438 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



and which has not since been accepted by the Government of any 

 other country. The United States have a right, like any other 

 nation, to interpose in any controversy by which their own inter- 

 ests are affected ; and they are the judge whether those interests 

 are touched, and in what measure they should be sustained. But 

 their rights are in no way strengthened or extended by the fact 

 that the controversy affects some territory which is called Ameri- 

 Mr. Olney quotes the case of the recent Chilean war, in 

 which the United States declined to join with France and England 

 in an effort to bring hostilities to a close, on account of the Mon- 

 roe doctrine. The United States were entirely in their right in 

 declining to join in an attempt at pacification if they thought fit ; 

 but Mr. Olney's principle that " American questions are for 

 American decision," even if it receive any countenance from the 

 language of President Monroe (which it does not), cannot be sus- 

 tained by any reasoning drawn from the law of nations. 



The Government of the United States is not entitled to affirm 

 as a universal proposition, with reference to a number of inde- 

 pendent States for whose conduct it assumes no responsibility, 

 hat its interests are necessarily concerned in whatever may befall 



M- States simply because they are situated in the Western 

 Hemisphere. It may well be that the interests of the United 

 States are affected by something that happens to Chile or to Peru, 

 and that that circumstance may give them the right of interfer- 

 : but such a contingency may equally happen in the case of 

 < 'h ina or Japan, and the right of interference is not more exten- 

 sive or more assured in the one case than in the other. 



Though the language of President Monroe is directed to the 

 attainment of objects which most Englishmen would agree to be 

 salutary, it is impossible to admit that they have been inscribed 

 by any adequate authority in the code of international law ; and 

 the danger which such admission would involve is sufficiently ex- 

 hibited both by the strange development which the doctrine has 

 received at Mr. Olney's hands, and the arguments by which it is 

 supported, in the despatch under reply. In defence of it he 

 says: 



That distance and 3,000 miles of intervening ocean make any 

 permanent political union between a European and an American 

 State unnatural and inexpedient will hardly be denied. But phys- 

 ical and geographical considerations are the least of the objections 

 to such a union. Europe has a set of primary interests which are 

 peculiar to herself ; America is not interested in them, and ought 

 not to be vexed or complicated with them. 



