Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/934

Maximilian. Emperor of Mexico
Executed June 19, 1867

be at stake in the dispute between Great Britain and Venezuela, because, as the dispute related to territory, it necessarily imported "political control to be lost by one party and gained by the other."

"To-day," declared Mr. Olney, "the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition." All the advantages of this superiority were, he affirmed, at once imperilled if the principle should be admitted that European powers might convert American states into colonies or provinces of their own. Lord Salisbury declined unrestricted arbitration; and when his answer was received, President Cleveland, on December 17, 1895, laid the correspondence before Congress. "If a European power, by an extension of its boundaries, takes possession of the territory of one of our neighboring republics against its will and in derogation of its rights," it was, said President Cleveland, the precise thing which President Monroe had declared to be "dangerous to our peace and safety"; but, he added, "any adjustment of the boundary which that country [Venezuela] may deem for her advantage and may enter into of her own free will cannot, of course, be objected to by the United States."

He then recommended the appointment by the United States of a commission to investigate the merits of the controversy, and declared that, if the title to the disputed territory should be found to belong to Venezuela, it would be the duty of the United States "to resist by every means in its power, as a wilful aggression upon its rights and interests, the appropriation by Great Britain of any lands or the exercise of governmental jurisdiction over any territory which, after investigation, we have determined of right belongs to Venezuela."

This declaration produced great excitement, in the United States as well as