Gentlemen, how far this supreme duty toward your own interest will allow you to go in giving life and effect to the principle which you so generously proclaim, and which your party (as I have understood) have generously proclaimed in different parts--_that_ you will in your wisdom decide, remaining always the masters of your action and of your fate. But that principle will rest; that principle is true; that principle is just; and you are just, because you are free. I hope therefore to see you cordially unite with me once more in the sentiment--"Intervention for non-intervention." * * * * * XIX.--MEANING OF RECOGNIZING. [_Last Speech at Washington_.] In returning thanks to all the citizens here assembled, and to yourself, sir, in particular,[*] I beg to add some remarks. That I have not here been honoured with the same demonstrations of local cordiality as in other places, I do not, with you, attribute to diplomatic influences. I know well the skill of Russian diplomacy, which indeed at Moldovarica instructs all its representatives to marry Moldovarican ladies. But I also know that the framers of your Constitution wisely discouraged the development of municipal life in the district of Columbia, lest local influences and pressure from without on the seat of the central legislature might unduly sway the national councils. Just so, we have often known a single street in Paris coerce the deliberations of the nation. Columbia having, as I understand, by an exceptional arrangement, no true local self-government, is deficient in local movement. Nevertheless, I have received _private_ expression of sentiment and of generous kind sympathy from various parts of this district, and chiefly from the city of Washington. [Footnote *: Chancellor Walworth of New York.] In respect to the declaration which you make as to nonintervention, I have only to thank you, and to express my earnest hope that all those in whose name you speak, will proceed to give effect to their principle in public life. The second right of nations,--that of mutual commerce--still more closely touches your domestic interests, regard it as a clear national right of your citizens to hold commerce with the thirty-five millions of men oppressed by Austria, if those thirty-five millions desire it, though to Emperor of Austria, having occupied an immoral position refuse it to you: and if the people of Hungary, Bohemia, and Italy take arms to punish his atrocities, that is no good reason why your citizens should submit to abstain from commerce with these injured nations.