custom-houses. In the message accompanying the treaty, President Roosevelt stated that conditions in Santo Domingo had for many years been growing steadily worse, that there had been many disturbances and revolutions, and that debts had been contracted beyond the power of the republic to pay. Those who profited by the Monroe Doctrine must, he affirmed, accept certain responsibilities along with the rights which it conferred; and the justification for assuming the responsibility proposed in the present instance was to be found in the fact that it was incompatible with international equity for the United States to refuse to allow other powers to take the only means at their disposal of satisfying the claims of their citizens and yet to refuse itself to take any such steps. Under the Monroe Doctrine the United States could not, said President Roosevelt, see any European power "seize and permanently occupy the territory of an American republic, and yet such seizure might eventually offer the only way in which such a power could collect any debts, unless the United States should interfere. Under such circumstances the United States should take charge of the custom-houses. In the course of his message he further said: "Either we must abandon our duty under our traditional policy towards the Dominican people, who aspire to a republican form of government while they are actually drifting into a condition of permanent anarchy, in which case we must permit

some other government to adopt its own measures in order to safeguard its own interests, or else we must ourselves take seasonable and appropriate action." And in conclusion he avowed the belief that the proposed treaty afforded a "practical test of the efficiency of the United States government in maintaining the Monroe Doctrine." The Senate adjourned without taking a vote on the treaty, final action on which was thus deferred. Meanwhile, under a modus vivendi concluded by President Roosevelt, an American citizen designated by him has been placed by the Dominican government in charge of the collection of the revenues, a certain proportion of which is to be deposited in a bank in New York, on account of the claims of creditors, till the question of ratification of the treaty shall be definitely determined.

VII

THE DOCTRINE OF EXPATRIATION

THE Declaration of Independence enumerates as among the "inalienable rights" with which "all men" are "endowed by their Creator," "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It has often been remarked that this dogma, like the associated affirmation that "all men are created equal," was evidently considered as an abstraction, since its announcement was not conceived to render inadmissible the continued holding in bondage of a large servile population. This criticism, however, cannot, certainly in its more sinister sense, be accepted as just. All general declarations of human rights to a large extent represent aspirations, for the perfect fulfilment of which conditions altogether ideal would be requisite. So long as human conditions are imperfect, the realization of the highest human aspirations will be imperfect. Even admitting, therefore, that the enumerated rights belonged to "all men" and were "inalienable," there yet remained the task of determining what they actually included and what were their practical limitations. No

argument, beyond the common experience of daily life, was needed to demonstrate that the unregulated pursuit by each individual of his own will was incompatible with the existence of social order; and it was therefore freely conceded, even by the most extreme proponents of the theory of natural rights, that men, when living in society, must be considered as having yielded up a part of those rights for the sake of the common welfare. But the question still remained, to what extent had this been done?

We are now concerned with the answer to this question in only one particular. Does the right to "liberty" and the "pursuit of happiness," in the sense in which they may be called "inalienable," embrace, incidentally, a right on the part of the individual to expatriate himself at will? This was a question that was destined, in the growth and development of American policy, to give rise to important international controversies, some of which yet remain unadjusted. In order to grasp the meaning of these controversies, it is necessary at the outset clearly to understand just what was the point at issue. The word expatriation is often employed to denote merely the giving up of one's country, and more particularly one's native country, by a permanent change of abode; but, as used in diplomatic discussions, it signifies the change both of home and of allegiance, and

more especially of allegiance. By the laws of all civilized countries, provision is made for the admission of aliens to citizenship. The process by which this is done is called naturalization. What is the effect of this process? Does it confer upon the individual a new political character, without divesting him of that which he previously had, thus exposing him, unless his original sovereign consent to the change, to the conflicting claims of a dual allegiance? or does it of its own force not only invest him with a new allegiance, but also free him from the obligations of the old? By the laws of the United States the alien was required, at the time of his admission to citizenship, to forswear all allegiance to his former sovereign; and no inquiry was made as to whether that sovereign had, either by general or by specific permission, consented to the act. It might therefore be inferred that they were framed upon the theory that the individual possessed an absolute and unrestricted right to change his allegiance, without regard to the claims which his country of origin might assert, even within its own jurisdiction. This would, however, be a hasty inference, so far, at any rate, as the omission to inquire concerning the claims of prior allegiance is concerned. Other countries had naturalization statutes, by which no such inquiry was authorized; and yet those countries conceded to their own subjects the right of expatriation only with substantial