convenience; to take for substantial that which is but accidental; or to
take for a constitutional doctrine that which is but a momentary
exigency of administrative policy. Such a course of action would be like
to a healthy man refusing substantial food, because when he was once
weak in stomach his physician ordered him a severe diet. Let me suppose,
gentlemen, that that doctrine of non-interference was really bequeathed
to you by your Washingtons (and that it was not, I will essay to prove
afterwards), and let me even suppose that your Washingtons imparted to
it such an interpretation, as were equivalent to the words of Cain, "Am
I my brother's keeper?" (which supposition would be, of course, a
sacrilege; but I am forced to such suppositions:) I may be entitled to
ask, is the dress which suited the child, still suitable to the full
grown man? Would it not be ridiculous to lay the man into the child's
cradle, and to sing him to sleep by a lullaby? In the origin of the
United States you were an infant people, and you had, of course, nothing
to do but to grow, to grow, and to grow. But now you are so far grown
that there is no foreign power on earth from which you have anything to
fear for your existence or security. In fact, your growth is that of a
giant. Of old, your infant frame was composed of thirteen states, and
was restricted to the borders of the Atlantic: now, your massive bulk is
spread to the gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, and your territory is a
continent. Your right hand touches Europe over the waves; your left
reaches across the Pacific to eastern Asia; and there, between two
quarters of the world, there you stand, in proud immensity, a world
yourselves. Then you were a small people of three millions and a half;
now you are a mighty nation of twenty-four millions. Thus you have fully
entered into the second stadium of national life, in which a nation
lives at length not for itself separately, but as a member of the great
family of human nations; having a right to whatever is due from that
family _towards_ every one of its full-grown members, but also