A second principle of Washington, and precisely in regard to foreign nations, is, to extend your commercial relations.  That is, again, a principle, gentlemen, which I boldly can invoke to the support of my humble claims; because if the league of despots becomes omnipotent in Europe, it is certain that the commerce of Republican America will very soon receive a death blow on the other side of the Atlantic; whereas, the maintenance of the law of nations, by affording a fair field to Hungary, Italy, and Germany, to settle their accounts with their own domestic oppressors, would open a vast field to your commercial relations, larger than imagination can conceive.

The third principle of Washington is to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.  Well, sir, I do not solicit alliances; I solicit the maintenance of the laws of nations, that the unholy alliance of despots may not interfere with the natural right of nations, upon which yourselves have established the lofty hall of your national independence.

It is on the stream of these rights that you are borne on in a rapid and irresistible course of prosperity.  Believe me, gentlemen, that course you cannot check—­you could not abandon the privileges upon which you embarked, without exposing to a shipwreck the glorious future of your existence and allow me to state that my poor country has some particular claim to be protected by the consistency of your principles, because we are the first nation towards which you have not exercised your principles. You say you recognize every de facto government.  Well, why was this not done with Hungary?  We shook off the yoke of the Austrian dynasty, we declared our national independence, and did thus not in an untimely movement of popular excitement, but after we became de facto independent, after we had, by crushing our enemy in our struggle of legitimate defence and driving him out from our country, proved to the world that we have sufficient strength to take our position amongst the independent nations of the earth.

And still the United States (which they never yet have done) withheld the benefit of their recognition, which we have full reason to believe would have been immediately followed by other recognitions, and thus would have prevented the foreign interference of Russia, by encouraging our national independence within those boundaries of diplomatic communication which no isolated power dared yet to disregard.

Sir, I have studied the history of your immortal Washington and have, from my early youth, considered his principles as a living source of instruction to statesmen and to patriots.

I now ask you to listen to Washington himself.

When, in that very year, in which Washington issued his Farewell Address, M. Adet, the French Minister, presented him the flag of the French Republic, Washington, as president of the United States, answered officially, with these memorable words: