never have succeeded to overcome our arms;--never! I should rather have
brought the well-deserved punishment home to her, should have shaken her
at home. Poland--heroic, unfortunate Poland would now be free, Turkey
delivered from the nightmare now pressing her chest, and I, according to
all probability, should have seen Moscow in triumph, instead of seeing
Salem in exile!

Well, there is a just God in heaven, and there will yet be justice on
earth;--the day of retribution will come!

Such being the sad tale of my fatherland, which, by a timely token of
your brotherly sympathy might have been saved, and which now has lost
everything except its honour, its trust in God, its hope of
resurrection, its confidence in my patriotic exertions, and its steady
resolution to strike once more the inexorable blow of retribution at
tyrants and tyranny;--if the cause I plead were a particular cause, I
would place it upon the ground of well-deserved sympathy, and would try
to kindle into a flame of excitement the generous affections of your
hearts: and I should succeed.

But since a great crisis, which is universally felt to be approaching,
enables me to claim for my cause a universality not restricted by the
geographical limits of a country or even of Europe itself, or by the
moral limits of nationalities, but possessing an interest common to all
the Christian world; it is calm, considerate conviction, and _not_
the passing excitement of generous sentiments, which I seek. I hope
therefore to meet the approbation of this intelligent assembly, when
instead of pleasing you by an attempt at eloquence, for which, in my
sick condition, I indeed have not sufficient freshness of mind--I enter
into some dry but not unimportant considerations, which the citizens of
Salem, claiming the glory of high commercial reputation, will kindly
appreciate.

Gentlemen, I have often heard the remark, that if the United States do
not care for the policy of the world, they will continue to grow
internally, and will soon become the mightiest realm on earth, a
Republic of a hundred millions of energetic freemen, strong enough to
defy all the rest of the world, and to control the destinies of mankind.
And surely this is your glorious lot; but _only under the
condition_, that no hostile combination, before you have in peace and
in tranquillity grown so strong, arrests by craft and violence your
giant-course; and this again is possible, only under the condition