I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States, never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property, and lives of their peoples ... on our part, never had a people so favorable a chance of trying the opposite system, of peace and fraternity with mankind, and the direction of our means and faculties to the purposes of improvement instead of destruction.[520]
Thus, little by little, the famous doctrine took its final shape in the minds of both Jefferson and Monroe. Jefferson contributed to it its historical background, the weight of his experience and authority, and the long conversations he had with Monroe on the matter gave him an opportunity not only to get "his political compass rectified" but to map out for the President the course to follow. The often quoted letter written by Jefferson to Monroe on October 24, 1823, contained little more than what had passed between them when Monroe visited his estate in Virginia. It was simply a reaffirmation of the fundamental maxims of the Jeffersonian policies:—"never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe—never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with cis-Atlantic affairs."
After making a survey of all the circumstances, Jefferson could write in conclusion:
I could honestly, therefore, join in the declaration proposed, that we aim not at the acquisition of any of those possessions, that we will not stand in the way of any amicable arrangement between them and the Mother country; but that we will oppose, with all our means, the forcible interposition of any other form or pretext, and most especially, their transfer to any power by conquest, cession, or acquisition in any other way.
Finally, although the letters to be exchanged between the British and American governments did not properly constitute a treaty, Jefferson advised Monroe to lay the case before Congress at the first opportunity, since this doctrine might lead to war, "the declaration of which requires an act of Congress."
Whatever use has been made of the Monroe Doctrine and whether or not the "mandate" assumed by the United States has proved irksome to several South American republics, there is no doubt that it was not proclaimed without long hesitation and that its promoters did not take up this new responsibility with "un cœur léger." There is no doubt, either, that it was not considered as an instrument of imperialism. It was primarily the extension of the doctrine of self-protection already advanced by John Adams in 1776 and since then maintained by Washington and Jefferson himself. It was also a corollary of the theory of the balance of power which Jefferson always kept in mind. In this he was not only followed but urged on by all his liberal friends in Europe.
I would not be sorry—wrote Lafayette in 1817—to see the American government invested by the follies of Spain, with the opportunity to take the lead in the affairs of her independent colonies. Unless that is the case or great changes happen in the European policies, the miseries of those fine countries will be long protracted. Could you establish there a representative system, a free trade, and a free press, how many channels of information and improvement should be open at once.[521]
Jefferson himself was too respectful of self-government ever to think of interfering with the internal affairs of the new republics. On the other hand, he was too firmly convinced of the moral, intellectual and political superiority of his own country not to believe that a time would come when the contagion of liberty would extend to the near and remote neighbors of the United States. The unavoidable result of the Monroe Doctrine and the moral mandate of America would be ultimately to form a "Holy American Alliance" of the free peoples of the Western Hemisphere, to counterbalance the conspiracy of Kings and Lords "called the European Holy Alliance."