from king, convention, anarchy, emperor, or king again. The rule we have ever followed has been this: to look at the state of the fact, and to recognize that government, be it what it might, which was in actual possession of sovereign power. When one government is overthrown, and another is established on its ruins, without embarrassing ourselves with any of the principles involved in the contest, we have ever acknowledged the new and actual government as soon as it had undisputed existence. Our simple inquiry has been, is there a government de facto? We have had a recent and memorable example. When the allied ministers retired from Madrid, and refused to accompany Ferdinand to Cadiz, ours remained, and we sent out a new minister, who sought at that port to present himself to the constitutional king. Why? Because it was the government of Spain, in fact. Did the allies declare war against us for the exercise of this incontestible attribute of sovereignty? Did they even transmit any diplomatic note, complaining of our conduct? The line of our European policy has been so plainly described that it is impossible to mistake it. We are to abstain from all interference in their disputes, to take no part in their contests, to make no entangling alliances with any of them; but to assert and exercise our indisputable right of opening and maintaining diplomatic intercourse with any actual sovereignty.

There is reason to apprehend that a tremendous storm is ready to burst upon our happy country-one which may call into action all our vigor, courage, and resources. Is it wise or prudent, in preparing to breast the storm, if it must come, to talk to this nation of its incompetency to repel European aggression, to lower its spirit, to weaken its moral energy, and to qualify it for easy conquest and base submission? If there be any reality in the dangers which are supposed to encompass us, should we not animate the people, and adjure them to believe, as I do, that our resources are ample; and that we can bring into the field a million of freemen, ready to exhaust their last drop of blood,and to spend the last cent in the defence of the country, its liberty, and its institutions? Sir, are these, if united, to be conquered by all Europe combined? All the perils to which we can possibly be exposed, are much less in reality than the imagination is disposed to paint them. And they are best averted by an habitual contemplation of them, by reducing them to their true dimensions. If combined Europe is to precipitate itself upon us, we cannot too soon begin to invigorate our strength, to teach our heads to think, our hearts to conceive, and our arms to execute, the high and noble deeds which belong to the character and glory of our country. The experience of the world instructs us, that conquests are already achieved, which are boldly and firmly resolved on; and that men only become slaves who have ceased to resolve to be free. If we wish to cover ourselves with the best of all armour, let us not discourage our people, let us stimulate their ardor, let us sustain their resolution, let us proclaim to them that

we feel as they feel, and that, with them, we are determined to live or die like freemen.

Surely, sir, we need no long or learned lectures about the nature of government, and the influence of property or ranks on society. We may content ourselves with studying the true character of our own people; and with knowing that the interests are confided to us of a nation capable of doing and suffering all things for its liberty. Such a nation, if its rulers be faithful, must be invincible. I well remember an observation made to me, by the most illustrious female* of the age, if not of her sex. All history showed, she said, that a nation was never conquered. No, sir, no united nation that resolves to be free, can be conquered. And has it come to this? Are we so humbled, so low, so debased, that we dare not express our sympathy for suffering Greece, that we dare not articulate our detestation of the brutal excesses of which she has been the bleeding victim, lest we might offend some one or more of their imperial and royal majesties? If gentlemen are afraid to act rashly on such a subject, suppose, Mr. Chairman, that we unite in an humble petition, addressed to their majesties, beseeching them that of their gracious condescension, they would allow us to express our feelings and our sympathies. How shall it run? "We, the representatives of the free people of the United States of America, humbly approach the thrones of your imperial and royal majesties, and supplicate that, of your imperial and royal clemency,"—I cannot go through the disgusting recital-my lips have not yet learnt to pronounce the sycophantic language of a degraded slave! Are we so mean, so base, so despicable, that we may not attempt to express our horror, utter our indignation, at the most brutal and attrocious war that ever stained earth or shocked high Heaven, at the ferocious deeds of a savage and infuriated soldiery, stimulated and urged on by the clergy of a fanatical and inimical religion, and rioting in all the excesses of blood and butchery, at the mere details of which the heart sickens and recoils !

If the great body of Christendom can look on calmly and coolly, whilst all this is perpetrated on a Christian people, in its own immediate vicinity, in its very presence, let us at least evince that one of its remote extremities is susceptible of sensibility to Christian wrongs, and capable of sympathy for Christian sufferings; that in this remote quarter of the world, there are hearts not yet closed against compassion for human woes, that can pour out their indignant feelings at the oppression of a people endeared to us by every ancient recollection, and every modern tie. Sir, the committee has been attempted to be alarmed by the dangers to our commerce in the Mediterranean; and a wretched invoice of figs and opium has been spread before us to repress our sensibilities and to eradicate our humanity. Ah! sir, "what

Mad. de Stael.

shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul," or what shall it avail a nation to save the whole of a miserable trade and lose its liberties?

On the subject of the other independent American states, hitherto it has not been necessary to depart from the rule of our foreign relations, observed in regard to Europe. Whether it will become us to do so or not, will be considered when we take up another resolution, lying on the table. But we may not only adopt this measure; we may go further, we may recognize the government in the Morea, if actually independent, and it will be neither war, nor cause of war, nor any violation of our neutrality. Besides, sir, what is Greece to the allies? A part of the dominions of any of them? By no means. Suppose the people in one of the Philippine isles, or any other spot still more insulated and remote, in Asia or Africa, were to resist their former rulers, and set up and establish a new government, are we not to recognize them in dread of the holy allies? If they are going to interfere, from the danger of the contagion of the example, here is the spot, our own favored land, where they must strike. This government, you, Mr. Chairman, and the body over which you preside, are the living and cutting reproach to allied despotism. If we are to offend them, it is not by passing this resolution. We are daily and hourly giving them cause of war. It is here, and in our free institutions, that they will assail us. They will attack us because you sit beneath that canopy, and we are freely debating and deliberating upon the great interests of free men, and dispensing the blessings of free government. They will strike, because we pass one of those bills on your table. The passage of the least of them, by our free authority, is more galling to despotic powers, than would be the adoption of this so much dreaded resolution. Pass it, and what do you? You exercise an indisputable attribute of sovereignty, for which you are responsible to none of them. You do the same when you perform any other legislative function; no less. If the allies object to this measure, let them forbid us to take a vote in this house; let them strip us of every attribute of independent government: let them disperse

us.

Will gentlemen attempt to maintain that, on the principles of the law of nations, those allies would have cause of war? If there be any principle which has been settled for ages, any which is founded in the very nature of things, it is that every independent state has the clear right to judge of the fact of the existence of other sovereign powers. I admit that there may be a state of inchoate initiative sovereignty, in which a new government, just struggling into being, cannot be said yet perfectly to exist. But the premature recognition of such new government, can give offence justly to no other than its ancient sovereign. The right of recognition comprehends the right to be informed; and the means of information must, of necessity, depend upon the sound discretion of the party seeking it. You may send out

a commission of inquiry, and charge it with a provident attention to your own people and your own interests. Such will be the character of the proposed agency. It will not necessarily follow that any public functionary will be appointed by the President. You merely grant the means by which the executive may act when he thinks proper. What does he tell you in his message? That Greece is contending for her independence; that all sympathize with her; and that no power has declared against her. Pass this resolution, and what is the reply which it conveys to him? "You have sent us grateful intelligence; we feel warmly for Greece; and we grant you money, that, when you shall think it proper, when the interests of this nation shall not be jeopardized, you may depute a commissioner or public agent to Greece." The whole responsibility is then left where the constitution puts it. A member in his place may make a speech or proposition, the house may even pass a vote, in respect to our foreign affairs, which the President, with the whole field lying full before him, would not deem it expedient to effectuate.

But, sir, it is not for Greece alone that I desire to see this measure adopted. It will give to her but little support, and that purely of a moral kind. It is principally for America, for the credit and character of our common country, for our own unsullied name, that I hope to see it pass. What, Mr. Chairman, appearance on the page of history, would a record like this exhibit? "In the month of January, in the year of our Lord and Saviour, 1824, while all European Christendom beheld, with cold and unfeeling indifference, the unexampled wrongs and inexpressible misery of Christian Greece, a proposition was made in the Congress of the United States, almost the sole, the last, the greatest depository of human hope and human freedom, the representatives of a gallant nation, containing a million of freemen ready to fly to arms, while the people of that nation were spontaneously expressing its deep-toned feeling, and the whole continent, by one simultaneous emotion, was rising, and solemnly and anxiously supplicating and invoking high Heaven to spare and succor Greece, and to invigorate her arms, in her glorious cause, while temples and senate houses were alike resounding with one burst of generous and holy sympathy;-in the year of our Lord and Savior, that Savior of Greece and of us-a proposition was offered in the American Congress to send a messenger to Greece, to inquire into her state and condition, with a kind expression of our good wishes and our sympathies—and it was rejected!" Go home, if you can, go home, if you dare, to your constituents, and tell them that you voted it down-meet, if you can, the appalling countenances of those who sent you here, and tell them that you shrank from the declaration of your own sentiments-that you cannot tell how, but that some unknown dread, some indescribable apprehension, some indefinable danger, drove you from your purpose-that the spectres of scimitars, and crowns, and crescents, gleamed before you, and alarmed you; and that you

suppressed all the noble feelings prompted by religion, by liberty, by national independence, and by humanity. I cannot bring myself to believe that such will be the feeling of a majority of this committee. But, for myself, though every friend of the cause should desert it, and I be left to stand alone with the gentleman from Massachusetts, I will give to his resolution the poor sanction of my unqualified approbation.

SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF THE AMERICAN SYSTEM,

Against the British Colonial System.-Delivered in the Senate of the United States, February 2d, 3d and 6th, 1832.

In one sentiment, Mr. President, expressed by the honorable gentleman from South Carolina, (Gen. Hayne,) though perhaps not in the sense intended by him, I entirely concur. agree with him, that the decision on the system of policy embraced in this debate, involves the future destiny of this growing country. One way, I verily believe, it would lead to deep and general distress, general bankruptcy and national ruin, without benefit to any part of the Union: The other, the existing prosperity will be preserved and augmented, and the nation will continue rapidly to advance in wealth, power and greatness, without prejudice to any section of the confederacy.

Thus viewing the question, I stand here as the humble but zealous advocate, not of the interests of one State, or seven States only, but of the whole Union. And never before have I felt, more intensely, the overpowering weight of that share of responsibility which belongs to me in these deliberations. Never before have I had more occasion, than I now have, to lament my want of those intellectual powers, the possession of which might enable me to unfold to this Senate, and to illustrate to this people, great truths, intimately connected with the lasting welfare of my country. I should, indeed, sink, overwhelmed and subdued beneath the appalling magnitude of the task which lies before me, if I did not feel myself sustained and fortified by a thorough consciousness of the justness of the cause which I have espoused, and by a persuasion, I hope not presumptuous, that it has the approbation of that Providence who has so often smiled upon these United States.

Eight years ago, it was my painful duty to present, to the other House of Congress, an unexaggerated picture of the general distress pervading the whole land. We must all yet remember some of its frightful features. We all know that the people were then oppressed and borne down by an enormous load of