Well, there is a just God in heaven, and there will yet be justice on earth;—­the day of retribution will come!

Such being the sad tale of my fatherland, which, by a timely token of your brotherly sympathy might have been saved, and which now has lost everything except its honour, its trust in God, its hope of resurrection, its confidence in my patriotic exertions, and its steady resolution to strike once more the inexorable blow of retribution at tyrants and tyranny;—­if the cause I plead were a particular cause, I would place it upon the ground of well-deserved sympathy, and would try to kindle into a flame of excitement the generous affections of your hearts:  and I should succeed.

But since a great crisis, which is universally felt to be approaching, enables me to claim for my cause a universality not restricted by the geographical limits of a country or even of Europe itself, or by the moral limits of nationalities, but possessing an interest common to all the Christian world; it is calm, considerate conviction, and not the passing excitement of generous sentiments, which I seek.  I hope therefore to meet the approbation of this intelligent assembly, when instead of pleasing you by an attempt at eloquence, for which, in my sick condition, I indeed have not sufficient freshness of mind—­I enter into some dry but not unimportant considerations, which the citizens of Salem, claiming the glory of high commercial reputation, will kindly appreciate.

Gentlemen, I have often heard the remark, that if the United States do not care for the policy of the world, they will continue to grow internally, and will soon become the mightiest realm on earth, a Republic of a hundred millions of energetic freemen, strong enough to defy all the rest of the world, and to control the destinies of mankind.  And surely this is your glorious lot; but only under the condition, that no hostile combination, before you have in peace and in tranquillity grown so strong, arrests by craft and violence your giant-course; and this again is possible, only under the condition that Europe become free, and the league of despots become not sufficiently powerful to check the peaceful development of your strength.  But Russia, too, the embodiment of the principle of despotism, is working hard for the development of her power.  Whilst you grow internally, her able diplomacy has spread its nets all over the continent of Europe.  There is scarcely a Prince there but feels honoured to be an underling of the great Czar; the despots are all leagued against the freedom of the nations:  and should the principle of absolutism consolidate its power, and lastingly keep down the nations, then it must, even by the instinct of self-preservation, try to check the further development of your Republic.  In vain they would have spilt the blood of millions, in vain they would have doomed themselves to eternal curses, if they allowed the United States to become the ruling power on earth.