Like most stages in a nation’s progress, the Monroe doctrine, though elicited by a particular political incident, was not an isolated step unrelated to the past, but a development.  It had its antecedents in feelings which arose before our War of Independence, and which in 1778, though we were then in deadly need of the French alliance, found expression in the stipulation that France should not attempt to regain Canada.  Even then, and also in 1783, the same jealousy did not extend to the Floridas, which at the latter date were ceded by Great Britain to Spain; and we expressly acquiesced in the conquest of the British West India Islands by our allies.  From that time to 1815 no remonstrance was made against the transfer of territories in the West Indies and Caribbean Sea from one belligerent to another—­an indifference which scarcely would be shown at the present time, even though the position immediately involved were intrinsically of trivial importance; for the question at stake would be one of principle, of consequences, far reaching as Hampden’s tribute of ship-money.

It is beyond the professional province of a naval officer to inquire how far the Monroe doctrine itself would logically carry us, or how far it may be developed, now or hereafter, by the recognition and statement of further national interests, thereby formulating another and wider view of the necessary range of our political influence.  It is sufficient to quote its enunciation as a fact, and to note that it was the expression of a great national interest, not merely of a popular sympathy with South American revolutionists; for, had it been the latter, it would doubtless have proved as inoperative and evanescent as declarations arising from such emotions commonly are.  From generation to generation we have been much stirred by the sufferings of Greeks, or Bulgarians, or Armenians, at the hands of Turkey; but, not being ourselves injuriously affected, our feelings have not passed into acts, and for that very reason have been ephemeral.  No more than other nations are we exempt from the profound truth enunciated by Washington—­seared into his own consciousness by the bitter futilities of the French alliance in 1778 and the following years, and by the extravagant demands based upon it by the Directory during his Presidential term—­that it is absurd to expect governments to act upon disinterested motives.  It is not as an utterance of passing concern, benevolent or selfish, but because it voiced an enduring principle of necessary self-interest, that the Monroe doctrine has retained its vitality, and has been made so easily to do duty as the expression of intuitive national sensitiveness to occurrences of various kinds in regions beyond the sea.  At its christening the principle was directed against an apprehended intervention in American affairs, which depended not upon actual European concern in the territory involved, but upon a purely political arrangement between certain great powers, itself the result of