in some form. The United States was not prepared to offer
Canning's self-denying ordinance barring the way to further
American expansion, but something it must offer. This
compensating offset Adams found in the separation of the New
World from the Old and in abstention from interference in Europe.
Such a renunciation involved, however, the sacrifice of generous
American sympathies with the republicans across the seas. Monroe,
Gallatin, and many other statesmen wished as active a policy in
support of the Greeks as of the Spanish Americans. Adams
insisted, however, that the United States should create a sphere
for its interests and should confine itself to that sphere. His
plan for peace provided that European and American interests
should not only not clash but should not even meet.

The President's message of December 2, 1823, amounted to a
rejection of the Holy Alliance as guardian of the world's peace,
of Canning's request for an entente, and of the proposal that the
United States enter upon a campaign to republicanize the world.
It stated the intention of the Government to refrain from
interference in Europe, and its belief that it was "impossible
that the allied powers should extend their political system to
any portion of either continent [of America] without endangering
our peace and happiness." The message contained a strong defense
of the republican system of government and of the right of
nations to control their own internal development. It completed
the foreign policy of the United States by declaring, in
connection with certain recent encroachments of Russia along the
northwest coast, that the era of colonization in the Americas was
over. The United States was to maintain in the future that
boundaries between nations holding land in America actually