As this result is in conformity with our cherished history, it is superfluous to add other considerations; and yet I venture to suggest that estranged sympathies abroad may be secured again by open adhesion to principles which have the support already of Continental Europe, smarting for years under British pretensions. The powerful organs of opinion on the Continent are also with us. Hautefeuille, whose earnest work on the Law of Nations[106] is the arsenal of neutral rights, has entered into this debate with a direct proposition for the release of the emissaries, as a testimony to the true interpretation of International Law. Another distinguished Frenchman, Agénor de Gasparin, whose impassioned love of liberty and enlightened devotion to our country impart to his voice all the persuasion of friendship, has made a similar appeal.[107] And a journal which of itself is an authority, the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, declares, in words which harmonize with what I have said to-day, that, “in disavowing a capture effected by the arbitrary initiative of a naval officer, without any of the guaranties of legal justice, without the intervention and the sanction of a Court of Admiralty, the United States, far from renouncing any of their political principles, would only render homage to the doctrine which they have ever professed on the rights of neutrals.” The same distinguished journal proceeds: “It would be in reality a true triumph for this doctrine so to apply it to the profit of a nation and of a government which have always contested or violated the rights of neutrals, but which would be henceforward constrained to the abandonment of their arbitrary pretensions by the conspicuous authority of such a precedent.”[108] Nor is this triumph enough. The sea-god will in future use his trident less; but the same principles which led to the present renunciation of early pretensions naturally conduct to yet further emancipation of the sea. The work of maritime civilization is not finished. And here the two nations, equally endowed by commerce, and matched together, while surpassing all others, in peaceful ships, may gloriously unite in setting up new pillars, to mark new triumphs, rendering the ocean a highway of peace, instead of a bloody field.