ogy of the wisdom of the Morgan-Belmont contract,1 the fact remains that the President, by his courageous adherence to what he believed to be our national and international obligations, without help from Congress, and in the face of the bitter opposition of a large section of his party, almost single-handed kept the government from going to what the advocates of silver called a bimetallic basis, but what would have resulted inevitably in silver monometallism. During the hectic period the Secretary of the Treasury had issued $262,000,000 in bonds, increasing its annual interest obligations by more than $11,500,000, in order to safeguard a gold reserve of $100,000,000. After the spring of 1896 there was no further danger. The presidential campaign was approaching, and the financial interests were alert to thwart the hopes of the free silverites, who were aiming at the capture of the Democratic party. In a single week of July, 1896, the bankers of the country contributed $25,000,000 to the gold reserve in exchange for notes. After the victory of McKinley in November the hoarded gold came out of hiding.

THE FREE-SILVER CAMPAIGN

Though the people at large felt the ultimate effects of the hard times of the first half of President Cleveland's administration, in unemployment, high rents, unprofitable crops, and uncertain investments, not one in a hundred had the least quali

1 The writer confesses that he is not. It seems to him that a wide appeal to public subscription by competitive bids, which was so successful in January, 1896, would have met with a favorable response a year earlier. Conditions were already improving at the beginning of 1895. Business was picking up. Exports were increasing. The Treasury surplus for the ordinary expenses of the government (not to be confused with the gold reserve), which had been but $18,000,000 at the time of the first bond issue in February, 1894, was over $100,000,000 a year later, when the Morgan contract was made. The government could probably have sold its 4 per cent bonds to the public in 1895 on terms almost as advantageous as Mr. Morgan did. Mr. Rhodes does not agree with this opinion. He believes that "the government was within a few days of bankruptcy, and only men who had control of the money market could save it." The student of the contemporary documents, he says, "can have no hesitation in justifying the contract which saved our country from dishonoring its obligations" (Rhodes, "From Hayes to McKinley," pp. 436, 437).

fication to judge intelligently the causes of the distressing situation. As environment, political leanings, or inherited party tradition dictated, they fell in behind the Republicans, who attributed it to Democratic tinkering with the tariff, or the Democrats, who charged it to the Republican nurture of the trusts. The protagonists spoke the parts in Congress, conventions, and editorial columns, and the people echoed their sentiments like a Greek chorus. About midway in the administration, however, there came an event which sent a shock through the American people, stirring elemental passions and revealing how perilously near the edge of the precipice of war the path of national honor runs.

For more than half a century the South American republic of Venezuela and the adjacent British colony of Guiana had been engaged in a boundary dispute. The utter disparity of strength between the British Empire and Venezuela made it impossible for the latter to bring more "pressure" to bear upon Downing Street than repeated requests to have the whole matter submitted to arbitration. As early as 1870 Venezuela, in notable contrast to the usual attitude of the Latin-American states toward their powerful northern neighbor since the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine, appealed to the United States to interest itself in having "due justice" done in the case. But it was not until Venezuela broke off diplomatic relations with Great Britain in 1887 that we offered our mediation, which Lord Salisbury declined. Meanwhile, the uncovering of large deposits of gold and other mineral wealth in Venezuela had attracted British settlers far to the north of the "Schomburgk line" of 1841, which England had for a generation insisted on as the proper boundary. Lord Salisbury spoke of this expanding area of occupation as the "possession" of the British crown. It is true that the extreme claim of Venezuela extended farther into the territory of British Guiana than the British claim extended into Venezuela;1 but the important point is that Vene

1 On this score and on the fact that the final settlement of the dispute practically conceded the Schomburgk line as the true boundary, Mr. Rhodes justifies Great Britain's position and condemns our government for entering into a dispute

zuela had no remotest prospect of enforcing her exaggerated claims, while Great Britain was steadily extending and making effective her own. Nevertheless, it is probably true, as Peck states, that when President Cleveland referred in a brief paragraph in his message of December, 1894, to his intent to renew the effort to bring the Venezuelan dispute to arbitration, "not one American in a million took any notice" of his words.1

Before the next year was out, however, the Venezuelan controversy had roused the country to a high pitch of excitement. On July 20 Richard Olney (who had succeeded Gresham as Secretary of State) sent to Lord Salisbury a dispatch declaring that it was the business of the United States to intervene in a controversy between Great Britain and Venezuela to see that the integrity of the latter's territory was not "impaired by the pretensions of its powerful antagonist," and that the United States was "entitled to resent and resist any sequestration of Venezuelan soil by Great Britain." "The United States," he wrote, "is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law on those subjects to which it confines its interposition. . . Its infinite resources combined with its isolated position render it master of the situation and practically invulnerable against any or all other powers." Aside from the rather rash boast of the last sentence and in view of the fact that we had not a single first-class battleship completed at the time it was written, Secretary Olney's interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine as public law was an innovation. The doctrine was actually a pronouncement of President Monroe in a message of general "recommendations" to Congress in December, 1823. It had not even received the legislative indorsement of Congress. Although it

which did not involve the Monroe Doctrine (see "From Hayes to McKinley,” pp. 443-456). He overlooks the crucial point that Great Britain had long since refused to be confined by the Schomburgk line and was offering protection to tens of thousands of settlers who were penetrating the rich mining lands of Venezuela, as "her Majesty's subjects" in a colony which "could not be severed from the Queen's dominions"- the words of Lord Granville, the British Secretary of Foreign Affairs. 1H. T. Peck, "Twenty Years of the Republic," p. 413.

2 Henry Clay had attempted to have Congress incorporate the Monroe Doctrine as law in 1824, but without success.

had been generally respected by foreign nations, it had never been specifically recognized as international law—nor was it, indeed, until it was incorporated in 1919 into the covenant of the League of Nations, to which the United States has not become a party! Lord Salisbury's reply (which was delayed for more than four months) denied the right of the United States to take over Venezuela's case and rejected the interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine contained in Olney's note. "No statesman, however eminent," said his lordship, "and no nation however powerful, are competent to insert into the code of international law a novel principle which was never recognized before, and which has not since been accepted by the Government of any other country."

Thereupon President Cleveland, on December 17, 1895, submitted the correspondence to Congress with the declaration that although the Monroe Doctrine "may not have been admitted in so many words to the code of international law," if its enforcement was a thing we might justly claim as a right, it had its place in the code "as certainly as if it were specifically mentioned." The President's logic verged on the fallacy of the petitio principi, but he was not concerned with logic. He was convinced that Great Britain was deliberately encroaching upon the territory of a weak neighbor, and was determined that the encroachment should cease. This continent was closed to further colonization by European powers. Cleveland therefore asked Congress for an adequate appropriation for the expenses of a commission to determine, upon careful investigation, "the true boundary line between the Republic of Venezuela and British Guiana"; and expressed the opinion that when such a line had been determined, it would be "the duty of the United States to resist by every means in its power" the violation of that line by Great Britain. "In making these recommendations," he said, "I am fully aware of the responsibility incurred and keenly realize all the consequences that may follow. I am, nevertheless, firm in my conviction that while it is a grievous thing to contemplate the two great English-speaking peoples of the world as being otherwise than friendly competitors in the

onward march of civilization, . . . there is no calamity which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice." Congress immediately and unanimously appropriated $100,000, and the President appointed an able commission to investigate the boundary.1

The holiday season was clouded with apprehension on both sides of the Atlantic. The American president had issued an ultimatum, couched in language which, coming from any European chancellery, would have meant war. The British foreign office had taken a firm position, from which retreat without humiliation seemed impossible. The English people and press had been in the habit of taking American foreign dispatches with a large grain of salt, as the crude communications of a young and rather "bumptious" nation; but when they realized the seriousness of President Cleveland's message and the significance of the immediate response of Congress, they began almost with one accord to work for peace. The public protest against the "unthinkable horror" of a war between England and the United States over a boundary line in the South American tropics had something of the force of a general-election issue. Lord Salisbury found himself unsupported in his position of finality. On the very day that Cleveland appointed the commission, more than three hundred and fifty members of Parliament sent a petition to the President and Congress asking that henceforth all matters of dispute between the two nations be settled by arbitration. Two days later an event occurred which made it easy for the British foreign office to execute a graceful retreat. A certain Dr. Jameson had conducted a raid into the territory of the Boer republic in South Africa and had been defeated and captured by the redoubtable old president, Paul Kruger. On January 3 the German Kaiser sent a telegram to Kruger con

1 The commission, appointed on New Year's Day, 1896, comprised Justice David Brewer of the Supreme Court; Judge Alvey of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals; Andrew D. White, former representative of the United States at the courts of St. Petersburg and Berlin; Frederick R. Coudert, a noted New York lawyer; and D. C. Gilman, president of Johns Hopkins University. Professors J. Franklin Jameson and George L. Burr served the commission as historical experts.