s that they are measures
of national right as well as of national duty; that misguided individual
citizens can not be tolerated in making war according to their own
caprice, passions, interests, or foreign sympathies; that the agents of
foreign governments, recognized or unrecognized, can not be permitted
to abuse our hospitality by usurping the functions of enlisting or
equipping military or naval forces within our territory. Washington
inaugurated the policy of neutrality and of absolute abstinence from
all foreign entangling alliances, which resulted, in 1794, in the first
municipal enactment for the observance of neutrality.

The duty of opposition to filibustering has been admitted by every
President. Washington encountered the efforts of Genet and of the French
revolutionists; John Adams, the projects of Miranda; Jefferson, the
schemes of Aaron Burr. Madison and subsequent Presidents had to deal
with the question of foreign enlistment or equipment in the United
States, and since the days of John Quincy Adams it has been one of the
constant cares of Government in the United States to prevent piratical
expeditions against the feeble Spanish American Republics from leaving
our shores. In no country are men wanting for any enterprise that holds
out promise of adventure or of gain.

In the early days of our national existence the whole continent of
America (outside of the limits of the United States) and all its islands
were in colonial dependence upon European powers.

The revolutions which from 1810 spread almost simultaneously through all
the Spanish American continental colonies resulted in the establishment
of new States, like ourselves, of European origin, and interested in
excluding European politics and the questions of dynasty and of balances
of power from further influence in the New World.

The American policy of neutrality, important before, became doubly so
from the fact that it became applicable to the new Republics as well as
to the mother country.

It then devolved upon us to determine the great international question
at what time and under what circumstances to recognize a new power
as entitled to a place among the family of nations, as well as the
preliminary question of the attitude to be observed by this Government
toward the insurrectionary party pending the contest.

Mr. Monroe concisely expressed the rule which has controlled the action
of this Government with reference to revolting colonie