Spanish minister at Washington, to Señor Canalejas, in which President McKinley was aspersed and the reciprocity negotiations between the two countries were exhibited as a sham, had just been officially declared to be closed, when the U.S.S Maine was blown up at Havana, and 266 of her crew perished. Shallow and short-sighted reasoners have wished to treat the destruction of the Maine as the justification and the cause of the intervention of the United States. The government of the United States, however, did not itself take that ground. It is true that the case of the Maine is mentioned in the preamble to the joint resolution of Congress, by which the intervention of the United States was authorized; but it is recited merely as the culmination of "abhorrent conditions," which had existed for more than three years. The destruction of the Maine doubtless kindled the intense popular feeling without which wars are seldom entered upon; but the government of the United States never charged—on the contrary, it refrained from charging—that the catastrophe was to be attributed to "the direct act of a Spanish official." Its intervention rested upon the ground that there existed in Cuba conditions so injurious to the United States, as a neighboring nation, that they could no longer be endured. Its action was analogous to what is known in private law as the abatement of a nuisance. On this ground the intervention was justified by the late Alphonse Rivier, one of the most eminent publicists in Europe, and on this ground its justification must continue to rest.
Any exposition of the American doctrine of non-intervention would be incomplete that failed specially to notice the rule of the United States with regard to the recognition of new governments—a rule which is indeed a corollary of that doctrine. In Europe, governments had been treated as legitimate or illegitimate, according to what was conceived to be the regularity or the irregularity of the succession of their rulers. The attitude of the United States on this question was early defined when the National Convention in France proclaimed a republic. On that occasion Jefferson, as Secretary of State, in a letter to Gouverneur Morris, of March 12, 1793, which has become a classic, said: "We surely cannot deny to any nation that right whereon our own government is founded, that every one may govern itself according to whatever form it pleases, and change these forms at its own will; and that it may transact its business with foreign nations through whatever organ it thinks proper, whether king, convention, assembly, committee, president, or anything else it may choose. The will of the nation is the only thing essential to be regarded." In a word, the United States maintained that the true test of a government's title to recognition is not the theoretical legitimacy of its origin, but the fact of its existence as the apparent exponent of the popular will. And from this principle, which is now universally accepted, it necessarily follows that recognition can properly be accorded only when the new government has demonstrated its ability to exist. Recognition extended at an earlier stage of the revolution savors of an act of intervention, and as such must be defended on its merits, as is clearly set forth in President Roosevelt's message of January 4, 1904, in relation to the recognition of the Republic of Panama.
In connection with the principle of non-intervention, a prominent place must be given to the Monroe Doctrine, the object of which was to render intervention unnecessary by precluding the occasions for it. On September 26, 1815, the Emperors of Austria and Russia and the King of Prussia signed at Paris a personal league commonly called the Holy Alliance, the design of which was declared to be the administration of government, in matters both internal and external, according to the precepts of justice, charity, and peace. To this end the allied monarchs, "looking upon themselves as delegated by Providence" to rule over their respective countries, engaged to "lend one another, on every occasion and in every place, assistance, aid, and support." In the course of time, as revolt against the arrangements of the Congress of Vienna spread and grew more pronounced, the alliance came more and more to assume the form of a league for the protection of the principle of legitimacy—the principle of the divine right of kings as opposed to the rights of the
