ation. We should
regard it as a great calamity to ourselves, to the cause of good
government, and to the peace of the world should any European power
challenge the American people, as it were, to the defense of
republicanism against foreign interference. We can not foresee and are
unwilling to consider what opportunities might present themselves, what
combinations might offer to protect ourselves against designs inimical
to our form of government. The United States desire to act in the
future as they have ever acted heretofore; they never will be driven
from that course but by the aggression of European powers, and we
rely on the wisdom and justice of those powers to respect the system of
noninterference which has so long been sanctioned by time, and which by
its good results has approved itself to both continents.

The correspondence between the United States and France in reference to
questions which have become subjects of discussion between the two
Governments will at a proper time be laid before Congress.

When, on the organization of our Government under the Constitution, the
President of the United States delivered his inaugural address to the
two Houses of Congress, he said to them, and through them to the country
and to mankind, that--

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the
republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as
_deeply_, as _finally_, staked on the experiment intrusted to the hands
of the American people.

And the House of Representatives answered Washington by the voice of
Madison:

We adore the Invisible Hand which has led the American people, through
so many difficulties, to cherish a conscious responsibility for the
destiny of republican liberty.

More than seventy-six years have glided away since these words were
spoken; the United States have passed through severer trials than were
foreseen; and now, at this new epoch in our existence as one nation,
with our Union purified by sorrows and strengthened by conflict and
established by the virtue of the people, the greatness of the occasion
invites us once more to repeat with solemnity the pledges of our fathers
to hold ourselves answerable before our fellow-men for the success of
the republican form of government. Experience has proved its sufficiency
in peace and in war; it has vindicated its authority through dangers and
afflictions, and sudden and terrible emergencies, whi