mpt on the
part of a European power to control the destiny of an American community
would be taken as a sign of "an unfriendly disposition towards the
United States."

Canning let it be understood that England backed the declaration, and
that any attempt to extend the operations of the Holy Alliance to
America would have to be carried out in the teeth of the combined
opposition of the two great maritime powers so recently at war with each
other. The plan was abandoned, and the independence of the South
American Republics was successfully established.

But much more was established. The "Monroe Doctrine" became, and remains
to-day, the corner-stone of American foreign policy. It has been greatly
extended in scope, but no American Government has ever, for a moment,
wavered in its support. None could afford to do so. To many Englishmen
the doctrine itself, and still more the interpretation placed upon it by
the United States in later times, seems arrogant--just as to many
Americans the British postulate of unchallengeable supremacy at sea
seems arrogant. But both claims, arrogant or no, are absolutely
indispensable to the nation that puts them forward. If the American
Republic were once to allow the principle that European Powers had the
right, on any pretext whatever, to extend their borders on the American
Continent, then that Republic would either have to perish or to become
in all things a European Power, armed to the teeth, ever careful of the
balance of power, perpetually seeking alliances and watching rivals. The
best way to bring home to an honest but somewhat puzzled American--and
there are many such--why we cannot for a moment tolerate what is called
by some "the freedom of the seas," is to ask him whether he will give us
in return the "freedom" of the American Continent. The answer in both
cases is that sane nations do not normally, and with their eyes open,
commit suicide.

CHAPTER VI

THE JACKSONIAN REVOLUTION

During the "era of good feeling" in which the Virginian dynasty closed,
forces had been growing in the shadow which in a few short years were to
transform the Republic. The addition to these forces of a personality
completed the transformation which, though it made little or no change
in the laws, we may justly call a revolution.

The government of Jefferson and his successors was a government based on
popular principles and administere