But what has all this to do with the question before us? Has it come to this? Is the cause of this great republic reduced to such extremities? Is this nation of twenty millions of freemen, so richly endowed with all the faculties, resources, and artificial means which constitute power, unable to preserve its national existence, independence, and liberty, without help from the contaminating hand of tyranny, without sacrificing its honor by basely singing hosannas to the imperial butcher of Poland, at the very moment when the blood of the people of Kosciuszko and Pulaski cries to Heaven and mankind for vengeance? Is the peril so great? so imminent? Is Hannibal _ante portas_? Has the French fleet dispersed Secretary Welles's five hundred and eighty-eight vessels of war, broken the Southern blockade, and appeared before our Northern harbors? Are all Jeff. Davis's bitter complaints against the English cabinet but a sham, covering a deep-laid conspiracy with treacherous Albion? Is Emperor Maximilian quietly seated on the throne of Montezuma, and already marching his armies upon the Rio Grande? The talk of foreign intervention has been going on for years, and not a threatening cloud is yet to be seen on our horizon. Both England and France deprecate the idea of hostile interference in American affairs. It is _Russia_ that is _menaced_, an alliance with her can serve only herself, and her artifices have caused all the foolish clamor that threatens to disgrace this country. And then, accepting aid is not forming an alliance, still less an alliance _defensive_ and _offensive_. Not to speak of examples too remote, every one familiar with the historical characters of the men, will know that neither Pulaski, Franklin, Ypsilanti, or Garibaldi would ever have so degraded his cause--the cause of liberty--as to promise to the despot, whose aid he desired, a compensatory assistance in trampling down a people rising for freedom. No _innocent_ man attacked by assassins will promise, with honest intent, to one who offers to save him, his assistance in continuing a work of murder and resisting the arm of justice.