A FORGOTTEN RESULT OF THE MONROE DOCTRINE.
THERE is one point in connection with the Monroe doctrine which is too much overlooked, and which we should like to bring to the attention of thoughtful Americans. This is the enormous deduction which the Monroe doctrine makes from the general wealth and happiness of the world. Its first consequence is that the mighty continent of South America, which could maintain the entire white race of the world in comfort and prosperity, is nearly wasted, and will continue wasted until that far-distant period when the population of the United States, having overflowed Canada and Mexico, finds itself once more too numerous for its habitat, and begins to pour still further southward, and through the Nicaragua Canal into the independent States on the Pacific Ocean. It is the opinion of the ablest naturalists that South America is, on the whole, the richest division of the world, and the one in which the human race, being aided rather than resisted by Nature in producing food, may with its perpetual toil reduced within less exhausting limits, reach the highest level of culture and civilisation. A white people which could earn its keep with four hours' labour, ought, on the average, to be a higher race than ours. The continent covers nearly eight million square miles, that is, is equal to forty times the area of France ; it contains all climates, especially an unusually healthy variety of the sub- tropical climate ; and it may be broadly asserted to be culturable throughout, and owing to its lofty plateaus, to be culturable for two-thirds of its extent by white men, who do not find either in Argentina or Chili that ploughing kills them. There is nothing which will not grow there, there is no mineral which does not exist in profusion, and the mass is cleft at almost every point by mighty rivers, affording the easiest and cheapest means of communication. The government and ownership of this mighty estate has, however, been left to the inhabitants of a single corner of the world, the Iberian Peninsula, under whose flags the remain- ing white sections of mankind are unwilling to settle. At the same time these Iberians, though they may possess many fine qualities, and have done much more in the way of successful work than Europe gives them credit for—they have, for example, made Chris- tianity, in however undeveloped a form, the single religion of the Continent—have displayed none of the multiplying power of the Anglo-Saxon. They have not filled the con- tinent, or even populated it in any true sense of the word " populated ; " they have left labour mainly to inferior races ; and they have shown a general proclivity to lose their control of those races, at least so far as any effective improvement in their mental status is concerned. Yet under the shadow of the Monroe doc- trine, they are able to keep out the more vigorous peoples whose first condition for settlement is that they will dwell permanently only under their own flag and the protection of their own laws. What with antipathies of creed, antipathies of race, and antipathies of civilisation, the Spaniards and Portuguese of America practically keep out all races except the Italian, which again confines its emi- gration to the valleys of a single Republic. Except in the Rio Grande do Sul, a single province of Brazil, there are not ten thousand Englishmen or Germans or Russians settled under foreign rule anywhere south of the Caribbean S, a. Yet Britain and Germany and Russia are filling up at a rate which is the despair of statesmanship, and which will within thirty years be the preoccupation of the strongest and most aggressive Governments in the world.
Take the single case of Germany. The increase of the German population is more than ten millions per genera- tion, in a country which is already overfull, and which offers by no means attractive rewards for incessant toil. Half of it is sand, and another large section will only grow trees read;ly. The surplus millions are ready to emigrate, they make capital ethigants, and they are keenly desirous of founding a new Germany ; but they can find no place where they can found even a colony, and are compelled to let themselves be lost amid the endless mul- titudes of the United States, whose weight in a generation or two extinguishes all distinctions. There is no German people outside Germany. We have not a doubt in our own minds that, were Germany free to invade Brazil, or coerce Brazil, or make terms with Brazil, Southern Brazil would become a German dependency, as would also Peru, now in her nadir of resources, thus consti- tuting a. mighty German State, stretching from ocean to ocean, filling up rapidly from year to year with a popu- lation capable of high culture, of managing a great sea- borne commerce, and of adding indefinitely to the wealth and thought, and general civiiitas of mankind. The tropical provinces of the same vast territory, now almost derelict, could be filled in a generation with the overspill of India, to the immense relief of the Peninsula, now be- ginning to be overcrowded, and the indefinite improve- ment of all the wild forest tribes. South America would, in fact, within fifty years, be utilised for man- kind, as the Pennsylvania Forest has been utilised, with no injury to any one, for neither Spanish nor Portu- guese need, or can use, all that vast spaciousness of dominion. A new " America," possibly two, would, in fact, be added to those forces of the world which, whatever else they fail in, do at least provide for the white race, that is, for the most vigorous and hopeful portion of mankind, the means of subsistence, and with them the possibility of high cultivation and of a peaceful and progressive existence. This immense advance is prohibited, in intention finally pro- hibited, by the Monroe doctrine, and to say that such a prohibition, whatever the other arguments for it—and we know of many—is not a diminution of the world's stock of potential vigour and happiness, is to deny the most direct evidence of experience. We are not besotted admirers of the Teutonic race either in Britain Germany, or the United States, but that it can utilise fertile territory as no other race can, is a self-evident proposition, which even the rival peoples do not venture to deny. What they say, on the contrary, is, "You are too capable and formidable. Keep away from us."
From this what deduction ? There is none to be made. We are addressing Americans, not Europeans, and only wish them, when they press or extol their Monroe doctrine, to see what they are doing to the injury of the world. They have plenty of solid reasons for the doctrine to urge from the point of view of their own interests, and if they had not, it would be sufficient that they think they have. The federation of Europe is still far off, so far as to seem a dream, and no single Power has resources sufficient to struggle with the people of the Union in their own hemi- sphere, in contravention of a doctrine about which they are unanimous. Japan might have done it had she conquered and revivified China ; but no single European Power will, within any time worth thinking about, make the attempt. The pressure of population on the means of subsistence is not yet severe enough, nor have Canada, the States, Australia, and South Africa yet decided effectively that they will receive no more immigrants from Europe. Mr. C. Pearson thought they were on the brink of this decision twenty years ago ; but the temptation of increased strength has so far prevailed over the temptation presented by higher wages and more manageable numbers. It is not as a practical counsel, but as an academic argument, that we make this rough statement of the facts ; but still they are facts, and facts which the better Americans ought not to forget. A good deal of the world's future is in their hands, and will be materially affected by a doctrine which they regard as a mere defence against the necessity of watching their frontiers, or keeping up armaments on the European scale. We have never blamed them, or thought of blaming them, for ordering Napoleon III. to quit Mexico ; but still it is well to recollect that in giving that order they affected the whole future of South America, and in fact condemned it to comparative useless- ness until such time as they themselves are ready to enter upon what they regard as a large reversionary estate. The reflection will not, we are quite aware, induce them to relinquish the Monroe doctrine, but it may induce them to consider when they apply it, that a doctrine with such tremendous and far-reaching effects should be applied with rigid moderation, and without the assumption that it secures pure good to mankind as well as to the United States.
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