was no danger of invasion or of hostilities of any kind from Mexico at the time of the march of the army. It must, in fact, be plain to everybody that the ordering of the army to the Rio Grande was a step naturally, if not necessarily, tending to provoke hostilities and to bring on war. I shall use no inflammatory or exciting language, but it seems to me that this whole proceeding is against the spirit of the Constitution and the just limitations of the different departments of the government; an act pregnant with serious consequences and of dangerous precedent to the public liberties.

"No power but Congress can declare war. But what is the value of this constitutional provision if the President of his own authority may make such military movements as must bring on war? If the war power be in Congress, then everything tending directly or naturally to bring on war should be referred to the discretion of Congress. Was this order of march given in the idle hope of coercing Mexico to treat? If so, idle it was, as the event proved. But it was something worse than a mistake or a blunder; it was, as it seems to me, an extension of executive authority of a very dangerous character. I see no necessity for it and no apology for it, since Congress was in session at the same moment at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and might have been consulted."

Extracts from a speech of Mr. Clay in the House of Representatives March 24, 1818, on his motion providing for a minister to the United Provinces of Rio de la Plata.

This speech contains the true, well-settled American doctrine, against which the United States is fighting in the Philippine Islands.

* "But I take a broader and a bolder position. I maintain that an oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and to break their fetters. This was the great principle of the English Revolution. It was the great principle of our own. Vattel, if authority were wanting, expressly supports this right. We must pass sentence of condemnation upon the founders of our liberty, say that they were rebels, traitors, and that we are at this moment legislating without competent powers, before we can condemn the cause of Spanish America. Our Revolution was mainly directed against the mere theory of tyranny. We had suffered comparatively but little; we had, in some respects, been kindly treated; but our intrepid and intelligent fathers saw, in the usurpation of the power to levy an inconsiderable tax, the long train of oppressive acts that were to follow. They rose, they breasted the storm, they achieved our freedom. Spanish America for centuries has been doomed to the practical effects of an odious tyranny. If we were justified, she is more than justified."

"I am no propagandist. I would not seek to force upon other nations our principles and our liberty if they did not

want them. I would not disturb the repose even of a detestable despotism. But if an abused and oppressed people will their freedom; if they seek to establish it; if, in truth, they have established it-we have a right, as a sovereign power, to notice the fact, and to act as circumstances and our interest require. I will say, in the language of the venerated father of my country, 'Born in a land of liberty, my anxious recollections, my sympathetic feelings, and my best wishes are irresistibly excited, whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom.' Whenever I think of Spanish America, the image irresistibly forces itself upon my mind of an elder brother whose education has been neglected, whose person has been abused and maltreated, and who has been disinherited by the unkindness of an unnatural parent. And when I contemplate the glorious struggle which that country is now making, I think I behold that brother rising by the power and energy of his fine native genius to the manly rank which Nature and Nature's God intended for him."

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"The independence of Spanish America, then, is an interest of primary consideration. Next to that, and highly important in itself, is the consideraton of the nature of their governments. That is a question, however, for themselves. They will, no doubt, adopt those kinds of government which are best suited to their condition, best calculated for their happiness. Anxious as I am that they should be free governments, we have no right to prescribe for them. They are, and ought to be, the sole judges for themselves. I am strongly inclined to believe that they will in most, if not all parts of their country, establish free governments. We are

their great example. Of us they constantly speak as of brothers, having a similar origin. They adopt our principles, copy our institutions, and, in many instances, employ the very language and sentiments of our revolutionary papers.

"But it is sometimes said that they are too ignorant and too superstitious to admit of the existence of free government. This charge of ignorance is often urged by persons themselves actually ignorant of the real condition of that people. I deny the alleged fact of ignorance; I deny the inference from that fact, if it were true, that they want capacity for free government; and I refuse to assent to the further conclusion, if the fact were true and the inference just, that we are to be indifferent to their fate."

# "The fact is not therefore true, that the imputed ignorance exists; but, if it do, I repeat, I dispute the inference. It is the doctrine of thrones, that man is too ignorant to govern himself. Their partisans assert his incapacity in reference to all nations; if they can not command universal assent to the proposition, it is then demanded as to particular nations, and our pride and our presumption too often make converts of us. I contend that it is to arraign the dispositions of Providence himself to suppose that He has created beings incapable of governing themselves and to be trampled on by kings. Self-government is the natural government of man, and for proof I refer to the aborigines of our own land."

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