connection which unites the series of consequences upon an act like the war with Spain, and it is invoked to prevent us from going back to see whether the consequences do not prove that that act was wrong and foolish.
There was room to argue, in 1845, that it was the plain course of the future that the United States should occupy and develop California: it was a contiguous territory; it lay between the United States and the Pacific and contained the best harbor on the coast; it was in hands which were not developing it; it was almost uninhabited, so that the subjugation of dissatisfied people, although not entirely absent, was not an important feature. The claim of a group of people to hold a part of the earth's surface is never absolute. Every group holds its territory by force and holds it subject to the obligation to exploit it and make it contributory to the welfare of mankind. If it does not do this it will probably lose the territory by the conquest of a more energetic people. This is manifest destiny. It is another dangerous doctrine, if it is used without a candid heed to its limitations. It has been abused twice recently: first, an absolute right to territory has been set up on behalf of the Boers, who really challenged the English as to the manifest destiny of South Africa; second, in our own relations with Spain we have heard arguments that, if one state thinks that another is not making good use of its territory, the former may dispossess the latter. In so far, then, as state necessity in the weaker form of manifest destiny may be judged to apply to California, that case of expansion could be justified.
If now we turn to our recent expansion and apply the doctrine of state necessity to it, there might be some argument in favor of the acquisition of Cuba. It is
