A revolution in Spain in 1820 was promptly suppressed by the Holy Alliance, and the Spanish people, who had raised their heads and begun to look around for freedom, were again bowed under the yoke of the detested Bourbons. The Holy Alliance was surely a most unholy alliance. Russia, by a ukase in 1821, claimed the right to keep the vessels of all other Powers out of the North Pacific Ocean. That was a Russian "Monroe Doctrine" which helped to make Monroe a doctrinaire. In 1823 Spain lost, through revolutions, all of her American possessions except Cuba and Porto Rico, and Portugal had lost Brazil. France had lost the island of Haiti. The United States naturally sympathized with the newly-formed states built on the ruins of the Spanish and Portuguese empires. They had mostly adopted republican institutions, becoming sisters of the great northern republic. James Monroe was not the father of the child named for him, for the actual formulator of the Monroe Doctrine was John Quincy Adams, at that time Secretary of State, who got the cue from George Canning. England wanted unrestricted trade with the Spanish-American countries; she had no need of additional territory on the American continent, but she saw danger in its acquisition by other nations. George Canning tried four times in 1823 to get the United States to join England in her declaration of the open-door policy. Monroe favored the proposal, but finally Adams convinced the President that it would be better to avoid any entangling arrangement with England, and to stand alone. On the second of December, 1823, in his annual message to Congress, President Monroe made the following declaration on behalf of the United States: * * * * * "_The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by European powers.... We should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them or controlling, in any other manner, their destiny, by any European power, in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States._" * * * * * Such was the birth of the famous Monroe Doctrine. Its recognition by England made it effective. The Monroe Doctrine has nothing whatever to do with international law. It is simply an expression of British national policy for the United States.