A painful, it may be said a calamitous, experience of more
than forty years has demonstrated the deep importance of these same
principles to the peace and prosperity of this nation and to the welfare
of all maritime States, and has illustrated the profound wisdom with
which they were assumed as cardinal points of the policy of the Union.
At that time in the infancy of their political existence, under the
influence of those principles of liberty and of right so congenial to
the cause in which they had just fought and triumphed, they were able
but to obtain the sanction of one great and philosophical, though
absolute, sovereign in Europe to their liberal and enlightened
principles. They could obtain no more. Since then a political hurricane
has gone over three-fourths of the civilized portions of the earth, the
desolation of which it may with confidence be expected is passing away,
leaving at least the American atmosphere purified and refreshed. And now
at this propitious moment the new-born nations of this hemisphere,
assembling by their representatives at the isthmus between its two
continents to settle the principles of their future international
intercourse with other nations and with us, ask in this great exigency
for our advice upon those very fundamental maxims which we from our
cradle at first proclaimed and partially succeeded to introduce into the
code of national law.
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