ght. You would have no right to look to the sympathy of mankind for
yourselves; for you would profess an abrogation of the laws of humanity
upon which is founded your own independence, your own nationality.

Now, gentlemen, if these be principles of common law, of that law which
God has given to every nation of humanity--if to organize itself is the
common lawful right of every nation; then the interference with this
common law of all humanity, the violent act of hindering, by armed
forces, a nation from exercising that sovereign right, must be
considered as a violation of that common public law upon which your very
existence rests, and which, being a common law of all humanity, is, by
God himself, placed under the safeguard of all humanity; for it is God
himself who commands us to love our neighbours as we love ourselves, and
to do towards others as we desire others to do towards us. Upon this
point you cannot remain indifferent. You may well remain neutral to war
between two belligerent nations, but you cannot remain indifferent to
the violation of the common law of humanity. That indifference
Washington has never taught you. I defy any man to show me, out of the
eleven volumes of Washington's writings, a single word to that effect.
He could not have recommended this indifference without ceasing to be
wise as he was; for without justice there is no wisdom on earth. He
could not have recommended it without becoming inconsistent; for it was
this common law of mankind which your fathers invoked before God and man
when they proclaimed your independence. It was he himself, your great
Washington, who not only accepted, but again and again asked, foreign
aid--foreign help for the support of that common law of mankind in
respect to your own independence. Knowledge and instruction are so
universally spread amongst the enlightened people of the United States,
the history of your country is such a household science at the most
lonely hearths of your remotest settlements, that it may be sufficient
for me to refer, in that respect, to the instructions and correspondence
between Washington and the Minister at Paris--the equally immortal
Franklin--the modest man with the proud epitaph, which tells the world
that he wrested the lightning from heaven, and the sceptre from the
tyrant's hands.

I will go further. Even that doctrine of neutrality which Washington
taught and bequeathed to you, he taught not as a constitutional
_principle