Lord Salisbury based his reply of November 26 in the main upon the familiar European contention that while the Monroe Doctrine is interesting, and may have had a salutary effect when first promulgated, it has never “been inscribed by competent authority in the code of international law,” and that Mr. Olney’s principle that “American questions are for American decision ... cannot be sustained by any reasoning drawn from the law of nations.” He reviewed the dispute with Venezuela, defended with many and plausible citations of authority Great Britain’s procedure in the territory claimed by her, made a tart reference to “large tracts” of territory once Mexican but now a part of the United States, and firmly declined “to submit to the arbitration of another Power or of foreign jurists, however eminent, claims based on the extravagant pretensions of Spanish officials in the last century, and involving the transfer of British subjects who have for many years enjoyed the settled rule of a British colony to a nation of different race and language, whose political system is subject to frequent disturbances, and whose institutions as yet offer very inadequate protection to life and property.” The substance and meaning of Lord Salisbury’s despatch, and the attitude which Great Britain assumed, were set forth with conspicuous moderation and fairness by Mr. Cleveland in his Princeton lectures: These dispatches exhibit a refusal to admit such an interest in the controversy on our part as entitled us to insist upon arbitration for the purpose of having a line between Great Britain and Venezuela established; a denial of such force or meaning to the Monroe Doctrine as made it worthy of the regard of Great Britain in the premises; a fixed and continued determination on the part of Her Majesty’s Government to reject arbitration as to any territory included within the extended Schomburgk Line. They further indicate that the existence of gold within the disputed territory had not been overlooked; and, as was to be expected, they put forward the colonisation and settlement by English subjects in such territory during more than half a century of dispute as creating a claim to dominion and sovereignty, if not strong enough to override all question of right and title, at least so clear and indisputable as to be properly regarded as above and beyond the contingencies of arbitration.[7]