I Tft *
10 'Cbe Conservative *
THE FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE
UNITED STATES.
The foreign relations of the United
States have recently assumed increased
importance. They have also become ,
more than ever , the subject of popular
concern and decision. Various and com
plicated questions now present them
selves so frequently that public thought ,
through every organ of its expression , is
engaged upon them daily.
Formerly the conduct of these rela
tions was reserved and occult. The
mystery has in these later years , been
made almost entirely plain to every
body. The fact that the senate is , by
the constitution , a part of the treaty-
making power has , evulgato imperil ar-
caiio , revealed , by a process somewhat
like that indicated by the terse phrase of
Tacitus , at once the method and reasons
of negotiations , and has subjected them
to the influence of contemporary opin
ion. For our diplomacy is now con
trolled by public opinion. It formerly
relied upon the power of the administra
tion to coerce or persuade sanction after
the diplomatic act had been done. This
power has passed away.
The foreign policy of this country has
usually been of that formal character
which consists in negotiating those con
ventions which maintain the peaceful
intercourse of states. We have fol
lowed , with few exceptions , the wise
advice of Washington , not to involve
ourselves in entangling alliances with
European states , and to preserve our
peculiar and powerful isolation from
their political concerns has been the line
upon which our foreign relations have
been conducted. We have been too
remote , and our latent power has been
too great to be attacked , or even made
the subject of serious diplomatic ag
gression by European states , singly erin
in combination. With the exception of
our war against Mexico , our conduct
towards the nations of tke western
hemisphere has been friendly and un
selfish beyond any example in history.
We have acquired by puchase , territory
on this continent larger in area than that
which our fathers wrested from Great
Britain by conquest. Wo paid Mexico
for provinces which we could have taken
from her as the legitimate and unremu-
uerated spoil of war.
As to any expansion of our dominions ,
it has never been asserted by the most
adverse critic of our institutions that
the cause of civilization and human
freedom would not be thereby promoted.
We have had no alliances with foreign
powers excepting that with France ,
made in 1778 , which wo evaded ; that
respecting Samoa with Great Britain
and Germany , which was most provi
dently terminated by the treaty of 1803 ,
nudthe sterile and exasperating Clayton-
Bulwer convention of 1850 , the result of
a most indefensible and inexplicable
negotiation , from which wo ought to
disengage ourselves in its entirety at the
earliest possible moment. We have
treaties with all the states of the world ,
but their basis and spirit are peace , com
merce and the guaranty of civil and
religions rights. We broke through the
wall of Chinese exclusion in many
places. We threw open wide the ports
of Japan and gave the first impulse to
that wonderful transformation of an
Oriental despotism , most artificial and
complicated in its feudalism , into a con
stitutional monarchy with legislative ,
executive , and judicial departments in
check and balance against each other.
We have been the model protective
monitor of the Central and South Amer
ican states , and under our tutelage , they
have advanced slowly , it is true , but
surely , towards stability. Under our
example the British colonies to the north
of us have become in substance a repub
lic of almost perfect autonomy.
We have kept Europe and its mon
archical institutions out of the American
continents by the fiat of the Monroe
doctrine , which has been self-executing
except as to Mexico at a time when all
our powers were engrossed in a great
civil war , but which was obeyed when
that war ended.
It has sometimes happened that a
nation has , all at once and from a pre
cise and perceptible date , appeared for
the first time , as by a summons , as a
permanent actor in large and general
international politics. England did so
during the Protectorate of Cromwell ;
Russia did so during the reign of Peter
the Great ; Prussia did so in the last
century ; Japan has done so within the
last thirty years.
For more than a century the United
States was not an appreciable factor in
the wars , the diplomacies , the expan
sions , the dismemberments , and the
revolutions of the other states of the
world.
By an impulse , providential or evolu
tionary , but irresistible , civilization has ,
during the present generation moved all
at once and in concert in a process of
territorial expansion as sudden and in
explicable as that which at the close of
the fifteenth century impelled the na
tions of Europe to voyages which re
sulted in the discovery and occupation
of America. Within the last few years
the continent of Africa has been sub
jected to European partition. China is
now under dismemberment. Through
out this vast expansive process no for
eign power seemed to think , nor indeed
had it any need to think of the United
States. We were merely languid and
willing spectators.
Two naval victories in the war with
Spain , as decisive as Salainis or Trafal
gar , demonstrated that the United
States had become a sea power in fact.
The skill of our officers , the marksmaii-
Bhip of our gunners , the bravery and
fighting efficiency of our crews , the
superb and faultless mechanism of our
steel leviathans , assured us and con
vinced other nations that the pastoral ,
farming , mechanical , mining giant of
the western world had become some
thing more than he had seemed , and
that he at last walked the rounds of
national defense and honor "clad in
complete steel. "
I think it can bo safely said that they
who once threatened intervention be
tween the United States and Spain
abandoned that desire quickly after the
momentous events of Manila and Santi
ago , and will never again entertain the
design of a similar intrusion under any
circumstances that we can now imagine.
I believe that these victories have done
more to assure the peace of the world
than all the alliances and international
concerts which have been effected dur
ing the last fifty years.
The treaty of Paris extirpated Spain
from her Asiatic and American insular
possessions , and gave Porto Rico and
the Philippine archipelago to the United
States.
The United States will command the
greatest part of the commerce with the
Chinese Orient. We can produce every
article that can be sold in this new and
limitless market. To conduct that com
merce we need to cross only one ocean ;
Europe must traverse the Atlantic , the
Mediterranean , the Red sea , and the
Pacific. Ancillary to this vantage of
position on the American continent we
possess the Philippines , undoubtedly the
richest of all the islands of the seas ,
flanking the coast of China for 1,200
miles , Hawaii and the insular extension
of Alaska which impends over middle
Asia , thus dominating southeastern Asia
and the Asiatic Pacific ocean.
The situation thus imperfectly stated ,
introduced new elements into our for
eign policy. The question was , what
were to be the rights and status of the
United States respecting trade and
intercourse under these new conditions
of partition , occupation and spheres of
influence ?
The action of Secretary Hay in the
solution of this problem was diligent
and wise. He stated to the great pow
ers what was desired and expected by
the United States in notes of the same
tenor to each government. Assurances
were promptly and unreservedly given
by Great Britain , Germany , Russia ,
France , Italy and Japan.
No diplomatic achievement in our
history , excepting the treaty negotiated
by Franklin by which our independence
was acknowledged , and the conventions
by which Louisiana and the provinces of
Mexico were acquired , can be placed be
fore this negotiation. It did not expand
our possession , but it will expand our
influence and ascendency immeasur
ably. It is the result , however , of the
two expansions as to Louisiana and
Mexico , and of the acquisition of the
