TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.
PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S Message to Congress upon the frontier dispute between Venezuela and Great Britain is an event, as well as a document., of grave importance. It is difficult for Englishmen at any time to conceive of circumstances under which they would willingly go to war with the United States ; and at the present moment, owing both to permanent complications in Europe and to their desire—in which the statesmen of the Union share—to rescue the people of Armenia from a blood- thirsty tyranny, such a war will seem to them peculiarly horrible. It is clear, however, to any one who reads the Message, and the correspondence which preceded it, which are published in the Times of December 18th, that the dominant party in the Union is putting forward pre- tensions to which no self-respecting Power can possibly submit. As Mr. Cleveland puts the matter, in language the stateliness and force of which we fully acknowledge, while it is a grievous thing to contemplate the two great English-speaking peoples of the world as being otherwise than friendly competitors in the onward march of civilisation and strenuous and worthy rivals in all the arts of peace, there is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows supine sub- mission to wrong and injustice and a consequent loss of national self-respect and honour, beneath which is shielded and defended the people's safety and great- ness." The extraordinary expansion of the Monroe doctrine to which the President and his advisers have committed themselves, involve just the kind of "wrong and injustice" to which the Message refers. Their position is that if one American Power—namely, Great Britain—quarrels with a second American Power—in this instance Venezuela—about boundaries, a third American Power—the United States—has a right to send a Commis- sion of demarcation, and that when that Commission, to which neither Great Britain nor Venezuela has assented, has reported, its decision must be accepted under penalty of war. To accept such a proposition is simply to accept the doctrine that, within the two Americas, the United States has a right to settle all frontier questions, and that any resistance to its decision, even when such decision is given proprio mote, and without any submission on the part of the contending Powers, is of itself just cause of war. The Union is, in fact, the permanent., just, and irresistible arbiter on the two continents. No such pre- tension has ever been put forward in that naked form by any European Power, though no doubt Napoleon, when master of the Continent, did exercise in parts of Germany some such authority ; and to submit to it, is to confess that we are, as regards our American possessions, no longer independent. It is impossible to yield to such a claim, as every American will perceive, if he will only reflect for a moment on what his own conduct would be if Britain insisted that, if the Union and Mexico dis- puted as to the boundaries of California, Great Britain should send out a Commission to report on the facts, and back the report of that Commission with a menace of war. How many minutes would the American pause before he had accepted such a challenge ? We are less hasty, because we are unable to believe that serious politicians, invested with vast responsibilities, can quite intend to offer so gra- tuitous a provocation to a friendly State of the same blood as themselves ; but this country will certainly not recede before such a menace, defended upon such a ground. It is fatal to her right to defend her own Colonies when they are assailed, and indeed almost involves her right to retain her American Colonies at all. For in the despatch the reply to which has elicited this threatening Message, Mr. Olney, the American Secretary of State, who, it must be remembered, is under the American Con- stitution responsible to the President alone, not only approves the doctrine that if there is to be arbitration the United States ought to be the arbiter, but uses this extraordinary language. He says the Monroe doc- trine rests upon facts and principles that are incon- trovertible, for "that distance and three thousand miles of intervening ocean make any permanent political union between an European and an American State unnatural and inexpedient will hardly be denied." This sentence strictly interpreted would be, as Lord Salisbury points out, fatal to our claim to Canada, to the West India Islands, to this very Guiana, about the frontier of which we are now disputing. That which is " unnatural and inex- pedient " cannot be justified in politics more than in any other department of life, and therefore we ought to depart, and leave the two Americas to any claimants who, subject always to the will of the United States, may make good their claims. Mr. Olney probably did not mean all that ; and the President does not repeat his expression, but the use of such phrases throws a singular and an un- pleasing light over the whole contention of the Message. It suggests that Mr. Cleveland, in his own mind, only tolerates the existence of any European Powers upon the American continents ; that he does not regard them as fully independent, and that he will not allow them to take any action whatever, however strictly in accordance with international law, without the consent, express or implied, of the United States. He has a full right, as he in fact contends, to take that attitude if he pleases ; but it assumes for the Union an inherent Protectorate over the two Americas, and cannot be endorsed by the independent States affected. It is fatal not only to our claim against Venezuela, but to the similar claim which France is about to make against Brazil. If we have no right to coerce Venezuela, for violating what we declare to be the frontier of British Guiana, France has no right to coerce Brazil for violating what she declares to be the frontier of French Guiana.
Our main hope, we confess, under the circumstances produced by the President's Message, consists in the moderation and keen sense of the bulk of the American people. They will not, we are quite aware, be divided by party lines ; for upon any national question there is in the United States no line of party division. But they are sensible people, and before plunging into a contest which can have no end but suffering for both nations, they wily we are certain, ask how or in what way they are injured or menaced or treated with any disrespect. No one in this country dreams of threatening the United States. No one in this country has the faintest idea of conquering or colonising or claiming any fresh portion of either of the two Americas. No one disputes or questions the right of the United States if her people think it expedient to defend any State in America, or for that matter throughout the whole world, which she may in her own interests think it proper to defend. All we maintain is that we are entitled to protect against Spanish aggression frontiers which we believe to be un- questionably ours, and which the people of the Union, if Guiana were theirs, would similarly defend. We are not even defending them against the Union, whose nearest territory is twelve hundred miles distant, but against a tur- bulent little Spanish State, born after we made our settle- ment in Guiana, and therefore in no way assailed or menaced or injured by our action. What, then, is this horrible quarrel to be about ? Clearly there is no ground for it, except the claim of the United States to what is virtually a Protectorate over the two Americas, which Mr. Olney, in the very despatch which called forth Lord Salisbury's most moderate and restrained reply, expressly repudiates in these words :—" The precise scope and limita- tions of this rule [the preservation of the Monroe doctrine-I cannot be too clearly apprehended. It does not establish any general protectorate by the United States over other American States. It does not relieve any American State from its obligations as fixed by international law, nor pre- vent any European Power directly interested from en- forcing such obligations or from inflicting merited punish- ment for the breach of them. It does not contemplate any interference in the internal affairs of any American State, or in the relations between it and other American States. It does not justify any attempt on our part to change the established form of Government of any American State, or to prevent the people of such State from altering that form according to their own will and pleasure. The rule in question has but a single purpose and object. It is that no European Power or combination of European Powers shall forcibly deprive an American State of the right and power of self-government, and of shaping for itself its own political fortunes and destinies." We are therefore to quarrel, possibly to fight, possibly to ruin one another, about nothing at all. We cannot believe that the American people, in spite of the language of some poli- ticians, desire such a struggle, as we are absolutely certain that no section of our own people will regard it with any feeling but one of horror and detestation. To Englishmen war with America is civil war, a war which, unless driven to it by direct menaces to their own territory, they will never commence. Still, Briiish Guiana, up to the Sehow- burgk line, is their own territory.
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