fficult as time went
on, particularly after the discovery of gold in the disputed region had
given a new impulse to occupation.

President Cleveland took a serious view of this controversy because it
seemed to involve more than a boundary dispute. To his mind it called
into question the portion of Monroe's message which, in 1823, stated
that "the American continents... are henceforth not to be considered as
subjects for future colonization by any European powers." According
to this dictum, boundaries existed between all nations and colonies of
America; the problem was merely to find these boundaries. If a European
power refused to submit such a question to judicial decision, the
inference must be made that it was seeking to extend its boundaries.
In December, 1894, Cleveland expressed to Congress his hope that an
arbitration would be arranged and instructed his Secretary of State to
present vigorously to Great Britain the view of the United States.

Richard Olney of Boston, a lawyer of exceptional ability and of
the highest professional standing, was then Secretary of State. His
Venezuela dispatch, however, was one of the most undiplomatic documents
ever issued by the Department of State. He did not confine himself to
a statement of his case, wherein any amount of vigor would have been
permissible, but ran his unpracticed eye unnecessarily over the whole
field of American diplomacy. "That distance and three thousand miles of
intervening ocean make any permanent political union between a European
and an American state unnatural and inexpedient," may have been a
philosophic axiom to many in Great Britain as well as in the United
States, but it surely did not need reiteration in this state paper, and
Olney at once exposed himself to contradiction by adding the phrase,
"will hardly be denied." Entirely ignoring the sensitive pride of the
Spanish Americans and thinking only of Europe, he continued: "Today the
United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat
is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition."

The President himself did not run into any such uncalled-for
extravagance of expression, but his statement of the American position
did not thereby lose in vigor. When he had received the reply, of the
British Government refusing to recognize the interest of the United
States in the case, Cleveland addressed himself, on December 17, 1895,
to Congress. In stating the position of the