Page:War and Other Essays.djvu/377

Rh The acquisition of Florida was not in obedience to a State necessity so clear and great as the acquisition of New Orleans, but Florida was geographically a part of our territory and Spain discharged her international duties with respect to it in such manner that our relations with her were always bad. There was a great interest to acquire Florida, if it could be done by peaceful purchase.

The acquisition of Texas and California was a very different matter. The two cases are generally conjoined, but they were very different and the whole story is one of those which a nation ignores in its own annals while vigorously denouncing similar episodes in the history of other states. The current argument now to justify what was done then is to point to Texas and the other states, to the harbor of San Francisco, the gold-mines, and the Pacific Railroad, and to say that we should have had none of these but for what was done in 1848. This is as if a man who had stolen a fortune fifty years ago should justify himself by saying that he would not otherwise have had the land, houses, ships, and stocks, which he has had and enjoyed. Public and private property are not to be put on the same plane, and this comparison is good only for the particular point for which it is adduced; namely, that the pleasure and profit obtained from spoliation never can justify it. Nevertheless, there is some force in the doctrine of "manifest destiny." Manifest destiny is far more sound than the empty and silly talk of the last two years about "Destiny." Manifest destiny includes a rational judgment about the relations which now exist compared with those which will probably arise in the future, but "Destiny" has nothing rational in it. To invoke it in public affairs is a refusal to think or or to be governed by reason. Destiny is a name for the