424 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



and uniformly declared and acted upon by the executive branch 

 of the Government for more than seventy years without express 

 repudiation by Congress, it must be conclusively presumed ta 

 have its sanction. Yet it is certainly no more than the exact 

 truth to say that every administration since President Monroe's 

 has had occasion, and sometimes more occasions than one, to 

 examine and consider the Monroe doctrine and has in each 

 instance given it emphatic endorsement. Presidents have dwelt 

 upon it in messages to Congress and Secretaries of State have 

 time after time made it the theme of diplomatic representation. 

 Nor, if the practical results of the rule be sought for, is the 

 record either meagre or obscure. Its first and immediate effect 

 was indeed most momentous and far reaching. It was the con- 

 trolling factor in the emancipation of South America and to it the 

 independent states which now divide that region between them, 

 are largely indebted for their very existence. Since then the most 

 striking single achievement to be credited to the rule is the evacu- 

 ation of Mexico by the French upon the termination of the civil 

 war. But we are also indebted to it for the provisions of the 

 < layton-Bulwer treaty, which both neutralized any interoceanic 

 canal across Central America and expressly excluded Great Brit- 

 ain from occupying or exercising any dominion over any part of 

 Central America. It has been used in the case of Cuba as if jus- 

 tifying the position that, while the sovereignty of Spain will be 

 respected, the island will not be permitted to become the posses- 

 sion of any other European power. It has been influential in 

 bringing about the definite relinquishment of any supposed pro- 

 tectorate by Great Britain over the Mosquito Coast. 



President Polk, in the case of Yucatan and the proposed volun- 

 tary transfer of that country to Great Britain or Spain, relied 

 upon the Monroe doctrine, though perhaps erroneously, when he 

 declared in a special message to Congress on the subject that the 

 United States could not consent to any such transfer. Yet, in 

 somewhat the same spirit, Secretary Fish affirmed in 1870 that 

 President Grant had but followed "the teachings of all our his- 

 tory " in declaring in his annual message of that year that exist- 

 ing dependencies were no longer regarded as subject to transfer 

 from one European power to another, and that when the present 

 relation of colonies ceases they are to become independent powers. 

 Another development of the rule, though apparently not neces- 

 sarily required by either its letter or its spirit, is found in the 

 objection to arbitration of South American controversies by an 

 European power. American questions, it is said, are for Ameri- 

 can decision, and on that ground the United States went so far as. 



