ould
cause our neutrality to be respected, and, with reference to
belligerent nations, might choose peace or war, as our
interests, guided by justice, should counsel."

Compare our situation and the circumstances of that time
with those of the present day and what, from the very words
of Washington then, would be his counsels to his countrymen
now? Europe has still her set of primary interests, with
which we have little or a remote relation. Our distant and
detached situation with reference to Europe remains the
same. But we were then the only independent nation of this
hemisphere, and we were surrounded by European colonies,
with the greater part of which we had no more intercourse
than with the inhabitants of another planet. These colonies
have now been transformed into eight independent nations,
extending to our very borders, seven of them Republics like
ourselves, with whom we have an immensely growing commercial
and must have, and have already, important political
connections, with reference to whom our situation is neither
distant nor detached, whose political principles and systems
of government, congenial with our own, must and will have an
action and counteraction upon us and ours to which we cannot
be indifferent if we would.

The rapidity of our growth, and the consequent increase of
our strength, has more than realized the anticipations of
this admirable political legacy. Thirty years have nearly
elapsed since it was written, and in the interval our
population, our wealth, our territorial extension, our
power--physical and moral--have nearly trebled. Reasoning
upon this state of things from the sound and judicious
principles of Washington, must we not say that the period
which he predicted, as then not far off, has arrived, that
America has a set of primary interests which have none or a
remote relation to Europe, that the interference of Europe,
therefore, in those concerns should be spontaneously
withheld by her upon the same principles that we have never
interfered with hers, and that if she should interfere, as
she may, by measures which may have a great and dangerous
recoil upon ourselves, we might be called, in defence of our
altars and firesides, to take an attitude which would cause
our neutrality t