“And sovereign Law, the state’s collected will,
      O’er thrones and globes elate,
    Sits empress,—­crowning good, repressing ill: 
      Smit by her sacred frown,
    The fiend, Discretion, like a vapor, sinks,
      And e’en the all-dazzling crown
    Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks.”

But this vision is past.  While the teachers of Laybach give the rule, there will be no law but the law of the strongest.

It may now be required of me to show what interest we have in resisting this new system.  What is it to us, it may be asked, upon what principles, or what pretences, the European governments assert a right of interfering in the affairs of their neighbors?  The thunder, it may be said, rolls at a distance.  The wide Atlantic is between us and danger; and, however others may suffer, we shall remain safe.

I think it is a sufficient answer to this to say, that we are one of the nations of the earth; that we have an interest, therefore, in the preservation of that system of national law and national intercourse which has heretofore subsisted, so beneficially for all.  Our system of government, it should also be remembered, is, throughout, founded on principles utterly hostile to the new code; and if we remain undisturbed by its operation, we shall owe our security either to our situation or our spirit.  The enterprising character of the age, our own active, commercial spirit, the great increase which has taken place in the intercourse among civilized and commercial states, have necessarily connected us with other nations, and given us a high concern in the preservation of those salutary principles upon which that intercourse is founded.  We have as clear an interest in international law, as individuals have in the laws of society.

But apart from the soundness of the policy, on the ground of direct interest, we have, Sir, a duty connected with this subject, which I trust we are willing to perform.  What do we not owe to the cause of civil and religious liberty? to the principle of lawful resistance? to the principle that society has a right to partake in its own government?  As the leading republic of the world, living and breathing in these principles, and advanced, by their operation, with unequalled rapidity in our career, shall we give our consent to bring them into disrepute and disgrace?  It is neither ostentation nor boasting to say, that there lies before this country, in immediate prospect, a great extent and height of power.  We are borne along towards this without effort, and not always even with a full knowledge of the rapidity of our own motion.  Circumstances which never combined before have co-operated in our favor, and a mighty current is setting us forward which we could not resist even if we would, and which, while we would stop to make an observation, and take the sun, has set us, at the end of the operation, far in advance of the place where we commenced it.  Does it not become us, then, is it not a duty imposed on us, to give our weight to the side of liberty and justice, to let mankind know that we are not tired of our own institutions, and to protest against the asserted power of altering at pleasure the law of the civilized world?