Memoirs of John Adams Dix; comp. by his son, Morgan Dix.

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MEMOIRS OF JOHN ADAMS DIX.

without being prepared to maintain them by acts, or to make
declarations of abstract principle until the occasion has arrived for enforcing them. The declarations of a President
having no power to make war without a vote of Congress, or
even to employ the military force of a country, except to defend our own territory, is very different from the protest of
a sovereign holding the issues of peace and war in his own
hands. But the former may not be less effectual when they
are sustained, as I believe those of Presidents Monroe and
Polk are, in respect to European interference on the American continent, by an undivided public opinion, even though
they may not have received a formal response from Congress.
I hold, therefore, if any such interposition as that to which I
have referred should take place, resistance on our part would
inevitably follow, and we should become involved in controversies of which no man could foresee the end."
I quote a striking passage against the aggressive policy of
Great Britain:
" In the references I have made to France and Great Britain, I have been actuated by no feeling of unkindness or hostility to either. Rapid and wide-spread as has been the progress of the latter, we have never sought to interfere with it.
She holds one-third of the North American continent. She
has established her dominion in the Bermudas, the West Indies, and in Guiana, on the South American continent. She
holds Balize, on the Bay of Yucatan, in North America, with
a district of about fourteen thousand square miles, if we may
trust her own geographical delineations. We see her in the
occupation of territories in every quarter of the globe, vastly,
inordinately extended, and still ever extending herself. It is
not easy to keep pace with her encroachments. A few years
ago the Indus was the western boundary of her Indian empire. She has passed it. She has overrun Afghanistan and
Beloochistan, though, I believe, she has temporarily withdrawn from the former. She stands at the gates of Persia.