Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/881

Rh American republics by foreign Powers. In his next message President Monroe said:

We declare that we should consider any attempt [of the allied Powers] to extend their system to any part of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. . . . 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 manner, their destiny by any European Power, in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.

This was a courageous and timely and most proper declaration, and it had its effect: the Continental despotisms abandoned their projects of interference. A revived Napoleon, indeed, revived the experiment in the case of Maximilian of propagating the European system on this continent; but it quickly ended in disaster, carrying Napoleon himself with it and turning France into a republic.

The emergency which called forth the declaration of this doctrine having passed away, it has since been used as mere political stock buncombe to cover unscrupulous projects which could not be openly and honestly defended. At first an expression of national dignity and justice in defense of the rights of the weak, it has been made the excuse for subverting the very objects it was designed to promote. Conceived and promulgated in the interests of freedom, it has been villainously pressed into the interests of slavery. When there was apprehension that Spain might in some future contingency give liberty to the blacks of Cuba, and thus endanger the American slave system by the contagion of moral example, the Monroe doctrine was invoked to forestall the humane possibility. Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, and Mason, of Virginia, fulminated the "Ostend Manifesto" to prevent "foreign interference on this continent," that slavery might be perpetual; and this in the name of the Monroe policy.

And now it is proposed again to pervert the Monroe doctrine to an end never dreamed of by its promulgators, and in point-blank subversion of its legitimate objects. We have already shown that, promptly following the Monroe declaration, came Congressional instructions to the President to open negotiations with other nations for the encouragement of all canal-constructors. It was then well enough understood that the Monroe doctrine was declared, to stop the extension of political despotisms, not to stop the free and beneficent extension of commerce. It was to prevent aggressive interference with young and feeble republics on this continent, that they may take their equal and independent place among the nations. In the exercise of its national rights thus affirmed, the Republic of Colombia has entered into arrangements to avail itself of foreign enterprise in constructing a canal through its territory. And now, forsooth, the loud proclaimers of the Monroe doctrine of non-interference propose to violate the principle by interfering with the right of Colombia to open a canal. The principle of the Monroe doctrine is not capable of any such application; it is the very bulwark of De Lesseps's enterprise. Originally designed to guarantee to Colombia her sovereign rights over her own soil, it now becomes a hypocritical pretext for invading and crushing her nationality.

Slavery and war are the surviving scourges of barbarism. The Monroe doctrine, having been used to fortify and prolong the curse of slavery, is now to be used to multiply the curses of war, and of war against the progress of peace-promoting commerce.

The sham reasons for defeating De Lesseps being out of the way, there is little difficulty in getting at the real motives of hostility to his project, as evinced by a large portion of the press and embodied in the Congressional resolutions. There are powerful rival