436 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



if they tliought that they were being exploited in the colonial re- 

 lation. To such extent as this destiny was aimed at or uncon- 

 sciously brought about, the construction of modern history put 

 forward by Rodbertus fails to be correct. 



It has become a common place of history that the revolt of the 

 American colonies was a good thing for the colonies and for Eng- 

 land. The question no longer has any other than speculative in- 

 terest, and perhaps no speculation is more idle than that which 

 deals with the possible consequences of some other course of his- 

 tory than that which actually took place ; but, if such speculation 

 ever could be profitable, it would be upon this question : What 

 would have been the consequences to human welfare if the Eng- 

 lish statesmen of 1775 could have risen to the nineteenth-century 

 doctrine of colonies, and if the whole English-speaking world 

 could have remained united in sympathy and harmony ? This 

 question has so much practical value that it may help us to see 

 the advantage there may be in a colonial relation where it still ex- 

 ists, and to see that there is no universal and dogmatic ground 

 for independence which can be urged by a third party. 



Independence was brought about on the Western continent ; 

 not to any important extent anywhere else. The Spanish- Amer- 

 ican colonies had grievances against their mother country which 

 fully justified their revolt ; still, it appears that they revolted 

 chiefly from contagion and imitation. They have never been 

 able to obtain good standing in the family of nations as inde- 

 pendent commonwealths. The Panama Congress of 1824, in its 

 original plan, promised to be a very important incident in the de- 

 velopment of the relations of the New World to the Old. It ap- 

 peared for a time that the Western continent might be organized 

 as a unit in independence of, and possible hostility to, the Eastern 

 continent. The project came to nothing. It was crushed in one 

 of the hardest political collisions in our history, that between the 

 Adams administration and the Jackson opposition. The theory 

 of it, however, remains behind and, under the name of the Monroe 

 doctrine, has remained as a vague and elastic notion. The prac- 

 tical outcome of any attempt to realize that doctrine must be to 

 organize the world into a dual system. Instead of the old notion 

 of a world-unit ruled from Europe as its head, we should have a 

 dual world-system, one half under the hegemony of Europe, the 

 other half under that of the United States. Is this a rational or 

 practicable plan of future development ? Is it not fantastic and 

 arbitrary ? If the United States pretends to hold aloof from a 

 share in the affairs of the Eastern continent, and to demand that 

 all European states shall abstain from any share in the affairs of 

 the Western continent, is that anything more than a pose and an 

 affectation ? Have we not within a year or two been forced to 



