the fact that the proposed coöperation with Great Britain would bind
the United States not to acquire some of the coveted parts of the
Spanish possessions, and partly to the fear that the United States as
the ally of Great Britain would be compelled to play a secondary part.
He probably carried his point by showing that the same ends could be
accomplished by an independent declaration, since it was evident that
the sea power of Great Britain would be used to prevent the reconquest
of South America by the European powers. Monroe, as we have seen,
thought that the exigencies of the situation justified a departure from
the sound maxim of political isolation, and in this opinion he was
supported by his two predecessors in the presidency.

The opinions of Monroe, Jefferson, and Madison in favor of an alliance
with Great Britain and a broad declaration against the intervention of
the great powers in the affairs of weaker states in any part of the
world, have been severely criticised by some historians and ridiculed
by others, but time and circumstances often bring about a complete
change in our point of view. After the beginning of the great world
conflict, especially after our entrance into it, several writers raised
the question as to whether, after all, the three elder statesmen were
not right and Adams and Clay wrong. If the United States and England
had come out in favor of a general declaration against intervention in
the concerns of small states and established it as a world-wide
principle, the course of human history during the next century might
have been very different, but Adams's diary does not tell the whole
story. On his own statement of the case he might be justly censured by
posterity for persuading the president to take a narrow American view
of a question which was world-wide in its bearing. An important
element in the situation, however, was Canning's change of attitude
between the time of his conference with Rush in August and the