France, by the assistance which she afforded to the
Americans, gave birth to reflections on freedom." This fact, which the
sagacity of that monarch perceived at so early a day, is now known and
admitted by intelligent powers all over the world. True, indeed, it is,
that the prevalence on the other continent of sentiments favorable to
republican liberty is the result of the reaction of America upon Europe;
and the source and centre of this reaction has doubtless been, and now
is, in these United States.

The position thus belonging to the United States is a fact as
inseparable from their history, their constitutional organization, and
their character, as the opposite position of the powers composing the
European alliance is from the history and constitutional organization of
the government of those powers. The sovereigns who form that alliance
have not unfrequently felt it their right to interfere with the
political movements of foreign states; and have, in their manifestoes
and declarations, denounced the popular ideas of the age in terms so
comprehensive as of necessity to include the United States, and their
forms of government. It is well known that one of the leading principles
announced by the allied sovereigns, after the restoration of the
Bourbons, is, that all popular or constitutional rights are holden no
otherwise than as grants and indulgences from crowned heads. "Useful and
necessary changes in legislation and administration," says the Laybach
Circular of May, 1821, "ought only to emanate from the free will and
intelligent conviction of those whom God has rendered responsible for
power; all that deviates from this line necessarily leads to disorder,
commotions, and evils far more insufferable than those which they
pretend to remedy." And his late Austrian Majesty, Francis the First, is
reported to have declared, in an address to the Hungarian Diet, in 1820,
that "the whole world had become foolish, and, leaving their ancient
laws, were in search of imaginary constitutions." These declarations
amount to nothing less than a denial of the lawfulness of the origin of
the government of the United States, since it is certain that that
government was established in consequence of a change which did not
proceed from thrones, or the permission of crowned heads. But the
government of the United States heard these denunciations of its
fundamental principles without remonstrance, or the disturbance of its
equanimity. Th