that, during a century, they have absorbed an immense portion of the earth's surface; have ousted from their neighbourhood three great nations, Russia from Alaska, France from Louisiana, Spain from all the South and West; have proclaimed by the Monroe doctrine that they will not allow any European power to "extend its system in any portion of this hemisphere"; have, recently, embarked on a most vigorous and expansive foreign policy in regard to Venezuela, Hawaii, Cuba, Spain, and the Philippines; have reorganised their army; and finally, are busy adopting measures of armament calculated to render them the second naval power in the world? According to Mr. Roosevelt, they are "a nation already of giant strength, which is but a foretaste of the power that is to come."
The next argument favouring a peaceful future in Europe is that so ably presented by Jeremy Bentham and his followers. To them monarchy is essentially warlike, and therefore democracy, a species of inverted monarchy, is essentially peaceful. Hobbes in former days had defined democracy as political power divided into small fragments, and Bentham said of it similarly that it is a polity where everybody counts for one, and nobody for more than one. The latter and his school inferred from this that, whereas monarchy is amenable to "sinister" influences, democracy avoids that pitfall, and remains in the broad and open way of peace.
