They crushed poor Hungary, because her example was considered dangerous.  How could they permit you to become so mighty, as to be not only dangerous by your example, but by your power a certain ruin to despotism?  They will, they must, do everything to check your glorious progress.  Be sure, as soon as they have crushed the spirit of freedom in Europe, as soon as they command all the forces of the Continent, they will marshal them against you.  Of course they will not lead their fleets and armies at once across the Ocean.  They will first damage your prosperity by crippling your commerce.  They will exclude America from the markets of Europe, not only because they fear the republican propagandism of your commerce, but also because Russia requires those markets for her own products.

[He proceeded to argue, that Russian policy, like that of the Magyars in their time of barbarism, is essentially encroaching and warlike; that to be feared, is often more important to Russia than to enjoy a particular market; that the Russian system of commerce is, and must be, prohibitory to republican traffic; that England alone in Europe has large commerce with America, and that the despots, if victorious on the continent, would make it their great object to damage, cripple, and ruin both these kindred constitutional nations.  He continued:]

The despots are scheming to muzzle the English lion.  You see already how they are preparing for this blow—­that Russia may become mistress of Constantinople, by Constantinople mistress of the Mediterranean, and by the Mediterranean of three-quarters of the globe.  Egypt, Macedonia, Asia-Minor, the country and early home of the cotton plant, are then the immediate provinces of Russia, a realm with twenty million serfs, subject to its policy and depending on its arbitrary will.

Here is a circumstance highly interesting to the United States.  Constantinople is the key to Russia.  To be preponderant, she knows it is necessary for her to be a maritime power.  The Black Sea is only a lake, like Lake Leman; the Baltic is frozen five months in a year.  These are all the seas she possesses.  Constantinople is the key to the palace of the Czars.  Russia is already omnipotent on the Continent; once master of the Mediterranean, it is not difficult to see that the power which already controls three-quarters of the world, will soon have the fourth quarter.

Whilst the victory of the nations of Europe would open to you the markets, till now closed to your products, the consolidation of despotism destroys your commerce unavoidably.  If your wheat, your tobacco, your cotton, were excluded from Europe but for one year, there is no farm, no plantation, no banking-house, which would not feel the terrible shock of such a convulsion.