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