to France, when his victories should establish his power, would be easier with vague boundaries as the specious cause of new aggressions.

The treaty of Ghent served to emphasise the fact that Great Britain's disregard of neutral rights had been due more to Napoleon than to any permanent differences of view between England and the United States upon the abstract questions. The aggressions which had been the chief causes of America's declaration of war against England, impressments and paper blockades, were not even mentioned in the treaty. With the banishment of Napoleon, they had ceased to be regarded as menacing, and they have never since that day resumed their former importance. Indeed, less than fifty years later America hailed with enthusiasm the news that Captain Charles Wilkes, of the 'San Jacinto,' had stopped the British mail steamer, the 'Trent,' on the high seas, and forcibly removed the Confederate commissioners, Mason and Slidell, a violation of the very principle which the United States had fought to maintain in the war of 1812. Had it not been for the vision and courage, the Platonic knowledge, of the British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, the Queen, the Prince Consort, of Lincoln and his advisers who restored the commissioners to a British steamer, and the diplomatic skill of the British and American ministers, Lord Lyons and Charles Francis Adams, that same difference of opinion might have caused another war.

And when the question speedily arose again, this time upon matters relating to the slave trade, which both nations abhorred, the new unity was manifested by the conclusion of the British-American Reciprocity Treaty of 1862, in which both nations accepted the right of search of suspected slave-ships; while a supplementary article, concluded on the seventeenth of February, 1863, allowed this reciprocal right of search to be exercised within the areas of the American coast. The logic of com-. mon ideals had again discovered new and superior unities.

Napoleon's not irreconcilable views upon blockades, impressment, and neutral rights, had caused the war of 1812. His conscienceless skill, not a unity of interest, had caused America to send her citizens to fight, though indirectly, for a cause that was not their cause; and the

whole trend of British-American relations since the treaty of Ghent has served to emphasise the fact that it was not their cause. That American interests were safe with Great Britain victorious over Napoleon was convincingly demonstrated within four years, for Richard Rush and Charles Bagot, the American minister to London and the British minister to the United States, concluded a convention by which both nations agreed to practical disarmament on the Great Lakes, which separate the British dominions in Canada from the United States. From this agreement, proclaimed on April 28, 1818, to the present day that boundary line has stood, unmarred by hidden mine or frowning bastion.

And from the end of the war of 1812 to the present hour England and America have never been at war. Subsequent ministers have faced grave differences, perplexing problems; but none have been strong enough to destroy the 'firm and universal peace' which the treaty of Ghent promised in its first article, and which the Rush-Bagot agreement so signally confirmed. In this convention England and America had discovered a new unity, a mutual faith in the peaceful method; and in the strength of that new unity all the pending disputes respecting American and Canadian questions were ultimately adjusted by rational processes, and without the presence of menacing guns of war. This arrangement for mutual disarmament on the Lakes,' says Frank A. Updyke, in his 'Diplomacy of the War of 1812,' 'has undoubtedly been the greatest single factor in the continuance of peaceful relations between the United States and Great Britain during the last one hundred years.'

Richard Rush's eight years of continuous service as minister at the Court of St James during which term Charles Bagot, Stratford Canning, and H. U. Addington filled in succession the post of British minister to the United States, saw the newly discovered British-American unity illustrated in new fields. The old Spanish Empire, built up by a process which can never be repeated, the discovery, conquest, and settlement of a new and fertile continent, had dissolved. The Spanish-American colonies had declared themselves independent of Spain, and the United States had, in 1822, recognised them as independent republics. The Holy Alliance, in pursuance of its set

purpose, 'to use all their efforts to put an end to the system of representative government. . . and to prevent its being introduced into those countries where it is not yet known,' was contemplating intervention, to restore those republics to their former allegiance. The problem of three bodies had suddenly expanded into almost world-wide proportions involving many nations, but the immediate concern of British-American diplomacy was still British-American unity.

In August 1823, George Canning, Foreign Secretary from 1822 to 1827, wrote to Minister Rush:

'Is not the moment come when our governments might understand each other as to the Spanish-American colonies, and if we arrive at such an understanding, would it not be expedient for ourselves and beneficial for all the world that the principles of it should be clearly settled and openly avowed? For ourselves:

I. We conceive the recovery of the colonies of Spain to be hopeless;

II. We conceive the question of recognition of them as independent states to be one of time and circumstances;

III. We are, however, by no means disposed to throw any impediment in the way of an arrangement between them and the mother country by amicable negotiations;

IV. We aim not at the possession of any portion of them ourselves;

V. We could not see any portion of them transferred to

any other power with indifference.

'If these observations and feelings are, as I firmly believe them to be, common to your government with ours, why should we hesitate eventually to confide them to each other, and to declare them in the face of the world?'

Without waiting for instructions Rush replied: 'I believe I may confidently say that the sentiments unfolded in your note are fully those which belong also to my government.' He then reported the facts to President Monroe, who consulted the two ex-presidents, Jefferson and Madison, each of whom expressed the belief that the joint declaration suggested by Canning was highly desirable. Jefferson's reply declared:

"The question presented by the letters... is the most

d to

momentous which has ever been offered to my contemplation since that of independence. That made us a nation; this sets our compass and points the course we are to steer through the ocean of time opening on us. By acceding to her proposition we detach her (England) from the band of despots, The bring her mighty weight into the scale of free government,

ere it

and emancipate a continent at one stroke. ... Great Britain is the nation which can do us the most harm of any one on earth, and with her on our side we need not fear the whole world. . . . I could, therefore, honestly join in the declaration proposed.'

Madison's reply was no less definite :

'It is particularly fortunate that the policy of Great Britain, though guided by calculations different from ours, has presented a cooperation for an object the same as ours. With that cooperation we have nothing to fear from the rest of Europe, and with it, the best reliance on the success of our joint and laudable views. There ought not to be any backwardness, I think, in meeting her in the way she has proposed. ... It cannot be doubted that Mr Canning's proposal, though made with the air of consultation as well as concert, was founded on a predetermination to take the course marked out, whatever might be the reception given here to his invitation. But this consideration ought not to divert us from what is just and proper in itself.'

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find in the whole history of American diplomacy one single instance of so complete an agreement among three equally eminent statesmen concerning a proposition of comparable importance; but the proposed joint declaration was never made. The reason is, doubtless, contained in the following passage from John Quincy Adam's Memoirs, under date Nov. 15, 1823: Monroe asked for the correspondence . . with a view to the particular notice he intends to take of it in his message, which I thought should have been only in general terms. He thinks, as I do, that this movement on the part of Great Britain is impelled more by her interest than by a principle of general liberty.' Distrust, suspicion, fear, that great sinister triad which has wrecked so many projects for the promotion of international unity, these, and these alone, prevented the proposed joint declaration. America and England, seeing as one, acted as two. The meditated

crusade was abandoned; but its defeat marked no new milestone on the road toward international unity. John Quincy Adams wrote the sentences of the message of Dec. 2, 1823, known as the Monroe Doctrine, and he expressed them in general terms. His scattered sentences, conveniently vague, have to be sought out and brought together from a mass of information upon a great variety of domestic subjects, before we can realise fully the text known as the Monroe Doctrine. All told they make up only about 15 per cent. of the message; and they state not a new but a very old American policy. Alexander Hamilton, in the early days of his career, had formulated one element of it thus: It ought to be the aim of American statesmen to prevent and frustrate for all time European interference with the development of the states, or even with the destinies of the whole northern continent.' Tom Paine, in 1776, had previsioned another element when he said in Common Sense': 'As Europe is our market for trade, we ought to form no partial connexion with any part of it. It is the true interest of America to steer clear of European contentions.'

Gradually, as the two continents grew closer together, Hamilton's principle had been extended, by new announcements, to South America also, and Paine's doctrine of steering clear of European contentions had been repeatedly revamped to meet new emergencies. The Monroe Doctrine, therefore, as John Quincy Adams well understood, presented no new programme. It merely stated an established point of view. The vital paragraph declared:

'We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers (the Holy Alliance) to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power, we have not interfered, and shall not interfere. But 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 other manner, their