to recognize the existence of any power.

The President of the United States, by the Constitution, has the charge of their foreign intercourse. Regularly he ought to take the initiative in the acknowledg ment of the independence of any new power, but in this case he has not yet done it, for reasons which he, without doubt, deems sufficient. If in any instance the President should be tardy, he may be quickened in the exercise of his power by the expression of the opinion, or by other acts, of one or both branches of Congress, as was done in relation to the Republics formed out of Spanish America. But the committee do not think that on this occasion any tardiness is justly imputable to the Executive. About three months only have elapsed since the establishment of an independent government in Texas, and it is not unreasonable to wait a short time to see what its operation will be, and especially whether it will afford those guaranties which foreign powers have a right to expect before they institute relations with it. Taking this view of the whole matter, the committee concluded by recommending to the Senate the adoption of the following resolution:

Resolved, That the independence of Texas ought to be acknowledged by the United States whenever satisfactory information shall be received that it has in successful operation a civil government capable of performing the duties and fulfilling the obligations of an independent power.

President Andrew Jackson, in his Texas message of December 21, 1836, began by calling attention to these resolutions passed by "the two Houses at their last session, acting separately, that the independence of Texas ought to be acknowledged by the United States whenever satisfactory information should be received that it had in successful operation a civil government capable of performing the duties and fulfilling the obligations of an independent power.'" After treating shortly the principles of recognition, President Jackson continued:

Nor has any deliberate inquiry ever been instituted in Congress, or in any of our legislative bodies, as to whom belonged the power of recognizing a new State-a power the exercise of which is equivalent, under some circumstances, to a declaration of war; a power nowhere expressly delegated, and only granted in the Constitution, as it is necessarily involved in some of the great powers given to Congress; in that given to the President and Senate to form treaties with foreign powers, and to appoint ambassadors and other public ministers, and in that conferred upon the President to receive ministers from foreign nations. In the preamble to the resolution of the House of Representatives it is distinctly intimated that the expediency of recognizing the independence of Texas should be left to the decision of Congress. In this view, on the ground of expediency, I am disposed to concur, and do not therefore consider it necessary to express any opinion as to the strict constitutional right of the Executive, either apart from or in conjunction with the Senate over

the subject. It is to be presumed that on no future occasion will a dispute arise, as none has heretofore occurred, between the Executive and the Legislature in the exercise of the power of recognition. It will always be considered consistent with the spirit of the Constitution and most safe that it should be exercised, when probably leading to war, with a previous understanding with that body by whom war can alone be declared, and by whom all the provisions for sustaining its perils must be furnished. Its submission to Congress, which represents in one of its branches the States of this Union and in the other the people of the United States, where there may be reasonable ground to apprehend so grave a consequence, would certainly afford the fullest satisfaction to our own country and a perfect guaranty to all other nations of the justice and prudence of the measures which might be adopted.

The initiative thus asserted by Congress and conceded by President Jackson to Congress in the case of the recognition of Texas was followed in the case of Hungary by President Taylor in the instructions already quoted, which authorized his agent to invite the revolutionary government of Hungary to send to the United States a diplomatic representative, since the President entertained no doubt that in such case at the next meeting of Congress "her independence would be speedily recognized by that enlightened body."

Until now no further question has been raised in regard to the powers of Congress.

So much space has been taken by this historical summary that the case of Texas must be passed over without further notice, and the cases of Haiti and Santo Domingo may be set aside as governed by peculiar influences. The record shows that in every instance except Poland down to 1850 where any people has claimed independence by right of revolt the right of intervention has been exercised against the will of one or the other party to the dispute. In every instance the only question that has disturbed the intervening powers has regarded neither the right nor the policy so much as the "time and mode" of action. The only difference between the European and American practice was that the United States aimed at moderating or restricting the extreme license of European intervention, and this was the difference which brought the United States nearly into collision with Europe in 1861 and 1862. Lords Palmerston and Russell, as well as the Emperor Napoleon and his ministers, entertained no doubt of their right to intervene even before our civil war had actually commenced, and accordingly recognized the insurgent States as belligerents in May, 1861, although no legal question had yet been raised requiring such a decision. The United States Government never ceased to protest with the utmost energy against the act as premature and unjust, and this last and most serious case of interference, in which the United States was concerned as an object of European intervention, revealed the vital necessity of their American system at the same time that it revealed the imminent danger of its destruction.

THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO, 1861-1866.

Allusion has been already made to the declaration of Lord John Russell on the part of the British Government in the House of Commons May 6, 1861, in which he announced that the law officers of the Crown had already "come to the opinion that the Southern Confederacy of America, according to those principles which seem to them to be just principles, must be treated as a belligerent." This astonishing promise of belligerency to an insurrection which had by the latest advices at that time neither a ship at sea nor an army on land, before the fact of war was officially known in England to have been proclaimed by either party, was accompanied by a letter of the same date from Lord Johu

Russell to the British ambassador at Paris, in which he said that the accounts which had been received from America were "sufficient to show that a civil war has broken out among the States which lately composed the American Union."

Other nations have therefore to consider the light in which, with reference to that war, they are to regard the Confederacy into which the Southern States have united themselves; and it appears to Her Majesty's Government that, looking at all the circumstances of the case, they can not hesitate to admit that such Confederacy is entitled to be considered as a belligerent, invested with all the rights and prerogatives of a belligerent.

Under these circumstances, Lord John Russell invited the Emperor of France to cooperate with England in "a joint endeavor" to obtain "from each of the belligerents" certain concessions in favor of neutrals. On May 8 the French minister "concurred entirely in the views of Her Majesty's Government" and pledged himself to the joint action. On May 13 the British Government issued its formal proclamation of neutrality between the United States and "certain States styling themselves the Confederate States of America."

Lord John Russell justified this action on the ground of "the size and population of the seceding States" and "the critical condition of our (British) commerce." He denied that the British Government had any thought of giving assistance to the South.

Nevertheless, the language of Lord John Russell showed that he considered the issue as decided in advance and that his measures were shaped on that assumption. His speech of May 6 characterized the insurgents without qualification as "the Southern Confederacy of America." In his official correspondence with his official agents he used the term "Northern or Southern confederation of North America," or "the Confederate States of America," as though their independence were fully established. All his expressions and acts warranted the belief that the recognition of belligerency was in his mind only a preliminary step to the recognition of independence as an already accomplished fact, and that he had hurried the declaration of belligerency in order to avoid the remonstrances certain to be made by the new American minister about to arrive. More serious still as a symptom of European temper was the joint action concerted between England and France, which soon proved that England, while waiting for the dissolution of the Union, meant, in recognizing the independence of the Southern Confederacy, to revive her old belligerent claims of 1812, which had never been expressly abandoned.

This threatened wreck of all American rights was even more imminent than our highest officials supposed. Only by slow degrees have we learned how narrow an escape we made, and even at this day much remains to be revealed. We know that as early as March, 1861, the French minister at Washington advised his Government to recognize the Confederate States, and in May he advised it to intervene by forcibly raising the American blockade. Mercier's recommendation was communicated to Russell, who entertained no doubts as to the right of intervention, either diplomatic or military, even at that early moment. when the serious operations of war had hardly begun.

There is much good sense in Mercier's observations [wrote Russell to Palmerston, October 17]. But we must wait; I am persuaded that, if we do anything, it must be on a grand scale. It will not do for England and France to break a blockade for the sake of getting cotton; but in Europe powers have often said to belligerents: "Make up your quarrels. We propose to give terms of pacification which we think fair and equitable. If you accept them, well and good. But if your adversary accepts them, and if you refuse them, our mediation is at an end, and you must expect to see us your enemies."