to no knowledge at all, a little knowledge is perhaps the most dangerous, and especially so in legal affairs. However, if by consulting this book a person is made to see how little he really does know, and how necessary it is for him to consult some one who is acquainted with the law on the matter, the book will be well worth the price. In many of the affairs of daily life, no doubt, this book proves of great assistance, since, subject to the defect of summary statements, the treatment is exceedingly good. In the present edition the statutes for 1913 have been included and the judicial decisions brought up to date. A useful Dictionary of Legal Terms had been added.

Books received, reviews of which have been held over owing to want of space :-Pellerin's Cases on Private International Law; Hall's Law of Naval Warfare; Holland's Letters on War and Neutrality; Bowles v. The Bank of England; Ihering's Law as a Means to an End; Stephen's Commentaries; Roome's Criminal Offences in Bankruptcy; Mohammed Kadri Pasha's Code of Mohammedan Personal Law; Sanger's Wills and Intestacies; Haines' American Doctrine of Judicial Supremacy; Hemmeon's Burgage Tenure in Mediaval England; Caporn's Cases Illustrating the Law of Contracts; Smith's Law of Associations; Fortescue-Brickdale's Methods of Land Transfer; Paine's Canadian Law of Contracts; Wilshere's Analysis of the Law of Contracts and Torts; Schwabe's Law of the Stock Exchange; Dean and Rimmer's Digest of Local Government Law; Ringwood's Bankruptcy; Gibson & Weldon's Student's Bankruptcy; Kohler's Philosophy of Law; Memoirs of John Westlake; Kerr on Injunctions; Daniell's Chancery Practice.

Other Publications received:-Bentham's Kriminalphilosophie (F. C. W. Vogel, Leipzig); Strupp's Völkerrechtliche Fälle, Part II (F. A. Perthes, Frankfurt); Reports of the American Bar Association, Vol. 38 (Lord Baltimore Press, Baltimore, U.S.A.); American Journal of International Law for January; Stier-Somlo's Handbuch des Völkerrechts (W. Kholhammer, Berlin); Struve's Die Strafrechtliche Behandlung der Jugend in England; Hentig's Strafrecht und Anslese.

The Law Magazine and Review receives or exchanges with the following amongst other publications :-Juridical Review, Law Times, Law Journal, Justice of the Peace, Law Quarterly Review, Irish Law Times, Australian Law Times, Canada Law Journal, Canada Law Times, Chicago Legal News, American Law Review, American Law Register, Harvard Law Review, Case and Comment, Green Bag, Madras Law Journal, Calcutta Weekly Notes, Law Notes, Law Students' Journal, Bombay Law Reporter, Medico-Legal Journal, Indian Review, Kathiawar Law Reports, The Lawyer (India), South African Law Journal.

THE

LAW MAGAZINE AND REVIEW.

No. CCCLXXIII.-AUGUST, 1914.

I. THE MONROE DOCTRINE: "BE A NATION, BE AMERICANS."

IN

N September 1796, Washington published his farewell address. 66 Be united," he said, "be Americans. The name which belongs to you in your national capacity must exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. Observe justice and good faith towards 'all nations; have neither passionate hatreds nor passionate attachments to any, and be independent politically of all. In one word, be a nation, be Americans, and be true to yourselves."

This was the immortal admonition of George Washington to the American people. It was the clarion call of a great soldier, a great statesman and a great patriot, to future generations of Americans-a call that will never be unheeded through the ages to come. It was, and it is hoped always will be, the foundation of the country's foreign policy.

The principles of the foreign policy of the United States were inaugurated when George Washington took the oath of office as President of the United States, and while the decision to stand apart from European conflicts was made clear in the proclamation of neutrality in the war between France and England, there was nothing new in this policy.

It had been outlined ever since Washington became President as co-equal with American independence, and as the only path that could lead to future greatness.

The political system on which the United States is founded is constitutional liberty and the political safety and happiness of a free people. As Seward said: "Americanism. is one interest, and ought to be one sentiment throughout this continent." This national spirit-this keen sense of the new Republic's political system-is seen in the utterances of the statesmen of the day in their patriotic appeal for unity and consolidation among all republican States.

A few instances show the gradual development of these principles. In a letter to Morris in December 1795, Washington wrote: "My policy has been, and will continue to be while I have the honour to remain in the administration, to maintain friendly terms with, but to be independent of, all the nations of the earth."

Again he declared in these touching words: "Born, sir, in a land of liberty; having early learned its value; having engaged in a perilous conflict to defend it; having, in a word, devoted the best years of my life to secure its permanent establishment in my own country, my anxious recollections, my sympathetic feelings and my best wishes, are irresistibly excited whenever in any country I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banner of freedom."2

John Adams declared in his annual address, December 8th 1798, that "a manly sense of national honour, dignity and independence has appeared, which, if encouraged and invigorated by every branch of the Government, will enable us to view undismayed the enterprises of any foreign power and become the sure foundation of national prosperity and glory."

In a letter to Thomas Paine, March 1801, Jefferson wrote: "We shall avoid complicating ourselves with the 1 Moore, Int. Law Dig., 6 V., 19. 2 Moore, 6 V., 46.

powers of Europe even in support of principles which we mean to pursue.'

In 1820, when the Portuguese minister felt so self-assured as to propose that Portugal and the United States, as the two great Powers of the western hemisphere, should join hands in a great American system, Adams, after suppressing his amusement at the idea, exclaimed: "As to an American system we have it; we constitute the whole of it."2

During the discussion regarding the acquirement of the Floridas, Adams, in opposition to those who advocated a moderate policy on account of the suspicions of England and France, affirmed that he was not in favour of our giving ourselves any concern whatever about the opinions of any foreign Power. "If the world do not hold us for Romans," he said, "they will take us for Jews, and of the two vices I would rather be charged with that which has greatness mingled in its composition." He was quite ready to have the world become familiarised with the idea. of considering our proper dominion to be the continent of North America.

In a letter to Rufus King dated December 16th 1796, he wrote: "We are labouring hard to establish in this country principles more and more national and free from all foreign ingredients, so that we may be neither Greeks nor Trojans, but truly Americans."

"Our situation," wrote Hamilton, "invites and our interests prompt us to aim at an ascendant in the system. of American affairs."4

We were to be dominant, declares Lodge, in the Western Hemisphere. We were not only to be neutral as to the affairs of Europe, but we were to exact from Europe neutrality in all regarding America, and were to crush out European influence.5

1 Jefferson's Works, IV, 370.

3 Ibid., 134.

3 Morse, John Quincy Adams, Jr., 129. 4 I Federalist, 77.

5 Lodge, Alexander Hamilton, 210, 211.

It took time and a herculean struggle before the politics of the country shook off the jealousies and petty strifes of colonialism and emerged into the great and broader realms of nationalism; before that national sentiment, which has gradually and progressively led us into being a great nation, could permeate thoroughly the minds and hearts of the people, smothering the embers of sectional dissension and political party wrangling. A new generation had sprung into manhood before the politics of the country were finally taken out of colonial feudalism and made co-ordinate with the national American spirit; but the idea was that of Washington. It was his foresight and courage which at the outset placed the United States in their relations with foreign nations on the ground of a firm independent and American policy.1

The policy of maintaining the independence of the American continent from foreign interference had long been foreshadowed.

On January 3rd 1811, President Madison sent a secret message to Congress recommending that the executive be authorized to take possession of any part of the Floridas in case there should be apprehension of the occupancy of the territory by a foreign Power other than Spain. Acting on this message, Congress in secret session on the 15th, taking into view the peculiar situation of Spain and of her American provinces, and the influences which the destiny of territory adjoining the southern border of the United States might have upon their security, tranquillity and commerce, resolved that the United States could not, without serious inquietude, see any part of that territory pass into the hands of any foreign Power, and that a due regard to their own safety compelled them to provide, under certain contingencies, for the temporary occupation of the said territory.2

1 Lodge, Washington, 213, 214.

2 Moore, 6 V., 372.