The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster: With an Essay on Daniel Webster as a Master of English StyleWebster, Daniel
History
The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster: With an Essay on Daniel Webster as a Master of English Style
Webster, Daniel
Speeches, addresses, etc., American; United States -- Politics and government -- 1815-1861; Webster, Daniel, 1782-1852
As little reason is there for fearing its consequences upon the conduct
of the Allied Powers. They may, very naturally, dislike our sentiments
upon the subject of the Greek revolution; but what those sentiments are
they will much more explicitly learn in the President's message than in
this resolution. They might, indeed, prefer that we should express no
dissent from the doctrines which they have avowed, and the application
which they have made of those doctrines to the case of Greece. But I
trust we are not disposed to leave them in any doubt as to our
sentiments upon these important subjects. They have expressed their
opinions, and do not call that expression of opinion an interference;
in which respect they are right, as the expression of opinion in such
cases is not such an interference as would justify the Greeks in
considering the powers at war with them. For the same reason, any
expression which we may make of different principles and different
sympathies is no interference. No one would call the President's message
an interference; and yet it is much stronger in that respect than this
resolution. If either of them could be construed to be an interference,
no doubt it would be improper, at least it would be so according to my
view of the subject; for the very thing which I have attempted to resist
in the course of these observations is the right of foreign
interference. But neither the message nor the resolution has that
character. There is not a power in Europe which can suppose, that, in
expressing our opinions on this occasion, we are governed by any desire
of aggrandizing ourselves or of injuring others. We do no more than to
maintain those established principles in which we have an interest in
common with other nations, and to resist the introduction of new
principles and new rules, calculated to destroy the relative
independence of states, and particularly hostile to the whole fabric of
our government.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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