tates of eternal justice. Without this "fair play"
there is no hope for Europe--no hope of seeing your principles spread.

Yours is a happy country, gentlemen. You had more than fair play. You
had active and effectual aid from Europe in your struggle for
independence, which, once achieved, you used so wisely as to become a
prodigy of freedom and welfare, and a lesson of life to nations.

But we in Europe--we, unhappily, have no such fair play. With us,
against every pulsation of liberty all despots are united in a common
league; and you may be sure that despots will never yield to the moral
influence of your great example. They hate the very existence of this
example. It is the sorrow of their thoughts, and the incubus of their
dreams. To stop its moral influence abroad, and to check its spread at
home, is what they wish, instead of yielding to its influence.

We shall have no fair play. The Cossack already rules, by Louis
Napoleon's usurpation, to the very borders of the Atlantic Ocean. One of
your great statesmen--now, to my deep sorrow, bound to the sick bed of
far advanced age[*]--(alas! that I am deprived of the advice which his
wisdom could have imparted to me)--your great statesman told the world
thirty years ago that Paris was transferred to St. Petersburg. What
would he now say, when St. Petersburg is transferred to Paris, and
Europe is but an appendage to Russia?

[Footnote *: Henry Clay, since deceased.]

Alas! Europe can no longer secure to Europe fair play. England only
remains; but even England casts a sorrowful glance over the waves.
Still, we will stand our ground, "sink or swim, live or die." You know
the word; it is your own. We will follow it; it will be a bloody path to
tread. Despots have conspired against the world. Terror spreads over
Europe, and persecutes by way of anticipation. From Paris to Pesth there
is a gloomy silence, like the silence of nature before the terrors of a
hurricane. It is a sensible silence, disturbed only by the thousandfold
rattling of muskets by which Napoleon prepares to crush the people who
gave him a home when he was an exile, and by the groans of new martyrs
in Sicily, Milan, Vienna, and Pesth. The very sympathy which I met in
England, and was expected to meet here, throws my sisters into the
dungeons of Austria. Well, God's will be done! The heart may break, but
duty will be done. We will stand our place, though to us in Europe there
be no "fair play." But so muc