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to the fitting out of the Alabama and other Confederate cruisers, should be submitted to arbitration, Earl Russell rejected the overture on the ground that the questions in controversy involved the "honor" of her Majesty's government, of which that government was declared to be "the sole guardian." Eight years later there was concluded at Washington the treaty under which the differences between the two governments were submitted to the judgment of the tribunal that met at Geneva. This remarkable example serves to illustrate the fact that the scope and progress of arbitration will depend, not so much upon special devices, or upon general declarations or descriptive exceptions, as upon the dispositions of nations, dispositions which, although they are subject to the modifying influence of public opinion, spring primarily from the national feelings, the national interests, and the national ambitions.

References:

See Moore's History and Digest of International Arbitrations, Washington, 1898. 6 vols.

As to The Hague Conferences, see the works of Holls and James Brown Scott (the latter covering both conferences, 1899, 1907); also The Memoirs of Andrew D. White. See also the Reports of the International American Conferences.

IX

THE TERRITORIAL EXPANSION OF THE UNITED STATES

As conventionalized in the annual messages of Presidents to Congress, the American people are distinguished chiefly by their peaceful disposition and their freedom from territorial ambitions. Nevertheless, in spite of these quiet propensities, it has fallen to their lot, since they forcibly achieved their independence, to have had, prior to that whose existence was declared April 6, 1917, four foreign wars, three general and one limited, and the greatest civil war in history, and to have acquired a territorial domain almost five times as great as the respectable endowment with which they began their national career. In reality, to the founders of the American Republic the question of territorial expansion did not present itself as a matter of speculation, or even of choice. There was not a single European power having possessions in America that did not lay claim to more territory than it had effectively occupied, nor was there a single one whose claims were not contested by some other power; and these contests were interwoven with the monopolistic struggle then in progress for colonial commerce and naviga

tion. The Spaniards and the Portuguese, the English and the French, the Swedes and the Dutch, contended with one another in Europe as well as in America for empire on the American continents. Their colonists knew no rule of life but that of conflict; and they regarded the extension of their boundaries as a measure of self-defence rather than of aggression. We have seen that, by the treaty of alliance with France of 1778, the remaining British possession in North America, if they should be wrested from the mother-country, were to be “confederated with or dependent upon" the United States; and in harmony with this stipulation, provision was made in the Articles of Confederation (Article xi.) for the full admission of Canada into the Union. No other colony was to be so admitted without the consent of nine States; and unless they consented, the colony, if seized, was to remain in a "dependent" position. With the independence of the United States, a new force entered into the territorial contests in America, but it did not stay their course. On the north of the new republic lay the possessions of Great Britain; on the west, the possessions of France; on the south, the possessions of Spain. With all these powers there were questions of boundary, while the colonial restrictions in commerce and in navigation were as so many withes by which the limbs of the young giant were fettered. It was in order to obtain relief from such condi

tions that the United States acquired Louisiana. To the inhabitants of the West, the Mississippi River was, as Madison once declared, the Hudson, the Delaware, the Potomac, and all the navigable rivers of the Atlantic States formed into one stream. During the dark hours of the American Revolution, the Continental Congress seemed to be ready to yield to Spain, in return for her alliance, the exclusive right to navigate the Mississippi; but fortunately this was not done. After the re-establishment of peace, Spain continued to maintain her exclusive claims. But the opposition to them in the United States steadily grew stronger and louder; and at length, on October 27, 1795, encompassed by many perils in her foreign relations, Spain conceded to the United States the free navigation of the Mississippi, together with the privilege of depositing merchandise at New Orleans and thence exporting it without payment of duty. The incalculable advantage of this arrangement was daily growing more manifest when, early in 1801, rumors began to prevail that Spain had ceded both Louisiana and the Floridas to France. As a neighbor, Spain, because of the internal weakness of her government and the consequent unaggressiveness of her foreign policy, was not feared; but an apprehension had from the first been exhibited by the United States as to the possibility of being hemmed in by colonies of England and France. If the rumored cession should

prove to be true, the arrangement with Spain with regard to the Mississippi was threatened with extinction. Jefferson was therefore hardly extravagant when he declared that the cession of Louisiana and the Floridas by Spain to France would completely reverse all the political relations of the United States, and would render France, as the possessor of New Orleans, "our natural and habitual enemy."

The treaty of cession was in fact signed at San Ildefonso, on October 1, 1800; but it was not published and even its existence was officially denied. It did not embrace the Floridas, but included the whole of the vast domain then known as Louisiana. The administration at Washington, though in the dark as to what had actually been done, felt the necessity of action. It desired if possible to prevent the transfer of the territory; or, if this could not be accomplished, to obtain from France the Floridas, if they were included in the cession, or at least West Florida, so as to give the United States a continuous stretch of territory on the eastern bank of the Mississippi. With these objects in view, Jefferson appointed Robert R. Livingston as minister to France. Livingston set out on his mission early in October, 1801. On his arrival in Paris he soon became convinced that the cession of Louisiana, if not of the Floridas, had been concluded; and he hinted to Talleyrand, who was then Minister of

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