cause of oppressed humanity, am bold to declare that there may never
again come a crisis, at which such an elevation of your policy would
prove either more glorious to you, or more beneficial to man: for we in
Europe are apparently on the eye of that day, when either the hopes or
the fears of oppressed nations will be crushed for a long time.

Having stated so far the difference of the situation, I beg leave now to
assert that it is an error to suppose that non-interference in foreign
matters has been bequeathed to the people of the United States by your
great Washington as a doctrine and as a constitutional principle.
Firstly, Washington never even recommended to you non-interference in
the sense of _indifference_ to the fate of other nations. He only
recommended _neutrality_. And there is a mighty diversity between
these two ideas. Neutrality has reference to a state of war between two
belligerent powers, and it is this case which Washington contemplated,
when he, in his Farewell Address, advised the people of the United
States not to enter into entangling alliances. Let quarrelling powers,
let quarrelling nations go to war--but do you consider your own
concerns; leave foreign powers to quarrel about ambitious topics, or
narrow partial interests. Neutrality is a matter of convenience--not of
principle. But while neutrality has reference to a state of war between
belligerent powers, the principle of non-interference, on the contrary,
lays down the sovereign right of nations to arrange their own domestic
concerns. Therefore these two ideas of neutrality and non-interference
are entirely different, having reference to two entirely different
matters. The sovereign right of every nation to rule over itself, to
alter its own institutions, to change the form of its own government, is
a common public law of nations, common to all, and, _therefore, put
under the common guarantee of all_. This sovereign right of every
nation to dispose of itself, you, the people of the United States must