were meditating interference to check the progress of free government
in America, that Mr. Monroe, in his annual message of December, 1823,
declared that the United States would consider any attempt to extend
the European system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to
our peace and safety. "With the existing colonies or dependencies of
any European power," he said, "we have not interfered and shall not
interfere; but with the governments who have declared their independence
and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great
consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view
any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in
any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light
than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United
States."

This declaration resolved the solution of the immediate question of the
independence of the Spanish American colonies, and is supposed to have
exercised some influence upon the course of the British cabinet in
regard to the absolutist schemes in Europe as well as in America.

It has also exercised a permanent influence on this continent. It was at
once invoked in consequence of the supposed peril of Cuba on the side of
Europe; it was applied to a similar danger threatening Yucatan; it was
embodied in the treaty of the United States and Great Britain as to
Central America; it produced the successful opposition of the United
States to the attempt of Great Britain to exercise dominion in Nicaragua
under the cover of the Mosquito Indians; and it operated in like manner
to prevent the establishment of a European dynasty in Mexico.

The United States stand solemnly committed by repeated declarations and
repeated acts to this doctrine, and its application to the affairs of