is connected with our affairs. But it can be little more than a transient experiment; for who can doubt that this imperial exotic, planted by foreign care and propped by foreign bayonets, must disappear before the ascending glory of the Republic? (3.) This enterprise of war was followed by an enterprise of diplomacy not less hardy. The Emperor, not content with stirring against us the Gulf of Mexico, the Antilles, and the Latin race, entered upon work of a different character. He invited England and Russia to unite with France in tendering to the two “belligerents” (such is the equal designation of our Republic and the embryo Slavemonger mockery!) a joint mediation to procure “an armistice for six months, during which every act of war, direct or indirect, should provisionally cease on sea as well as on land, to be renewed, if necessary, for a further period.” The Cabinets of England and Russia, better inspired, declined the invitation, which looked to little short of recognition itself. Under the proposed armistice, all our vast operations must have been suspended, the blockade itself must have ceased, while the Rebel ports were opened on the one side to unlimited supplies and military stores, and on the other to unlimited exports of cotton. Trade, for the time, would have been legalized in these ports, and Slavery would have lifted its grinning front before the civilized world. Not disheartened by this failure, the Emperor alone pushed forward his diplomatic enterprise against us, as alone he had pushed forward his military enterprise against Mexico, and presented to our Government the unsupported mediation of France. His offer was promptly rejected by the President. By solemn resolutions of both Houses, adopted with singular unanimity, and communicated since to all foreign governments, Congress announced that such a proposition could be attributed only to “a misunderstanding of the true state of the question, and of the real character of the war in which the Republic is engaged”; and that it was in its nature so far injurious to the national interests that Congress would be obliged to consider its repetition an unfriendly act.[47] This strong language frankly states the true position of our country. Any such offer, whatever its motive, must be an encouragement to the Rebellion. In an age when ideas prevail and even words become things, the simple declarations of statesmen are of incalculable importance. But the head of a great nation is more than statesman in such influence. The imperial proposition tended directly to the dismemberment of the Republic and the substitution of a ghastly Slavemonger nation.