Had your internal peace been continued for ten years longer, your free population would have reached to forty millions, and your wealth would have grown at a greater rate than your population.  You would have been able to give law to America, and you would, under one plausible pretext or another, have taken possession of all the European colonies of the Occident.  Nothing short of a European alliance could have prevented your becoming supreme from the region of eternal snows to the regions of eternal bloom; and such an alliance it would have been difficult to form, as there are nations in Europe that would have been as ready to back you in your day of strength as they are now both ready and anxious to back your enemy in this your hour of weakness.  In plain words, it is for our interest that you should fall; and as your fall can be best promoted through the success of the Secessionists, therefore do we give them our moral support, and sympathize with them in their struggle to establish their national freedom on the basis of everlasting slavery.  Why should we not sympathize with them, and even aid, at an early day, in raising the blockade of their ports?  Are they not doing our work?  As to their seizure of Spanish-American countries, it would be long before they could attempt an extension of their dominion; and by reestablishing our rule over Mexico we shall be in condition to bridle them for fifty years to come, even if they should remain united.  But it is not at all probable that they would continue united.  What Mexico has been, that the Southern Confederacy would be.  The revolutions, the pronunciamientos, the murders, and the robberies which it is our intention to banish from Mexico, would take up their abode in the Southern Confederacy, in which Secession would do its perfect work.  Such things are the natural fruits of the Secession tree, which is as poisonous as the upas and as productive as the palm. You we shall have no occasion to fear, as, once cut down, Europe would never again permit you to endanger the integrity of the possessions of any of her countries in the West.”

Such might be the language of Spain in reply to the remonstrances of our Unionists, and although it embodies nothing but the intensest selfishness, it would not be the worse diplomatic expression on that account.  When was diplomacy otherwise than sordid in its nature?  When was it the custom with nations to “spare the humble and subdue the proud”?  Never.  The Romans said that such was their practice, but every page of their bloody history gives the lie to the poetical boast.  It is the humble who are subdued, and the proud who are spared.  Good Samaritans are rare characters among men, but who ever heard of a Good Samaritan among nations?  The custom of nations is far worse than was the conduct of those persons who would not relieve the man who had fallen among thieves.  They simply abstained from doing good, while nations unite their powers to annoy and annihilate the distressed.  There is, it is probable, an understanding existing between France, England, and Spain to aid the Southern Confederacy at an early day, and when we shall have become sufficiently reduced to admit of their giving such aid without hazard to themselves, they being little inclined to engage in hazardous wars.