violate the laws of nature and of nature's God, which
Washington and his heroic associates invoked, when they proclaimed the
independence of this Republic.

A second principle of Washington, and precisely in regard to foreign
nations, is, to extend your commercial relations. That is, again, a
principle, gentlemen, which I boldly can invoke to the support of my
humble claims; because if the league of despots becomes omnipotent in
Europe, it is certain that the commerce of Republican America will very
soon receive a death blow on the other side of the Atlantic; whereas,
the maintenance of the law of nations, by affording a fair field to
Hungary, Italy, and Germany, to settle their accounts with their own
domestic oppressors, would open a vast field to your commercial
relations, larger than imagination can conceive.

The third principle of Washington is to steer clear of permanent
alliances with any portion of the foreign world. Well, sir, I do not
solicit alliances; I solicit the maintenance of the laws of nations,
that the unholy alliance of despots may not interfere with the natural
right of nations, upon which yourselves have established the lofty hall
of your national independence.

It is on the stream of these rights that you are borne on in a rapid and
irresistible course of prosperity. Believe me, gentlemen, that course
you cannot check--you could not abandon the privileges upon which you
embarked, without exposing to a shipwreck the glorious future of your
existence and allow me to state that my poor country has some particular
claim to be protected by the consistency of your principles, because
_we are the first nation towards which you have not exercised your
principles._ You say you recognize every _de facto_ government.
Well, why was this not done with Hungary? We shook off the yoke of the
Austrian dynasty, we declared our national independence, and did thus
not in an untimely movement of popular excitement, but after we became
_de facto_ independent, after we had, by crushing our enemy in our
struggle of legitimate defence and driving him out from our country,
proved to the world that we have sufficient strength to take our
position amongst the independent nations of the earth.

And still the United States (which they never yet have done) withheld
the benefit of their recognition, which we have full reason to believe
would have been immediately followed by other recognitions, and thus
would have prevente