on which England declares with audacious
selfishness that she cannot sacrifice that portion of her Indian
revenue which comes from the opium trade or the capital which is
invested in its growth and manufacture, and that China must therefore
take the poison which diseases and degrades her population. But
selfish as is this market-policy, it is a policy of circumstance.
It may be resisted with success or it may be abandoned because it
cannot succeed. It creates bitterness; it leads to war; it may in
its selfishness cause the destruction of a nation, but it does not
necessarily imply a desire for that destruction. But there was in
the foreign policy of Europe towards the United States during the
civil war the manifestation of a spirit more intense in its hostility,
more dangerous in its consequences. It was the spirit of enmity
to the Union itself, and the emphatic demonstration of this feeling
was the invasion of Mexico for the purpose of converting the republic
by force into an empire. Louis Napoleon's enterprise was distinctly
based on the utter destruction of the American Union.

The Declaration of Independence by the British Colonies in America
was something more than the creation of a new sovereignty. It was
the foundation of a new system both of internal government and
foreign relation, a system not entirely isolated from the affairs
of the Old World but independent of the dynastic complications and
the territorial interests which controlled the political conflicts
of Europe. At first, with its material resources undeveloped, its
territorial extension limited and surrounded by the colonies of
the great Powers, this principle although maintained as a conviction,
could not manifest itself in action. But it showed itself in that
abstinence from entangling alliances which would avoid the dangers
of even a too friendly connection. In time our territory expanded.
The colonies of foreign nations following our example became
independent republics whose people had the same aspirations, whose
governments were framed upon the same basis of popular right. The
rapidity of communication, supplied by the railroad and the telegraph,
facilitated and concentrated this political cohesion, and there
had been formed from the borders of Canada to the Straits of Magellan
a complete system of republics (to which Brazil can scarcely be
considered an exception) professing the same political creed, having
great commercial interests