THE BEGINNING OF THE PARTICULARISTIC REACTION
THE BEGINNING OF THE PARTICULARISTIC REACTION
Slavery and the Industrial Policies of the Union—President Monroe and Protection after 1820—The Committee on Manufactures—The Tariff Bill of 1823—The General Character of the Bill, and its Failure to Pass—President Monroe's Message of 1823, and Protection—The Tariff Bill of 1824—Mr. Clay's Argument in its Support—Mr. Clay's Argument Answered—The First Expression of the Doctrine that Protection and Slavery were Hostile Interests—The Bill Amended and Passed—The Tariff of 1824 not yet Considered Sectional Legislation—South Carolina and the Tariff of 1824—The Historical Development of the Doctrine of Internal Improvements—Madison's Ideas upon Internal Improvements—The Bill of 1822 for Internal Improvements—Passage of the Bill, and Analysis of the Vote upon it—The Bill in the Interests of the West—President Monroe's Veto, and Communication of May 4th, 1822—President Monroe's Argument, and the Vote upon the Veto—Congressional Act of 1824 for Distinguishing National from Local Improvements—Foreign Relations During Monroe's Second Term—Russia and the Northwest Coast of America—The Holy Alliance—The Congress at Verona—Mr. Adams' Declaration to Baron Tuyl—Mr. Canning's Proposal to Mr. Rush—Mr. Canning's Declaration to Prince Polignac—The "Monroe Doctrine"—The Meaning of the Monroe Propositions in 1824—Failure to Commit Congress to these Propositions—The Particularistic Reaction Scarcely Discoverable before 1824.
It was hoped and believed that the settlement of the Missouri question and the compromise in reference to the remainder of the Louisiana cession had put the problem of negro slavery out of the realm of national politics. In fact, however, the struggle over these questions had introduced it into that realm, and hadfirst opened the eyes of the slaveholders to the bearings of the slavery interest upon all the questions of constitutional law and public policy. From the point of view of that interest their attitude toward all these questions was more and more determined as they came to understand more and more clearly the relation of these questions to that interest. While, therefore, the settlement and the compromise served to withdraw the question of slavery from the direct and immediate issue, they, at the same time, left it the secret influence over views and actions in many, if not most, directions.
At the next session, beginning in December of 1821, propositions were introduced into the Senate to limit and decrease the admiralty jurisdiction of the United States courts, to make the Senate itself a court of appeal from the regular Judiciary in cases where a "State" should be a party, and to limit to two hundred the number of members in the House of Representatives.
The purpose of all these projects is apparent. Indeed, their proposers said openly and frankly that their purpose was to lessen and limit the powers of the general Government in the interests of "States'-rights."
It was natural, however, that the new spirit of particularism should attack the policies of the Government rather than the structure of the political system, or, more correctly, should undertake to control these policies before it sought to transform that system.
We have seen with what unanimity and national enthusiasm the protection of home industries was regarded, in the half decade between 1815 and 1820, as a measure indispensable to the attainment and maintenance of industrial independence. Not even Calhoun then understood the relation between this policy and the interests of slavery. The Presidents, Madison andMonroe, were utterly oblivious to it. Even after the Missouri struggle, Mr. Monroe continued to recommend the protection of manufactures for the attainment of industrial independence as the true national policy. His annual messages of 1821 and of 1822 contain this recommendation. He either did not comprehend the relation of the slavery interests to the protective system or disregarded it. It could hardly have been the latter, for, although he was no radical supporter of slavery, he was a slaveholder and a very conservative man.
The House of Representatives, the body which had upheld even radically national views of the character of the political system during the Missouri struggle, very naturally responded to Mr. Monroe's recommendation, and referred it to its committee on Manufactures for consideration and support. Heretofore this subject had been referred to the committee on Ways and Means, the regular revenue-raising committee. Its reference now to the committee on Manufactures is good evidence that the House of Representatives regarded a protective tariff as a subject which Congress might deal with independently, and without any necessary connection with the subject of the revenue. Such a view is radically national. It rests upon the doctrine that Congress may do anything in the regulation of foreign trade and commerce which, in its own opinion, is conducive to the general welfare, regardless of the pecuniary needs of the Government.
On January 9th, 1823, Mr. Tod, of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the committee on Manufactures, reported a tariff bill. It proposed to nearly double the existing duty upon iron, quadruple that upon coarse woollens, and to increase the custom-house valuation of dyed cotton goods by some forty per centum.
Moreover, the bill made no provision for the future reduction of these duties. It therefore indicated that protection was to be the permanent policy, protection so high as to amount to the prohibition of the importation of coarse cottons and woollens and bar iron. In fact, Mr. Tod conceded that the prohibition of the importation of coarse woollens was intended. He said that the tariff of 1816 on coarse cotton goods had given a monopoly of the domestic markets for such goods to the home manufacturers, while the price of the goods had been reduced through home competition by one-half, and that his committee desired to bring about the same result in regard to the manufacture of coarse woollens.
Mr. Tod was not able to get a vote upon his bill at this session of the Congress. Three significant facts, however, were elicited in the course of the debate upon it, facts which indicated the trend of political history. These facts were that the bill was a Pennsylvania measure, that the South would oppose it, and that Massachusetts and New York City would unite with the South in this opposition. It was, in fact, a Massachusetts man, Mr. Gorham, who denounced the bill as sectional legislation, and advised the South to resist it to the utmost. Cotton and commerce, and that meant slavery and commerce, were beginning to discover their affinity.
President Monroe, however, does not seem to have shared this view of the subject. In his message of December 2nd, 1823, he again recommended additional protection to "those articles which we are prepared to manufacture, or which are more immediately connected with the defence and independence of the country."
Thus encouraged by the President, the House ofRepresentatives again referred the question of increasing the tariff to Mr. Tod's committee.
On January 9th, 1824, Mr. Tod brought in his new bill. It was a more moderate proposition than that of the preceding session; still it provided for a substantial increase of the duties on woollens and iron.
Mr. Tod assumed the constitutionality of the bill to be a settled question, and supported the policy of it by arguments from the necessity of attaining industrial independence in the manufacture of the necessaries of life, from the necessity of creating new and more remunerative employments for labor, and from the policy of developing better home markets for agricultural products. He predicted that an ultimate reduction of the prices of manufactured goods would be the result of the increased home competition produced by higher duties. He did not, however, make out any very satisfactory prospects for commerce. This branch of the national pursuits was to make the sacrifice.
Mr. Clay made the great argument in defence of the measure. He elaborated the patriotic reason in every direction. He pointed out the utter dependence of the country upon foreign markets, both for the sale of its agricultural products and for the purchase of manufactured goods. He demonstrated that these relations had been created by the quarter of a century of war in Europe, forcing the European countries to buy the agricultural products of the United States to an unusual amount, and at high prices, and showed how the restoration of general peace in Europe had reduced the demand for, and the price of, these products, while it left the United States dependent upon Europe for manufactured articles. And he urged the accomplishment of industrial independenceas a necessary corollary of political independence. He contended that the aid granted to the manufacturing interests would impose no sacrifice upon the agricultural and commercial interests; that by the establishment of new manufacturing centres new home markets for the products of agriculture would be created, which would not only emancipate the country from the necessity of foreign markets for these products, but would give the country steady and certain markets, under its own control; and that the growth of manufactures would speedily result in the establishment of an export trade in manufactured goods to all parts of the world, and especially to South America, which would ultimately more than compensate the commercial interests for the temporary losses they might incur by reason of the increased duties. This was a strongly tinted picture upon both sides. It represented the distress of the country too darkly, and it painted the speculative benefits of the high tariff in too vivid colors. Moreover, Mr. Clay now omitted any reference to the temporary character of protection. It now appeared to be a permanent article of his creed.
Webster for Massachusetts, Cambreleng for the city of New York, and Barbour for the South, denied Mr. Clay's statement in regard to the intense and general financial distress throughout the country, and demonstrated the destructive effects of a high tariff upon agriculture and commerce, and upon the existing manufacturing interests themselves. They contended that such a tariff would so prohibit importation of foreign products as to make it impossible for Europe to buy the agricultural products of the United States, since Europe would not be able to pay for them; that the promised increase of domestic markets would not at all compensate for the loss offoreign markets; that commerce would thus be destroyed both ways; and that even the manufacturing industries already established would suffer from the unnatural competition which would be created by the inducements which the high tariff would hold out to capital otherwise employed. Mr. Barbour frankly declared that the slave labor of the South could not be used in the development of manufactures, and that, therefore, the high tariff must inure to the benefit of the North, by making the South tributary to the North for all manufactured goods.
The theory accepted by all parties, however, at the moment, was, that the duties were paid ultimately by the consumers of the imported goods. Senator Hayne, of South Carolina, pronounced this doctrine himself. Upon this view the North must pay the duties equally, at least, with the South. So long, then, as this idea was held, and so long as the commercial interests of Massachusetts, Maine, and the city of New York made common cause with the agricultural interests of the South against the bill, it could not be strictly regarded as sectional legislation, it could not develop into a political and constitutional question between the North and the South.
While this combination of interests was not able to prevent the House from finally passing the bill by a narrow majority, it did succeed in imposing several very substantial modifications upon it in the direction of more moderate protection.
In the Senate the bill suffered still further modification in the same direction. The burden of the Senate's amendments fell, however, on the wool- and hemp-growing and liquor-distilling West. It was for this reason that the House of Representatives refused to concur inthem. Recourse was then had to a conference committee, which arranged a compromise that gave a little less protection than the House had voted, and a little more than the Senate had voted.
The tariff of May, 1824, was still only a moderately protective tariff. It was certainly in only one particular anything like prohibitory; it preserved the high tariff of 1816 on coarse cotton goods. In other respects it was not much more than a continuation of the reasonable duties already imposed.
So long as the tariff remained moderately protective, and was approved in Kentucky and Missouri, and disapproved in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and the city of New York, and so long as its burdens were generally believed to fall ultimately upon the consumers of the dutiable articles, it could not take on the form of a sectional issue, dominated by the question of slavery. Some of the Southerners had, indeed, discovered that slave labor could not be employed in the mills, and that, therefore, protection of manufactures would not secure the establishment of these industries in the South, and had begun to treat the tariff question in a manner to develop a party issue out of it. But this tendency had not advanced far enough in 1824 to produce a division of the all-comprehending Republican party. It needed another four years of personal differences among the leaders, another revision of the tariff in the direction of higher duties, and a more complete consolidation of the North for protection, before this result could be attained.
During the passage of the bill public meetings had been held throughout South Carolina protesting against it, and the year subsequent to its enactment the South Carolina legislature denounced it as unconstitutional, but the peopleof the Commonwealth acquiesced, though with very bad temper, in the execution of the law.
The other question of internal policy, to which certain of the historians refer as suffering under the baleful influences of the slavery interest immediately after 1820, was the question of national internal improvements.
This question became a definite issue in Congress for the first time on December 19th, 1805, when a committee of the Senate, charged with the duty of reporting to the Senate an opinion as to how the money appropriated in the Enabling Act for Ohio ought to be applied, recommended the use of it for the building of a road across the Alleghanies from Cumberland, in Maryland, to a point upon the Ohio River, near Wheeling, in Virginia.
If we may take the first Act passed by Congress, that of March 29th, 1806, in regard to the matter as expressing the views of the Government and the people upon the subject, we must conclude that the first matured ideas were that the general Government had the power to lay out and construct roads within and through the Commonwealths, by and with the consent of the Commonwealths through which they might pass. The Cumberland road was originally built by the general Government, after the consent thereto of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia had been obtained. The appropriations for subsequent repairs upon the road were, however, not considered as requiring the consent of those Commonwealths before being made or expended.
The second stage in the evolution of opinion upon the subject was attained in the year 1817, when Mr. Madison vetoed Mr. Calhoun's bill for setting aside the bonus and the dividends to be paid to the Government by the United States Bank as a fund for constructing roads and canals, andimproving the navigation of water-courses in the several Commonwealths. This bill proposed to authorize the general Government to expend the money, thus appropriated, only with the consent of the Commonwealth, or Commonwealths, in which the proposed improvement might lay, antecedently given, and distributed the sum to be spent among the Commonwealths according to the ratio of their representation in the national House of Representatives. As has been pointed out, Madison vetoed this bill on the ground that the power to enact it was not to be found among the enumerated powers of Congress, and could not be regarded as a necessary and proper means for carrying out any of the enumerated powers.
The President drew no distinction between the power to construct internal improvements and the power to appropriate money for their construction, nor between such powers and the power to administer them, or to exercise jurisdiction over them. He regarded all, or any of these things, as unwarranted by the Constitution. He furthermore declared that the consent of the several Commonwealths to the exercise of such powers by the general Government could not make the exercise of them constitutional, unless that consent should be given in the form of an amendment to the Constitution.
The vote upon the vetoed bill in the House of Representatives manifested the fact that a substantial majority of that body remained unconvinced by the President's argument. It is reasonably certain that Mr. Madison's views were not the views of the country at that moment. A large majority of the people felt that he had abandoned his earlier faith in regard to this subject. An analysis of the vote upon the vetoed bill shows that New England was almost unanimous in opposing the measure; that Virginia and NorthCarolina also opposed it, though less decidedly; that New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the Northwest, together with South Carolina and Georgia, favored it; and that Kentucky and Tennessee inclined to favor it. Certainly, down to 1817, no influence of the slavery interest upon the question of internal improvements is discoverable. It was evident that the general opinion was, that the middle Atlantic section and the Northwest would receive the larger share of the benefits of a national system of internal improvements. It was also evident that New England viewed the matter purely in that light, and that Virginia was impelled wholly by her ancient principle of strict construction of the powers of the general Government. It was South Carolina and Georgia whose actions appeared at this juncture to spring from unselfish and patriotic motives.
The third stage in the development of constitutional interpretation in reference to this subject was attained in the year 1822. In May of that year Congress passed a bill appropriating money for the repair of the Cumberland road, and authorizing the President to cause the erection of toll-gates upon it, and to appoint toll-gatherers. The toll charges, and penalties for attempting to avoid paying them, and for not keeping to the left in passing, were fixed in the bill itself. That is, this bill assumed for the general Government not only the powers of appropriating and expending money for the construction of the road, but the power of operating the road and jurisdiction over it. The passage of such a bill is certainly very good evidence that President Madison's views, as expressed in his veto message of March 3rd, 1817, were not the views of the country in 1822 upon the subject of internal improvements.
It is interesting and instructive to analyze the vote upon this bill. In the House of Representatives themembers from the New England section were nearly evenly divided, pro and con. The majority of the New Yorkers voted against it. The Pennsylvanians were nearly balanced. The Marylanders voted for it. The Virginians were against it by a decided majority. The North Carolinians were indifferent. The South Carolinians and Georgians abandoned their high national ground of 1817, and voted unanimously against it. The Representatives from the Northwest went unanimously for it; and those from Kentucky now wheeled into line with them. Lastly, while the Tennesseeans still maintained their attitude of indifference, the members from the Commonwealths south of Tennessee, and west of Georgia, all voted for the bill.
In the Senate the majority in favor of the measure was very large. Only the Senators from the Carolinas and Alabama, and one Senator from Missouri, voted against it.
There is somewhat more of an appearance of slavery influence in the vote upon this bill than upon the bill of 1817, in that South Carolina showed herself practically a unit against this bill. Still it is probable that this opposition rested upon other grounds. Certainly when we read in the "Annals of Congress," that so stanch a friend of free labor, so eminent a lawyer, and so honorable a man as John W. Taylor, of New York, said of this bill that it was so important in its character, and proposed such a violation of the Constitution, that he felt obliged to call for the yeas and nays upon it, we must concede that other motives may have influenced the statesmen of South Carolina than such as might have sprung from subserviency to the interests of slavery.
If we review the analysis of the vote in the House of Representatives we shall see that the entireWest—taking the Appalachian range as the dividing line, for that period, between the East and the West—was for the bill, while the whole East, with the exception of Maryland, which was specially interested in the road, was either against it or indifferent to it. The Eastern Commonwealths had made their roads with Commonwealth money, and did not wish to assist the Western Commonwealths to make theirs by giving them national money with which to do it. The West, on the other hand, was new and comparatively poor, and wanted the nation to help it out of the mud. This is unquestionably the plain statement of the situation from the point of view of interests. The interests of slavery played but little part, if any at all, in the distribution of the vote.
President Monroe promptly vetoed the bill, on the ground that it was in excess of the powers granted to Congress by the Constitution. He also sent a communication, of the same date as the veto, to the House of Representatives, explaining his views upon those principles of the Constitution generally, and upon those provisions specially, which could be regarded as vesting powers in the general Government concerning internal improvements. The paper is prolix, confused, and confusing, but, upon the specific question at issue, the propositions advanced are definite and intelligible. He held that the power of Congress in regard to internal improvements was to be found in the Constitution only by implication, by implication from the power to appropriate money, and that, therefore, its nature and limitations were to be drawn from the character of the power to appropriate money. He contended, on the one side, that the power of Congress to appropriate money was not limited to the objects enumerated in theConstitution, but was, on the other side, limited by the spirit of the Constitution to national purposes. He concluded, therefore, that Congress was empowered to appropriate money to internal improvements of a national character. But he asserted that Congress could not, under the power to appropriate money, establish jurisdiction over such improvements, or authorize the executive department of the Government to administer them. The bill in question did just that, and it was for this reason that the President returned it with his objections.
The President's views were apparently convincing to many who had voted for the bill. Upon its passage, the vote in the House of Representatives was eighty-seven for, and sixty-eight against, the measure. After the veto, it stood sixty-eight yeas and seventy-two nays.
It may be safely assumed that the view expressed by President Monroe in the paper accompanying the veto of this bill was the view which prevailed throughout the country in the year 1824. It may be also said that the power of Congress to authorize the President to expend the appropriation by causing the improvements to be planned and constructed was generally regarded, in 1824, as a necessary consequence of the power to appropriate money for the same. The acts of Congress appropriating money for the construction and repair of roads, canals, etc., after, as well as before, that date, seem to proceed upon this theory.
The great difficulty which lay in the way of the realization of President Monroe's principle of the appropriation of national money for internal improvements of a national character was the proper determination of the question as to what improvements were really of that character. The danger was that theappropriation bills would become log-rolling measures for the purpose of obtaining national money for matters of local concern. This difficulty was distinctly felt, and Congress undertook to meet it by the Act of April 30th, 1824, which authorized the President to cause "surveys, plans, and estimates to be made of the routes of such roads and canals as he might deem of national importance," and required him to lay the same before Congress.
From all this it is apparent that, down to the presidential election of 1824, the development of a pro-slavery, strict-constructionist, "States' rights" party is hardly to be discovered in the attitude of the different sections of the country toward the question of internal improvements. Despite the fact that the slaveholders had become conscious during the Missouri struggle that their interests demanded the establishment of a particularistic view of the Constitution and a particularistic practice in the working of the governmental system of the country, not much progress had been made, in the period between 1820 and 1824, in the way of twisting the policies developed during the previous eight years into line with such a view. In fact the foreign relations of the United States were again, in 1822, of a somewhat threatening character, and the consideration of these relations was acting as a certain hindrance to the development of parties upon internal issues.
The menace, or perhaps it would be more correct to say the apparent menace, came from two quarters; but in neither case did it relate immediately to the territory or interests of the United States. In both cases it was consequential and more or less remote.
In the first place, the movements of Russia in the North Pacific had created grave apprehensions. At the close of the first decade of the century the Russian American Company put forward a claim to the territory of the North American continent along the Pacific coast from Behring's Strait to the mouth of the Columbia River, and even to points south of the Columbia. Really this claim came into conflict only with the rights of Great Britain and Spain, but the United States, having the presentiment of its future, if not a legal claim to any part of this territory as a part of Louisiana, regarded the Russian movement with jealous discontent. And when, on September 16th, the Russian Czar issued an edict, asserting Russia's rights to the North Pacific territory from Behring's Strait to the fifty-first parallel of north latitude, it was natural that this discontent should become hostile in its nature. The Government of the United States declared its dissent from the Russian pretensions, and the matter rested momentarily with that.
At the same time the other danger was developing. The European reaction against the terrible excesses of the Revolution and the despotism of Bonaparte had assumed the form of an alliance between the Governments of the great continental states, Russia, Austria, Prussia, and France, for the purpose of maintaining each by the power of all against the reappearance of revolutionary movements anywhere. Great Britain had scented in this Holy Alliance a combination of continental powers which might prove, in some degree at least, as dangerous to her continental relations as the commercial system of Bonaparte had been. There is no doubt, too, that there was a large party in England which repudiated the fundamentalpolitical doctrine of the Holy Alliance Powers, the doctrine of thejure divinomonarchy. England had, in fact, repudiated that doctrine at the close of the seventeenth century. For these reasons the British Government had declined to enter the Holy League, and regarded it with suspicion and ill-concealed hostility.
The United States Government paid little attention to its workings so long as they were confined to purely European relations, but when, in 1822, at the congress of these powers at Verona, which had been assembled to consider the question of aiding the Spanish Government to suppress the insurrection against its authority in Spain, the subject of aiding that Government to re-establish its authority over Spain's revolting colonies in North and South America was discussed, serious apprehensions were roused in both Great Britain and the United States. It was stated, and generally believed, in the United States, that the plan was the re-establishment of the Spanish power over all of Spain's American possessions, except Mexico and California, and the cession of Mexico to France, and of California to Russia, in consideration of the military aid to be rendered to Spain by these two great powers in the work of restoration.
To the United States the supposed intentions of Russia in respect to the Pacific coast appeared the more immediate danger, and the United States Government addressed its diplomacy to this question first. On July 17th, 1823, the Secretary of State, Mr. John Quincy Adams, declared to the Russian Minister at Washington, Baron Tuyl, that "we should contest the right of Russia to any territorial establishment on this continent, and that we should assume distinctly the principle that the Americancontinents are no longer subjects for any new European colonial establishments."
The following month, the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. George Canning, proposed to the Minister of the United States at the Court of St. James, Mr. Richard Rush, a joint declaration by the British Government and the Government of the United States to Europe, that the two Governments would not remain indifferent to an intervention by the Holy Alliance Powers to restore the Spanish authority over Spain's revolting American colonies. Both commercial interests and political principles moved the British Government to make this proposition.
Mr. Rush had not been instructed by his Government in anticipation of the British advances, but he offered to assume the responsibility of joining for the United States in the declaration, provided the British Government would acknowledge the independence of the revolting Spanish colonies in America, as the Government of the United States had already done. The British minister was not then prepared to go so far, and the plan of the joint declaration fell through. But Mr. Canning declared for his Government to the French ambassador at St. James, Prince Polignac, that Great Britain would resist any intervention on the part of the Holy Alliance Powers in the question between Spain and her revolting American colonies, and the President of the United States, in his annual message of December 2nd, 1823, stated the position which the United States Government and the people of the United States ought, in his opinion, to assume, and would, in his opinion, assume, in regard to the whole subject.
Mr. Monroe dealt first with the question of Russiancolonization upon the Pacific coast. After informing Congress of the instructions which had been given to the Minister representing the United States at St. Petersburg for negotiating with the Czar's Government, he said: "In the discussions to which this interest has given rise, and in the arrangements by which they may terminate, the occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers."
Toward the close of the message Mr. Monroe addressed himself to the other question, the question of intervention by the Holy Alliance Powers in the contest between Spain and her revolting American colonies in the following language: "In the wars of European powers, in matters relating to themselves, we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparations for our defence. With the movements in this hemisphere we are, of necessity, more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers. The political system of the allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their respective governments, and to the defence of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of our most enlightened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is devoted. We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the UnitedStates and those powers, to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere, but with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have on great consideration and on just principles acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power, in any other light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.... It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent without endangering our peace and happiness; nor can anyone believe that our Southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition, in any form, with indifference. If we look to the comparative strength and resources of Spain and these new Governments, and their distance from each other, it must be obvious that she can never subdue them. It is still the true policy of the United States to leave the parties to themselves, in the hope that other powers will pursue the same course."