438 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



We may probe tlie ideas and projects which are grouped under 

 this attempt at a dual organization of the world as we will, in no 

 direction do we come upon anything but crude notions and in- 

 flated rhetoric. Such notions have hitherto proved very costly 

 to the human race. President Cleveland, in his Venezuela mes- 

 sage, sought a parallel for the Monroe doctrine in the balance-of- 

 power doctrine. The parallel was unfortunate, if it had been 

 true. The balance-of-power doctrine cost frightful expenditures 

 of life and capital, and what was won by them ? Where is the 

 balance of power as it was understood in the eighteenth century, 

 or in Napoleon's time ? A real parallel to the Monroe doctrine is 

 furnished by the colonial system. The latter, as above shown, 

 was the doctrine of the unity of the world under the headship of 

 Europe. The former is the doctrine of the dualism of the world, 

 with Europe at the head of one part and the United States at the 

 head of the other. One of these conceptions of the new organiza- 

 tion of the human race, which is to grow out of the colonization 

 and settlement of the outlying countries, is as arbitrary as the 

 other, and the new one can never be realized without far greater 

 expenditure of life and property than the other. If history and 

 science have any power over the convictions and actions of men, 

 here is a good opportunity for proof of it, for if anything is 

 proved by ecclesiastical and civil history it would seem to be the 

 frightful cost of phrases and doctrines, and of the whole cohort 

 of phantasms which take the place of facts and relations in deter- 

 mining the actions of men. It is to these that men have always 

 brought the heaviest sacrifices of their happiness, blood, and 

 property. We have had in our own history the doctrines of no 

 entangling alliances. State rights, nullification, manifest destiny, 

 the self-expanding power of the Constitution, the higher law, 

 secession, and as many more as rhetorical politicians have found 

 necessary to save them the trouble of coming down to facts and 

 law. How frightful has been the penalty for the people who have 

 been deluded by some of these ! Who knows on what day an- 

 other of them may, by a turn of events, become politically impor- 

 tant and call for its share of sacrifice ? It is a wise rule of life 

 for a man of education and sense not to allow his judgment to be 

 taken captive by stereotyped catch-words, mottoes, and doctrines. 



We have already a commercial system in which we have un- 

 dertaken to surround ourselves by a wall of taxes so as to raise 

 the prices of all manufactured products twenty-five to fifty per 

 cent above the same prices in western Europe. That system has 

 been adopted as a policy of prosperity to be produced by specific 

 devices of legislation. We have applied it to the best part of the 

 continent of North America. It is now proposed to restrict im- 

 migration so as to close the labor market of the same part of 



