PARTISAN REVIEW
509
of an empire." The first European example adduced is Charlemagne,
of whom the
Encyclopedia Britannica
says,
"It
is to be observed that
there was not a foot of land or territory annexed to the emperor's
title."
Or, if one consults the standard modem work on the subject,
Richard Koebner's
Empire,
one finds that the essence of the Latin word
imperium
was the idea of command, rule, sovereignty, the exercise of
authority, and that in the eighteenth century the word "empire" by no
means necessarily implied territorial expansion. Indeed, the British his–
torian, E. A. Freeman, writing in 1885, could say, "It is only in quite
later times within my own memory, that the word 'empire' has come
into common use as a set term for something beyond the kingdom." In
any case, an examination of the context in which Washington used the
phrase makes it clear that by "rising Empire" he meant no more than
a new nation securing its national sovereignty. As for Madison's sup–
posedly damning words, A.
K.
Weinberg
is
indisputably correct in that
excellent but neglected book
Manifest Destiny
when he
writes
that the
authors of the
Federalist
"had reference not to expansion but only to the
amalgamation of the thirteen States."
This example may suggest the anxiety with which Professor Wil–
liams seeks to press recalcitrant evidence into the service of his thesis.
Again and again, he overstates and manipulates his case
in
order to
insert
overseas-market preoccupations where they existed only feebly or
not at all. Thus he writes that Grant in his annual message of 5 De–
cember 1870, "first reiterated his argument that Santo Domingo should
be annexed because of its value as a market for farm surpluses." But,
if one turns to the Grant message, one sees that the first argument ad–
vanced for the annexation of "San Domingo" was that, if the United
States did not act, Europeans would. Grant mentions both the strategic
argument and the raw materials argument before he gets to the market
argument, and even here his concern is as much with industrial as with
agricultural products. Similarly Professor Williams tries to force the
Populist platform of 1892 into the overseas-markets straitjacket; in point
of fact, the Populist platform never mentioned overseas markets - rather
strangely in view of Professor Williams's contention that farmers had
thought of nothing else for a generation. Cleveland's message of 17
December 1895 on the Venezuela controversy was, in Professor Wil–
liams's judgment, "a well-nigh definitive application of the marketplace
conception of the world"; actually the message said nothing at all about
markets - how in the world would the Venezuela border dispute affect
either American or British access to Latin American markets? - and
