f freedom, alighting at will on
the chosen summit, undisturbed by fear and untroubled by the torments of
power!

Vive La France.

A strange fact is the apathy of the American nation towards France and
the French people. There is every reason to expect a different sentiment
on this side of the sea. France was ever our friend; since the colonial
days we have never warred with her. The French were our allies when the
days were dark and the winds of our destiny were loosed on the deep. We
had been assailed by an unnatural mother. That strong mother had wronged
us, treated us as aliens, erased us from her book, turned loose
mercenary armies upon us, killed our patriot fathers.

In that hour of fate France appeared willingly on the scene as our
champion. She succored us. Whatever may have been her motive, she put
her aegis over our head. She sent her heroes to our camps; she gave us
Lafayette and Rochambeau. She placed her fleets at our ports, with guns
pointed seaward for protection. Then, when the fight was won, she aided
us to enlarge our territories, to confirm our new republican empire.
Though in the afterdays of her monarchical gloom France sometimes looked
askance at our flag, the French nation was never once disloyal to
us--never once indifferent to the fate of our great democracy.

In our institutional development for more than a century we have
proceeded on the same general lines with the French. If we are satisfied
with the result--if we _believe_ in our republic--we ought, in good
reason, to believe in the republic of France; for the republic is a
universal fact, little trammelled by locality. The barrier of race ought
not to predominate over political and social sympathies. The barrier of
race ought not to separate us from our own. The fact that we are allied
in ethnic descent with the English people ought not to make us enamored
of the social life and civil institutions of Great Britain. Much less
should the industrial and commercial life of England allure us as if to
provoke a like manner of life in ourselves. Least of all should the
financial method of Great Britain lead us by imitation to fix upon
ourselves a similar incubus and horror.

This leads us to say that to break away from Great Britain, even when
incited thereto by the antipathy and prejudice which we must needs hold
against her; to leave her behind; to treat her as a historical fact not
favorable, but inimical rather, to our progress and ind