340 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



The powers of Continental Europe were surprised and 

 indignant ; Monroe was a dictator of the worst character, 

 while the United States was an upstart nation, that main- 

 tained unwarrantable pretensions, and sought to establish 

 wholly inadmissible principles in contempt of the civilized 

 nations of the world. The declaration of this presumptuous 

 people should be resisted by all powers possessing interests 

 in the Western Hemisphere. But just back of the out- 

 stretched wings of the noisy American eagle, France and 

 Russia believed they detected the British lion. If Eng- 

 land had, after all, joined the allies in their schemes, it 

 is much to be doubted whether the President's message of 

 1823 would have seriously embarrassed them in the ultimate 

 perfection of their Spanish American plans ; but the realiza- 

 tion that Great Britain, with her powerful navy, endorsed, 

 in the main, the sentiments of President Monroe, cast a 

 gloom over the propagandists of divine right, and the great 

 South American project was abandoned. 



Although the Colombian Congress resolved that the doc- 

 trine of the North American President was " an act eminently 

 just and worthy of the classic land of liberty," the message 

 does not seem to have been welcomed with loud acclaim in 

 South America. Events following soon after convinced the 

 people of Spanish America suspicious by nature, and at 

 heart distrustful of the Anglo-Saxon that the United 

 States did not intend to uphold the doctrine, and that if it 

 were meant as a promise of protection to them, it was false. 



Soon after the reading of the President's annual message, 

 Henry Clay, Speaker of the House of Representatives, caused 

 to be introduced the following resolution : 



Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 

 United States of America in Congress assembled, That the people 

 of these states would not see, without serious inquietude, any 

 forcible intervention by the allied Powers of Europe, in behalf 

 of Spain, to reduce to their former subjection those parts of the 

 continent of America which have proclaimed and established for 

 themselves, respectively, independent governments, and which 

 have been solemnly recognized by the United States. 



