Her interest, her ambition, her hate, the principles of her Czar, the proud hope of taming Europe to the yoke of absolute power, all combine to impel her into active hostility against this republic. Her territorial possessions, the condition of our neighbors, the relations of our own territory, all afford the utmost facilities not merely for annoyance, but for injury, serious and abiding. She only waits the auspicious solution of the European problem, to seize the first invitation of internal discord or foreign embarrassment, to begin the plot that is to end with our ruin. Her peaceful and friendly tone is politicbut hollow. She would encounter one enemy at a time. She avoids sedulously the roused and combined wrath of the two great free powers of the earth: and she willingly postpones the assault till the blow can be fatal, and securely dealt. If she triumph in Europe, not many years will roll along ere we shall feel the influence of her diplomacy, and be called on to encounter her arms. In ordinary war she is invulnerable to us,-while we are exposed at a thousand points. She can cut off our commerce and fritter away our resources-exempted by her position from the evils of retaliation. She encounters only half the risks of war-holding in her hands the chances of success in attack, the certainty of safe and unassailable asylum in retreat after discomfiture. Like some robber knight, she pounces from her den on the honest and exposed way-farer, and retreats in safety to her hold ere the arm of vengeance can overtake her. It is, then, the part of wisdom and foresight, for the free nations of the world-the only two whose towers still lift themselves above the flood-to see and provide against these threatening calamities now, while they are yet at a distance and allies are left, rather than to meet them singly after a few years of treacherous peace bearing all the fruits of the most disastrous war. THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC AND THE LAST WAR OF FREEDOM AND DESPOTISM. THE policy which this Republic should pursue in consequence of the recent events in Europe has become the subject of vivid discussion and varied views. I maintain it to be the dictate of high policy, when ever the battle shall be joined in earnest in that final conflict between freedom and despotism, which is unavoidable and may not be remote, to display the banner of the Republic in the cause of the rights of nations and of man, for our own defence. A wise precaution spontaneously suggests the opening of diplomatic conferences with England, that the two free nations of the world may face together their common foe in that day of trial. They who stand with their backs to the future and their faces to the past, wise only after the event, and refusing to believe in dangers they have not felt, clamorously invoke the name of Washington in their protest against interference in the concerns of Europe. With such it is useless to argue-till they learn the meaning of the language they repeat. |