The undersigned will first observe, that the President is persuaded his Majesty, the Emperor of Austria, does not think that the government of the United States ought to view with unconcern the extraordinary events which have occurred, not only in his dominions, but in many other parts of Europe, since February, 1848.  The government and people of the United States, like other intelligent governments and communities, take a lively interest in the movements and the events of this remarkable age, in whatever part of the world they may be exhibited.  But the interest taken by the United States in those events has not proceeded from any disposition to depart from that neutrality toward foreign powers, which is among the deepest principles and the most cherished traditions of the political history of the Union.  It has been the necessary effect of the unexampled character of the events themselves, which could not fail to arrest the attention of the contemporary world, as they will doubtless fill a memorable page in history.

But the undersigned goes further, and freely admits that, in proportion as these extraordinary events appeared to have their origin in those great ideas of responsible and popular government, on which the American constitutions themselves are wholly founded, they could not but command the warm sympathy of the people of this country.  Well-known circumstances in their history, indeed their whole history, have made them the representatives of purely popular principles of government.  In this light they now stand before the world.  They could not, if they would, conceal their character, their condition, or their destiny.  They could not, if they so desired, shut out from the view of mankind the causes which have placed them, in so short a national career, in the station which they now hold among the civilized states of the world.  They could not, if they desired it, suppress either the thoughts or the hopes which arise in men’s minds, in other countries, from contemplating their successful example of free government.  That very intelligent and distinguished personage, the Emperor Joseph the Second, was among the first to discern this necessary consequence of the American Revolution on the sentiments and opinions of the people of Europe.  In a letter to his minister in the Netherlands in 1787, he observes, that “it is remarkable that France, by the assistance which she afforded to the Americans, gave birth to reflections on freedom.”  This fact, which the sagacity of that monarch perceived at so early a day, is now known and admitted by intelligent powers all over the world.  True, indeed, it is, that the prevalence on the other continent of sentiments favorable to republican liberty is the result of the reaction of America upon Europe; and the source and centre of this reaction has doubtless been, and now is, in these United States.