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.