If theories change, frontiers change no less. The northern Republic has been the beneficiary of an incessant territorial expansion: in 1813 it acquired Louisiana; in 1819, Florida; in 1845 and 1850, Texas; the Mexican provinces in 1848 and 1852; and Alaska in 1858. The annexation of Hawaii took place in 1898. In the same year Porto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, and one of the Marianne Islands, passed, by the Treaty of Paris, into the hands of the United States. They obtained the Samoan Islands in 1890, wished to buy the Danish West Indies in 1902, and planted their imperialistic standard at Panama in 1903. Interventions have become more frequent with the expansion of frontiers. The United States have recently intervened in the territory of Acre, there to found a republic of rubber gatherers; at Panama, there to develop a province and construct a canal; in Cuba, under cover of the Platt amendment, to {304} maintain order in the interior; in San Domingo, to support the civilising revolution and overthrow the tyrants; in Venezuela, and in Central America, to enforce upon these nations, torn by intestine disorders, the political and financial tutelage of the imperial democracy. In Guatemala and Honduras the loans concluded with the monarchs of North American finance have reduced the people to a new slavery. Supervision of the customs and the dispatch of pacificatory squadrons to defend the interests of the Anglo-Saxon have enforced peace and tranquillity: such are the means employed. The _New York American_ announces that Mr. Pierpont Morgan proposes to encompass the finances of Latin America by a vast network of Yankee banks. Chicago merchants and Wall Street financiers created the Meat Trust in the Argentine. The United States offer millions for the purpose of converting into Yankee loans the moneys raised in London during the last century by the Latin American States; they wish to obtain a monopoly of credit. It has even been announced, although the news hardly appears probable, that a North American syndicate wished to buy enormous belts of land in Guatemala, where the English tongue is the obligatory language. The fortification of the Panama Canal, and the possible acquisition of the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific, are fresh manifestations of imperialistic progress.