what should be omitted under all contingencies. The verbal literalist would, on the one hand, make the United States an involuntary party, to all controversies between European and American governments, in order that the latter may not be "oppressed"; while the historical literalist would, on the other hand, treat Monroe's declarations as obsolete, since the conditions to which they specially referred no longer exist. But when we consider the mutations in the world's affairs, these modes of reasoning must be confessed to be highly unsatisfactory. The "Monroe Doctrine" has in reality become a convenient title by which is denoted a principle that doubtless would have been wrought out if the message of 1823 had never been written—the principle of the limitation of European power and influence in the Western Hemisphere. We have seen, in the first paper of this series, that as early as 1778 the Continental Congress, in the treaty of alliance with France, obtained from its ally the renunciation of any claim to the British possessions in North America. When Washington, in his Farewell Address, observed that Europe had "a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation," he lent emphasis to the thought that it was desirable so far as possible to dissociate America from the vicissitudes of European politics. Giving to this thought a further reach, Jefferson, while President, in 1808, declared: "We shall be satisfied to see Cuba and Mexico remain in their present dependence, but very unwilling to see them in that of either France or England, politically or commercially. We consider their interests and ours as the same, and the object of both must be to exclude European influence from this hemisphere." On January 15, 1811, twelve years before Monroe's message was published, Congress, in secret session, "taking into view the peculiar situation of Spain and her American provinces," and "the influence which the destiny of the territory adjoining the southern border of the United States might have upon their security, tranquillity, and commerce," resolved that the United States could not "without serious inquietude see any part of said territory pass into the hands of any foreign power"; and the President was authorized to occupy all or any part of the Floridas, "in the event of an attempt to occupy the same, or any part thereof, by any foreign government."
In the long struggle, which was eventually crowned with success, to exclude European domination from the interoceanic canal routes, and to secure the construction of a neutralized canal under American auspices, American statesmen no doubt were aided by the authority of Monroe's declarations, but were by no means dependent upon them. It is a remarkable fact that Seward, neither in the formal demand upon France in 1865 to desist from armed intervention in Mexico for the purpose of overthrowing the domestic republican government under Juarez and establishing on its ruins the foreign imperial government under Maximilian, nor in any of the official correspondence relating to the subject, mentioned the "Monroe Doctrine," although his action came within the letter as well as the spirit of the message of 1823. President Polk, on the other hand, in pronouncing against the acquisition of new "dominion" in North America by a European power, although he was well within the limits of the "Monroe Doctrine" as it is now understood, invoked a passage that fell far short of sustaining his position. It would be easy to cite many similar examples.
The Monroe Doctrine, as a limitation upon the extension of European power and influence on the American continents, is now generally recognized as a principle of American policy. To its explicit acceptance by Great Britain and Germany there may be added the declaration which was spread by unanimous consent upon the minutes of the Hague Conference, and which was permitted to be annexed to the signature of the American delegates to the convention for the peaceful adjustment of international disputes, that nothing therein contained should be so construed as to require the United States "to depart from its traditional policy of not entering upon, interfering with, or entangling itself in the political questions or internal administration of any foreign state," or to relinquish "its traditional attitude toward purely American questions."
