Washington has never taught you. I defy any man to show me, out of the
eleven volumes of Washington's writings, a single word to that effect.
He could not have recommended this indifference without ceasing to be
wise as he was; for without justice there is no wisdom on earth. He
could not have recommended it without becoming inconsistent; for it was
this common law of mankind which your fathers invoked before God and man
when they proclaimed your independence. It was he himself, your great
Washington, who not only accepted, but again and again asked, foreign
aid--foreign help for the support of that common law of mankind in
respect to your own independence. Knowledge and instruction are so
universally spread amongst the enlightened people of the United States,
the history of your country is such a household science at the most
lonely hearths of your remotest settlements, that it may be sufficient
for me to refer, in that respect, to the instructions and correspondence
between Washington and the Minister at Paris--the equally immortal
Franklin--the modest man with the proud epitaph, which tells the world
that he wrested the lightning from heaven, and the sceptre from the
tyrant's hands.

I will go further. Even that doctrine of neutrality which Washington
taught and bequeathed to you, he taught not as a constitutional
_principle_--a lasting regulation for all future time, but only as
a matter of temporary _policy_. I refer in that respect to the very
words of his Farewell Address. There he states explicitly that "it is
your _policy_ to steer clear of _permanent_ alliances with any
portion of the foreign world." These are his very words. Policy is the
word, and you know that policy is not the science of principle, but of
exigencies; and that principles are, of course, by a free and powerful
nation, never to be sacrificed to exigencies. The exigencies pass away
like the bubbles of a shower, but the nation is immortal: it must