and of what is sometimes known as the "Monroe Doctrine,"[1] partial as this last is in its application, will all be found to be sources in which writers on International Law have discovered legal limitations on the general principle of the absolute exemption of a truly independent State from any kind of interference from without. But the above principles, claims, and pretensions, by which the independence of States has been practically limited in the past, and is liable to be limited in the future, are either extremely vague and indeterminate in their nature, or only admit of being rendered precise and definite by reproducing an assemblage of by-gone historic circumstances and relationships, for which no true parallel could ever be found again.
Thus, when International Law attempts to lay down a broad International Law only admits right of Intervention in exceptional cases. principle that Intervention is never justifiable, or consistent with the doctrine of the independence of Sovereign States, it is instantly confronted with the facts that in almost every generation, since International Law attained any maturity, Sovereign States have forcibly and violently interposed in each other's affairs; that in many of these cases the Intervention has been countenanced by the impartial opinion of surrounding States, and approved by the judgment of posterity; and that, in the realm of practical politics, it is found that cases are almost daily presenting themselves in which, while all sorts of views are held as to the time and manner of Intervention, the legal right and moral justice of Intervention, in certain possible emergencies, is never a matter of controversy at all.
Hence, the International Lawyer is compelled to recognize exceptions to the broad principle of exemption from interfer-
- ↑ See, for a full account of the scheme of the Holy Alliance, Manning's Law of Nations, Ed. 1875, p. 488; and of the Monroe Doctrine, Wheaton's Law of Nations, Dana's ed., Section 67 seq., note 36.
