The Path of Empire, A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power | Page 4

PROBLEMS OF
THE CARIBBEAN XVII. WORLD RELATIONSHIPS
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

THE PATH OF EMPIRE

CHAPTER I.
The Monroe Doctrine
In 1815 the world found peace after twenty-two years of continual war.
In the forests of Canada and the pampas of South America, throughout
all the countries of Europe, over the plains of Russia and the hills of
Palestine, men and women had known what war was and had prayed
that its horrors might never return. In even the most autocratic states
subjects and rulers were for once of one mind: in the future war must
be prevented. To secure peace forever was the earnest desire of two
statesmen so strongly contrasted as the impressionable Czar Alexander
I of Russia, acclaimed as the "White Angel" and the "Universal
Savior," and Prince Metternich, the real ruler of Austria, the spider who
was for the next thirty years to spin the web of European secret

diplomacy. While the Czar invited all governments to unite in a "Holy
Alliance" to prevent war, Metternich for the same purpose formed the
less holy but more powerful "Quadruple Alliance" of Russia, Prussia,
Austria, and England.
The designs of Metternich, however, went far beyond the mere
prevention of war. To his mind the cause of all the upheavals which
had convulsed Europe was the spirit of liberty bred in France in the
days of the Revolution; if order was to be restored, there must be a
return to the former autocratic principle of government, to the doctrine
of "Divine Right"; it was for kings and emperors to command; it was
the duty of subjects to obey. These principles had not, it was true,
preserved peace in the past, but Metternich now proposed that, in the
future, sovereigns or their representatives should meet "at fixed
periods" to adjust their own differences and to assist one another in
enforcing the obedience of subjects everywhere. The rulers were
reasonably well satisfied with the world as it was arranged by the
Congress of Vienna in 1815 and determined to set their faces against
any change in the relations of governments to one another or to their
subjects. They regretted, indeed, that the Government of the United
States was built upon the sands of a popular vote, but they recognized
that it was apparently well established and decently respectable, and
therefore worthy of recognition by the mutual protection society of the
Holy Alliance.
The subjects of these sovereigns, however, did not all share the
satisfaction of their masters, and some of them soon showed that much
as they desired peace they desired other things even more. The
inhabitants of Spanish America, while their imperial mother was in the
chaos of Napoleon's wars, had nibbled at the forbidden fruit of freedom.
They particularly desired freedom to buy the products of British
factories, which cost less and satisfied better than those previously
furnished by the Spanish merchants, secure in their absolute monopoly.
With peace came renewed monopoly, haughty officials, and oppressive
laws dictated by that most stupid of the restored sovereigns, Ferdinand
VII of Spain. Buenos Aires, however, never recognized his rule, and
her general, the knightly San Martin, in one of the most remarkable
campaigns of history, scaled the Andes and carried the flag of
revolution into Chili and Peru. Venezuela, that hive of revolution, sent

forth Bolivar to found the new republics of Colombia and Bolivia.
Mexico freed herself, and Brazil separated herself from Portugal. By
1822 European rule had been practically swept off the American
mainland, from Cape Horn to the borders of Canada, and, except for the
empire of Dom Pedro in Brazil, the newly born nations had adopted the
republican form of government which the European monarchs despised.
The spirit of unrest leaped eastward across the Atlantic. Revolutions in
Spain, Portugal, and Naples sought impiously and with constitutions to
bind the hands of their kings. Even the distant Greeks and Serbians
sought their independence from the Turk.
Divine Right, just rescued from the French Revolution, was tottering
and had yet to test the strength of its new props, the "Holy" and the
"Quadruple" alliances, and the policy of intervention to maintain the
status quo. Congresses at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, at Troppau in 1820,
and at Laibach in 1821, decided to refuse recognition to governments
resting on such revolutions, to offer mediation to restore the old order,
and, if this were refused, to intervene by force. In the United States, on
the other hand, founded on the right of revolution and dedicated to
government by the people, these popular movements were greeted with
enthusiasm. The fiery Clay, speaker and leader of the House of
Representatives, made himself champion of the cause of the Spanish
Americans; Daniel Webster thundered forth the sympathy of all lovers
of antiquity for the Greeks; and Samuel Gridley