e
feelings of burning indignation which they provoked, or to prolong
the discussion of the angry questions to which they gave rise.
The relations of nations are not and should not be governed by
sentiment. The interest and ambition of states, like those of men,
will disturb the moral sense and incline to one side or the other
the strict balance of impartial justice. New days bring new issues
and old passions are unsafe counselors. Twenty years have gone
by. England has paid the cost of her mistakes. The Republic of
Mexico has seen the fame and the fortunes of the Emperors who sought
her conquest sink suddenly--as into the pits which they themselves
had digged for their victims--and the Republic of the United States
has come out of her long and bitter struggle, so strong that never
again will she afford the temptation or the opportunity for unfriendly
governments to strike at her National life. Let the past be the
past, but let it be the past with all the instruction and the
warning of its experience.

The future safety of these continents rests upon the strength and
the maintenance of the Union, for had dissolution been possible,
events have shown with what small regard the interests or the honor
of either of the belligerents would have been treated. It has been
taught to the smaller republics that if this strength be shattered
they will be the spoil of foreign arms and the dependent provinces
again of foreign monarchs. When this contest was over, the day of
immaturity had passed and the United States stood before the world
a great and permanent Power. That Power can afford to bury all
resentments. Tranquil at home, developing its inexhaustible
resources with a rapidity and success unknown in history, bound in
sincere friendship, and beyond the possibility of a hostile rivalry,
with the other republics of the continents, standing midway between
Asia and Europe, a Power on the Pacific as well as on the Atlantic,
with no temptation to intermeddle in the questions which disturb
the Old World, the Republic of the United States desires to live
in amicable relation with all peoples, demanding only the abstinence
of foreign intervention in the development of that policy which
her political creed, her territorial extent, and the close and
cordial neighborhood of kindred governments have made the essential
rule of her National life.

[NOTE.--In the foregoing chapter the term "piratical" is used
without qualificatio