In this sense, but apparently with the qualification in the particular case that only a forcible acquisition of territory was forbidden, the Monroe Doctrine was invoked by President Cleveland in respect of the Venezuelan boundary question. This incident, as is well known, grew out of a long-standing dispute between Great Britain and Venezuela, which was the continuation of a dispute two centuries old between the Netherlands and Spain as to the limits of the Dutch and Spanish settlements in Guiana. In 1844 Lord Aberdeen proposed to Venezuela a conventional line, beginning at the river Moroco. This proposal was declined; and, chiefly in consequence of civil commotions in Venezuela, negotiations remained practically in abeyance till 1876. Venezuela then offered to accept the Aberdeen line; but Lord Grenville suggested a boundary farther west; and in subsequent negotiations the British demand was extended still farther in that direction. Venezuela, representing that this apparent enlargement of British dominion constituted a pure aggression on her territorial rights, invoked the aid of the United States on the ground of the Monroe Doctrine. Venezuela asked for arbitration, and in so doing included in her claim a large portion of British Guiana. Great Britain at length declined to arbitrate unless Venezuela would first yield all territory within a line westward of that offered by Lord Aberdeen. In these circumstances, Mr. Olney, as Secretary of State, in instructions to Mr. Bayard, American ambassador at London, of July 20, 1895, categorically inquired whether the British government would submit the whole controversy to arbitration. In these instructions Mr. Olney declared that the Monroe Doctrine did not establish a "protectorate" over
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Benito Juarez
President of Mexico
other American states; that it did not relieve any of them "from its obligations as fixed by international law nor prevent any European power directly interested from enforcing such obligations or from inflicting merited punishment for the breach of them"; but that its "single purpose and object" was that "no European power or combination of European powers" should "forcibly deprive an American state of the right and power of self-government, and of shaping for itself its own political fortunes and destinies." This principle he conceived to
