NEW YORK -- Searching the Internet for information on immigration in the United States, I came across President Grover Cleveland's message to Congress on Dec. 18, 1893. In it he detailed his opposition to the annexation of Hawaii. At the start of that year, a self-styled Committee of Safety, led by foreign residents representing the interests of sugar planters, had overthrown Queen Lilioukalani's government of Hawaii and hastily submitted a treaty of annexation to the U.S. Senate. European-style imperialist sentiments were sweeping the land. In "Grover Cleveland," historian Henry Graff tells us that a popular jingle went, ". . . . Lilioukalani / Give us your little brown hanni."

But Cleveland, who held "the imperishable ideal of the Declaration that all men have the right to self-government," told Congress he was withdrawing the treaty submitted while his predecessor, Benjamin Harrison, was president. "If national honesty is to be disregarded and a desire for territorial extension, or dissatisfaction with a form of government not our own, ought to regulate our conduct," he declared, "I have entirely misapprehended the mission and character of our Government and the behavior which the conscience of our people demands of their public servants."

These noble sentiments immediately brought to mind the words of John Quincy Adams quoted in Helen Mears' 1948 book, "Mirror for Americans: Japan." On Independence Day, 1821, Adams, then secretary of state under President James Monroe and soon to formulate the Monroe Doctrine, spoke of America's position in international relations. Emphasizing that the United States has never interfered "in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings," Adams went on to say: