This Article has been supposed to have a common origin with the more elaborate disquisition in the North American Review for April. 1856, the views and arguments being much alike, and coming to a similar conclusion, which is thus expressed in the Review:

While, therefore, the Monroe Doctrine with regard to forcible intervention was still a living question, it failed to meet the sanction of Congress, in whose judgment it seemed at least prudent to delay the adoption of any measures corroborative of the President's suggestions, until such intervention had actually taken place. The declaration of the President did not commit the policy of the country to any specific action in the premises. It rested with Congress to give it life and activity, and this Congress declined to do. Upon the wisdom of this decision we do not undertake to pronounce; we merely state the facts, for the purpose of drawing the conclusion that this branch of the Monroe Doctrine is not a living and substantive principle of our governmental policy. In case, however, of any emergency similar to that which prompted the declaration of Mr. Monroe, it would be competent for Congress to resuscitate and enforce the principle he announced, not because it was the doctrine of Mr. Monroe, but because it might be deemed wise and expedient at the time. Let the dead past bury its dead. To act in the living present is as sound a maxim in public affairs as in private life." Vol. 82, page 493.

It is a mistake, into which we are surprised that so able a statesman as General Cass has also fallen, to suppose that the Monroe Doctrine lacks any element of force or authority in consequence of not having been formally confirmed or enacted by Congress. It is a matter that pertains exclusively to the President, and his declaration gives it complete validity. By the distribution of powers in our frame of government, questions of international relation and diplomacy, except the declaration of war, are committed to the executive department. A resolution of approval, or even an act of Congress, may sometimes be of value, in any emergency, to show that the representatives of the people by states and districts are in full accord with the President, who acts for the whole nation as a unit. But the nation is as fully committed, and foreign powers are at liberty and bound to recognize our national determination on such a point, in a declaration of the President of the United States, as though the matter had been solemnly enacted by both Houses of Congress, and even ratified by the people in town meeting all over the country.

But it is equally a mistake to suppose that the Holy Alliance,

the Balance of Power, or the Political System of Europe, are no longer of concern to us, or that the danger is passed of a European invasion for the purpose of dictating to American nations the form of government under which they may live. If the Holy Alliance were indeed utterly abrogated and forgotten, it would not therefore follow that there is no longer reason to fear the introduction of the European system of politics in this hemisphere. The Balance of Power is still the central idea of European statesmanship. The doctrine still prevails, that rights are not inherent in the people, but granted to them by the crown or the conqueror; and that it cannot be a valid or "stable" government which has been created solely by the will of the people, and holds its authority from no higher source than "the consent of the governed." Unhappy Greece, which succumbed to the European system, is at this day as destitute of the blessings of good government as the most unfortunate of the Americau republics which rejected that system. And every nation in Europe stands liable to interference from its neighbors, for ends and with purposes lying outside of the mutual relations between it and the interfering powers. Nor were the statesmen of Europe ever more eager than they are to-day, to make their system of policy as dominant in the New World as it is in the Old. Those persons are doubtless greatly mistaken who imagine that the Great Rebellion was inaugurated without help or counsel from Europe; or that the confident reliance upon European help sprung only from the heated imaginations of the arch traitors; or that the instant recognition of belligerent rights in the rebels was a sudden after-thought, suggested at the moment; or that the command of vast resources in Europe, by the rebels, was merely a matter of private arrangement with Messrs. Spence and Laird, and their associates. Great effects require adequate causes. is hardly supposable that the ready coalition and instant action of the three powers, England, France, and Spain, which united in the invasion of Mexico for the purpose of imposing a government upon that free people, were the effect merely of a sudden resolve to improve an unlooked-for opportunity. We must rather believe that there was, somewhere, a pre-existing concert of design, to help the rebellion into full being, and thus make an op

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portunity, while our government was embarrassed, to overthrow the Monroe Doctrine, and get at once a firm footing on this continent for the political system of Europe. It will require a succinct but careful examination of this Mexican affair, to show precisely the present position of our government in regard to the Monroe Doctrine in its practical applications under the existing aspect of affairs in Europe.

Almost simultaneously. with the attack on Fort Sumter, as if by one and the same impulse, Spain obtained possession of the eastern provinces of St. Domingo, through the treachery of the President Santana, and made that fine island again a colony, our own government quietly acquiescing in this first grand outrage against the Monroe Doctrine. On the 29th of June, 1861, Mr. Corwin, our minister to Mexico, called the attention of our government to the inklings he had heard of a project of intervention in Mexican affairs by France and England; and he asks how that will affect the great idea of free government on this continent, and exclaims: "Surely American statesmen should be awake to even a suspicion that such portentious events are possible." He reasons: "The towering ambition of Napoleon to regulate Europe, when it shall have been gratified in that quarter, will seek to dazzle the world by impressing upon this continent the idea of French glory and French supremacy." That wild suggestion is now history. Mr. Seward 'replied, August 24th, that "This government cherishes the actual independence of Mexico as a cardinal object, to the exclusion of all foreign intervention, * yet the present moment does not seem to me an opportune one for personal reassurance of the policy of the government to foreign nations. Prudence requires that, in order to surmount the evils of faction at home, we should not unnecessarily provoke debates with foreign countries, but rather repair, as speedily as possible, the prestige which those evils have impaired." Wisdom would have dictated, what experience has sadly confirmed, that the national "prestige" would be best maintained by a frank and firm communication of our unalterable adhesion to the positions of Mr. Monroe. Instead of which, Mr. Seward wrote on the same day to Mr. Adams, our minister to England, to ascertain if the British government will forbear hostilities against Mexico, on

condition that we should aid the latter in the payment of certain claims. A month later, Sept. 24th, he instructed Mr. Adams "to inform the government of Great Britain that this government looks with deep concern to the subject of the armed movement," then publicly talked of, and to ask "for such explanations of it as her Majesty may feel at liberty to give," but grounding the request, not on the positions of the Monroe Doctrine, but on "the intimations we have already given in regard to an assumption of the payment of interest on the Mexican debt." In a like spirit he wrote to Mr. Dayton, March 3d, 1861:

"We have acted with moderation and with good faith towards the three Powers which invited our co-operation in their combined expedition to that disturbed and unhappy country. We have relied upon their disclaimers of all political designs against the Mexican republic. But we cannot shut out from our sight the indications which, unexplained, arc calculated to induce a belief that the government of France has lent a favoring ear to Mexican emissaries, who have proposed to subvert the republican American system in Mexico, and to import into that country a throne and even a monarch from Europe.

"You will intimate to M. Thouvenel that rumors of this kind have reached the President, and awakened some anxiety on his part. You will say that you are not authorized to ask explanations, but you are sure that if any can be made, which will be calculated to relieve that anxiety, they will be very welcome, inasmuch as the United States desire nothing so much as to maiutain a good understanding and cordial relations with the government and people of France.

"It will hardly be necessary to do more in assigning your reasons for this proceeding on your part than to say that we have more than once, and with perfect distinctness and candor, informed all the parties to the alliance that we cannot look with indifference upon any avowed intervention for political ends in a country so near and so closely connected with us as Mexico." p. 218. Mexican Doc., April, 1862.

This deprecatory, apologetic, almost fawning approach to the British and French governments, contrasts with the manly tone of a better day. In the year 1825, the government of France sent a large fleet to the American seas without giving notice to this government, or any explanation of the object. Mr. Clay, then Secretary of State under President J. Q. Adams, instructed Mr. Brown, our minister, Oct. 25, 1825, to inform the French government that the President expects that "the purpose of any similar movement hereafter," should be frankly communicated to this government. And he added that "if any sensibility should be manifested to what the French minister may choose to regard

as suspicions entertained here," he was to disavow those suspicions, but at the same time recapitulate the circumstances that gave apparent force to our surprise as to the objects of the movement. Mr. Brown replied, Jan. 10, 1826, that he had, "in the most delicate and friendly manner, put it to the Baron de Damas," the French Secretary, that in case France should again send out an unusual force, "its design and object should be communicated to the government of the United States." The Baron de Damas explained the peculiar circumstances of the case, and promised, in behalf of France, that, "in future, the United States should be duly apprised of the objects of every such squadron sent into their vicinity." That promise has never been vacated, and its fulfillment should have been directly and categorically demanded by us on the first demonstrations towards the invasion of Mexico. But no such demand was made. On the contrary, Mr. Dayton was directly inhibited from asking any explanations whatever. And he was directed, April 22d, 1862, to say that "M. Thouvenel's assurances on the subject of Mexico are eminently satisfactory to the President."

It is believed that our ministers abroad, Messrs. Adams, Dayton, Corwin, and Schurtz, did all that was becoming their station to do, to impress upon the administration the true objects of the coalition, the importance of our own interests that were imperiled, and the hollowness of the pretexts with which we were turned off. That it was the intention of the coalition to effect a change of government in Mexico, was notorious to all Europe. It was impossible for our ministers to shut their eyes upon facts so patent. We find Mr. Dayton, in a letter to Mr. Seward, June 5th, 1862, after some repetition of M. Thouvenel's fallacious disclaimers, adding with evident humiliation:

"It may be difficult to reconcile the published opinions of the commissioners acting for England and Spain in Mexico with these declarations of the French government; but your original dispatch instructed me to say that I was not authorized to demand explanations, though the government would be happy to receive them. These explanations have been freely given; if they conflict with what has been said and done elsewhere, I have not felt at liberty, under my instructions, to make such conflict the subject of comment.

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"Were it supposed, however, that France proposed to change the form of government, and establish a monarchy in a republic next to and adjoining our own, it is not to be doubted that, upon every just principle of international law