When I perceive that the sympathy of your people with Hungary is almost universal, and that they pronounce their feelings in its favour with a resolution such as denotes noble and great deeds about to follow; I might feel inclined to take for granted, at least in principle, that we shall have your generous aid for restoring to our land its sovereign independence. Nothing but details of negotiation would seem to be left for me, were not my confidence checked, by being told, that, according to many of your most distinguished Statesmen, it is a ruling principle of your public policy never to interfere in European affairs.
I highly respect the source of this conviction, gentlemen. This source is your religious attachment to the doctrines of those who bequeathed to you the immortal constitution which, aided by the unparalleled benefits of nature, has raised you, in seventy-five years, from an infant people to a mighty nation. The wisdom of the founders of your great republic you see in its happy results. What would be the consequences of departing from that wisdom, you are not sure. You therefore instinctively fear to touch, even with improving hands, the dear legacy of those great men. And as to your glorious constitution, all humanity can only wish that you and your posterity may long preserve this religious attachment to its fundamental principles, which by no means exclude development and progress: and that every citizen of your great union, thankfully acknowledging its immense benefits, may never forget to love it more than momentary passion or selfish and immediate interest. May every citizen of your glorious country for ever remember that a partial discomfort of a corner in a large, sure, and comfortable house, may be well amended without breaking the foundation; and that amongst all possible means of getting rid of that partial discomfort, the worst would be to burn down the house with his own hands.
But while I acknowledge the wisdom of your attachment to fundamental doctrines, I beg leave with equal frankness to state, that, in my opinion, there can be scarcely anything more dangerous to the progressive development of a nation, than to mistake for a basis that which is none; to mistake for a principle that which is but a transitory convenience; to take for substantial that which is but accidental; or to take for a constitutional doctrine that which is but a momentary exigency of administrative policy. Such a course of action would be like to a healthy man refusing substantial food, because when he was once weak in stomach his physician ordered him a severe diet. Let me suppose, gentlemen, that that doctrine of non-interference was really bequeathed to you by your Washingtons (and that it was not, I will essay to prove afterwards), and let me even suppose that your Washingtons imparted to it such an interpretation, as were equivalent to the words of Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?" (which supposition would be, of course, a sacrilege; but I am forced to such suppositions:) I may be entitled to ask, is the dress which suited the child, still suitable to the full grown man? Would it not be ridiculous to lay the man into the child's cradle, and to sing him to sleep by a lullaby? In the origin of the United States you were an infant people, and you had, of course, nothing to do but to grow, to grow, and to grow. But now you are so far grown that there is no foreign power on earth from which you have anything to fear for your existence or security. In fact, your growth is that of a giant. Of old, your infant frame was composed of thirteen states, and was restricted to the borders of the Atlantic: now, your massive bulk is spread to the gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, and your territory is a continent. Your right hand touches Europe over the waves; your left reaches across the Pacific to eastern Asia; and there, between two quarters of the world, there you stand, in proud immensity, a world yourselves. Then you were a small people of three millions and a half; now you are a mighty nation of twenty-four millions. Thus you have fully entered into the second stadium of national life, in which a nation lives at length not for itself separately, but as a member of the great family of human nations; having a right to whatever is due from that family towards every one of its full-grown members, but also engaged to every duty which that great family may claim from every one of its full-grown members.
A nation may, either from comparative weakness, or by choice and policy, as Japan and China, or by both these motives, as Paraguay under Dr. Francia,—be induced to live a life secluded from the world, indifferent to the destinies of mankind, in which it cannot or will not have any share. But then it must be willing to be also excluded from the benefits of progress, civilization and national intercourse, while disavowing all care about all other nations in the world. No citizen of the United States has, or ever will have, the wish to see this country degraded to the rotting vegetation of a Paraguay, or the mummy existence of a Japan and China. The feeling of self-dignity, and the expansiveness of that enterprizing spirit which is congenial to freemen, would revolt against the very idea of such a degrading national captivity. But if there were even a will to live such a mummy life, there is no possibility to do so. The very existence of your great country, the principles upon which it is founded, its geographical position, its present scale of civilization, and all its moral and material interests, would lead on your people not only to maintain, but necessarily more and more to develop your foreign intercourse. Then, being in so many respects linked to mankind at large, you cannot have the will, nor yet the power, to remain indifferent to the outward world. And if you cannot remain indifferent, you must resolve to throw your weight into that balance in which the fate and condition of man is weighed. You are a power on earth. You must be a power on earth, and must therefore accept all the consequences of this position. You cannot allow that any power in the world should dispose of the fate of that great family of mankind, of which you are so pre-eminent a member: else you would resign your proud place and your still prouder future, and be a power on earth no more.
I hope I have sufficiently shown, that should even that doctrine of non-interference have been established by the founders of your republic, that which might have been very proper to your infancy would not now be suitable to your manhood. It is a beautiful word of Montesquieu, that republics are to be founded on virtue. And you know that virtue between man and man, as sanctioned by our Christian religion, is but an exercise of that great principle—"Thou shalt do to others as thou desirest others to do to thee." Thus I might rely simply upon your generous republican hearts, and upon the consistency of your principles; but I beg to add some essential differences in material respects, between your present condition and that of yore. Of your twenty-four millions, more than nineteen are spread over yonder immense territory, the richest of the world, employed in the cultivation of the soil, that honourable occupation, which in every time has proved to be the most inexhaustible and most unfailing source of public welfare and private happiness, as also the most unwavering ally of freedom, and the most faithful fosterer of all those upright, noble, generous sentiments which the constant intercourse with ever young, ever great, ever beautiful virtue, imparts to man. Now this immense agricultural interest, desiring large markets, at the same time affords a solid basis to your manufacturing industry, and in consequence to your immensely developed commerce. All this places such a difference between the republic of Washington and your present grandeur, that though you may well be attached to your original principles (for the principles of liberty are everlastingly the same), yet not so in respect to the exigencies of your policy. For if it is to be regulated by interest, your country has other interests to-day than it had then; and if ever it is to be regulated by the higher consideration of principles, you are strong enough to feel that the time is already come. And I, standing here before you to plead the cause of oppressed humanity, am bold to declare that there may never again come a crisis, at which such an elevation of your policy would prove either more glorious to you, or more beneficial to man: for we in Europe are apparently on the eye of that day, when either the hopes or the fears of oppressed nations will be crushed for a long time.
Having stated so far the difference of the situation, I beg leave now to assert that it is an error to suppose that non-interference in foreign matters has been bequeathed to the people of the United States by your great Washington as a doctrine and as a constitutional principle. Firstly, Washington never even recommended to you non-interference in the sense of indifference to the fate of other nations. He only recommended neutrality. And there is a mighty diversity between these two ideas. Neutrality has reference to a state of war between two belligerent powers, and it is this case which Washington contemplated, when he, in his Farewell Address, advised the people of the United States not to enter into entangling alliances. Let quarrelling powers, let quarrelling nations go to war—but do you consider your own concerns; leave foreign powers to quarrel about ambitious topics, or narrow partial interests. Neutrality is a matter of convenience—not of principle. But while neutrality has reference to a state of war between belligerent powers, the principle of non-interference, on the contrary, lays down the sovereign right of nations to arrange their own domestic concerns. Therefore these two ideas of neutrality and non-interference are entirely different, having reference to two entirely different matters. The sovereign right of every nation to rule over itself, to alter its own institutions, to change the form of its own government, is a common public law of nations, common to all, and, therefore, put under the common guarantee of all. This sovereign right of every nation to dispose of itself, you, the people of the United States must recognize; for it is the common law of mankind, in which, because it is such, every nation is equally interested. You must recognize it, secondly, because the very existence of your great republic, as also the independence of every nation, rests upon this ground. If that sovereign right of nations were no common public law of mankind, then your own independence would be no matter of right, but only a matter of fact, which might be subject, for all future time, to all sorts of chances from foreign conspiracy and violence. And where is the citizen of the United States who would not revolt at the idea that this great republic is not a righteous nor a lawful existence, but only a mere accident—a mere matter of fact? If it were so, you were not entitled to invoke the protection of God for your great country; for the protection of God cannot, without sacrilege, be invoked but in behalf of justice and right. You would have no right to look to the sympathy of mankind for yourselves; for you would profess an abrogation of the laws of humanity upon which is founded your own independence, your own nationality.
Now, gentlemen, if these be principles of common law, of that law which God has given to every nation of humanity—if to organize itself is the common lawful right of every nation; then the interference with this common law of all humanity, the violent act of hindering, by armed forces, a nation from exercising that sovereign right, must be considered as a violation of that common public law upon which your very existence rests, and which, being a common law of all humanity, is, by God himself, placed under the safeguard of all humanity; for it is God himself who commands us to love our neighbours as we love ourselves, and to do towards others as we desire others to do towards us. Upon this point you cannot remain indifferent. You may well remain neutral to war between two belligerent nations, but you cannot remain indifferent to the violation of the common law of humanity. That indifference Washington has never taught you. I defy any man to show me, out of the eleven volumes of Washington's writings, a single word to that effect. He could not have recommended this indifference without ceasing to be wise as he was; for without justice there is no wisdom on earth. He could not have recommended it without becoming inconsistent; for it was this common law of mankind which your fathers invoked before God and man when they proclaimed your independence. It was he himself, your great Washington, who not only accepted, but again and again asked, foreign aid—foreign help for the support of that common law of mankind in respect to your own independence. Knowledge and instruction are so universally spread amongst the enlightened people of the United States, the history of your country is such a household science at the most lonely hearths of your remotest settlements, that it may be sufficient for me to refer, in that respect, to the instructions and correspondence between Washington and the Minister at Paris—the equally immortal Franklin—the modest man with the proud epitaph, which tells the world that he wrested the lightning from heaven, and the sceptre from the tyrant's hands.
I will go further. Even that doctrine of neutrality which Washington taught and bequeathed to you, he taught not as a constitutional principle—a lasting regulation for all future time, but only as a matter of temporary policy. I refer in that respect to the very words of his Farewell Address. There he states explicitly that "it is your policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." These are his very words. Policy is the word, and you know that policy is not the science of principle, but of exigencies; and that principles are, of course, by a free and powerful nation, never to be sacrificed to exigencies. The exigencies pass away like the bubbles of a shower, but the nation is immortal: it must consider the future also, and not only the egotistical dominion of the passing hour: it must be aware that to an immortal nation nothing can be of higher importance than immortal principles. Again, in the same address Washington explicitly says, in reference to his policy of neutrality, that "with him a predominant motive has been to gain time to your country to settle and mature its institutions, and to progress without interruption to that degree of strength and consistency which is necessary to give it the command of its own fortunes." These are highly memorable words, gentlemen. Here I take my ground; and casting a glance of admiration over your glorious land, I confidently ask you, gentlemen, are your institutions settled and matured or are they not? Are you, or are you not, come to such a degree of strength and consistency as to be the masters of your own fortunes? Oh! how do I thank God for having given me the glorious view of this country's greatness, which answers this question for me! Yes! you have attained that degree of strength and consistency in which your less fortunate brethren may well claim your protecting hand.
One word more on Washington's doctrines. In one of his letters, written to Lafayette, he says:—"Let us only have twenty years of peace, and our country will come to such a degree of power and wealth that we shall be able, in a just cause, to defy any power on earth whatsoever." "In a just cause!" Now, in the name of eternal truth, and by all that is dear and sacred to man, since the history of mankind is recorded, there has been no cause more just than the cause of Hungary. Never was there a people, without the slightest reason, more sacrilegiously, more treacherously attacked, or by fouler means than Hungary. Never has crime, cursed ambition, despotism, and violence, united more wickedly to crush freedom, and the very life, than against Hungary. Never was a country more mortally aggrieved than Hungary is. All your sufferings—all your complaints, which, with so much right, drove your forefathers to take up arms, are but slight grievances in comparison with those immense deep wounds, out of which the heart of Hungary bleeds! If the cause of our people is not sufficiently just to insure the protection of God, and the support of right-willing men—then there is no just cause, and no justice on earth. Then the blood of no new Abel will moan towards Heaven. The genius of charity, Christian love, and justice will mourningly fly the earth; a heavy curse will fall upon morality—oppressed men will despair, and only the Cains of mankind walk proudly with impious brow about the ruins of liberty on earth.
Now, allow me briefly to consider how your Foreign Policy has grown and enlarged itself. I will only recall to your memory the message of President Monroe, when he clearly stated that the United States would take up arms to protect the American Colonies of Spain, now free republics, should the Holy (or rather unholy) Alliance make an attempt either to aid Spain to reduce the new American republics to their ancient colonial state, or to compel them to adopt political systems more conformable to the policy and views of that alliance. I entreat you to mark this well, gentlemen. Not only the forced introduction of monarchy, but in general the interference of foreign powers in the contest, was declared sufficient motive for the United States to protect the colonies. Let me remind you that this declaration of President Monroe was not only approved and confirmed by the people of the United States, but that Great Britain itself joined the United States, in the declaration of this decision and this policy. I further recall to your memory the instructions given in 1826 to your Envoys to the Congress of Panama, Richard Anderson and John Sergeant, where it was clearly stated that the United States would have opposed, with their whole force, the interference of the continental powers in that struggle for independence. It is true, that this declaration to go even to war, to protect the independence of foreign States against foreign interference, was restricted to the continent of America; for President Monroe declares in his message that the United States can have no concern in European straggles, being distant and separated from Europe by the great Atlantic Ocean. But I would remark that this indifference to European concerns is again a matter, not of principle but of temporary exigency—the motives of which have, by the lapse of time, entirely disappeared—so much that the balance is even turned to the opposite side.