But whatever we do in this respect, it becomes us to do upon clear and consistent principles.  There is an important topic in the message to which I have yet hardly alluded.  I mean the rumored combination of the European Continental sovereigns against the newly established free states of South America.  Whatever position this government may take on that subject, I trust it will be one which can be defended on known and acknowledged grounds of right.  The near approach or the remote distance of danger may affect policy, but cannot change principle.  The same reason that would authorize us to protest against unwarrantable combinations to interfere between Spain and her former colonies, would authorize us equally to protest if the same combination were directed against the smallest state in Europe, although our duty to ourselves, our policy, and wisdom, might indicate very different courses as fit to be pursued by us in the two cases.  We shall not, I trust, act upon the notion of dividing the world with the Holy Alliance, and complain of nothing done by them in their hemisphere if they will not interfere with ours.  At least this would not be such a course of policy as I could recommend or support.  We have not offended, and I hope we do not intend to offend, in regard to South America, against any principle of national independence or of public law.  We have done nothing, we shall do nothing, that we need to hush up or to compromise by forbearing to express our sympathy for the cause of the Greeks, or our opinion of the course which other governments have adopted in regard to them.

It may, in the next place, be asked, perhaps, Supposing all this to be true, what can we do?  Are we to go to war?  Are we to interfere in the Greek cause, or any other European cause?  Are we to endanger our pacific relations?  No, certainly not.  What, then, the question recurs, remains for us?  If we will not endanger our own peace, if we will neither furnish armies nor navies to the cause which we think the just one, what is there within our power?

Sir, this reasoning mistakes the age.  The time has been, indeed, when fleets, and armies, and subsidies, were the principal reliances even in the best cause.  But, happily for mankind, a great change has taken place in this respect.  Moral causes come into consideration, in proportion as the progress of knowledge is advanced; and the public opinion of the civilized world is rapidly gaining an ascendency over mere brutal force.  It is already able to oppose the most formidable obstruction to the progress of injustice and oppression; and as it grows more intelligent and more intense, it will be more and more formidable.  It may be silenced by military power, but it cannot be conquered.  It is elastic, irrepressible, and invulnerable to the weapons of ordinary warfare.  It is that impassible, inextinguishable enemy of mere violence and arbitrary rule, which, like Milton’s angels,

    “Vital in every part, ... 
    Cannot, but by annihilating, die.”