We have shown energy without example, since the time of the Romans, in making ourselves what we are; and we are ready to let the world see that we know how to maintain the power which was supposed to have enervated us, with more than Roman courage. With admitted social and political evils—far less, however, than any other nation on earth—we have not become corrupt or effeminate. It is not true that the extraordinary development of our public and private fortune has buried us in that shameful indolence which made the Romans so easy a prey to the barbarians. Prosperity has not made us forget or disregard our rights. The wonderful development of our railway communications and our steam navigation, the extension of our commerce, the pacification of India, the colonisation of Africa, ought to have shown the Emperor of Russia that we have not yet fallen from our high estate in the political or moral world. The mighty fleets and the gallant bands of warriors that are even now conveying to him our answer to his insolent defiance, will show him the magnitude of his error. Our courage and our activity, our resolution in council, and our sternness in execution, are in proportion to the grandeur of the interests we have to defend. Our decline, much less our fall, has not yet commenced; and if any foreign or domestic friend has persuaded Russia that we resemble the Romans in the latter days of their empire, and that we are in a condition to fall a prey to the barbarians, he is an idiot or a calumniator.