“Such are not the doctrines of France. I speak not now of my personal incredulity of the doctrine of the divine right of kings; but I recall to you that already, long before ’89, the era of the European revolution, when we SOLDIERS OF AMERICA felt honored by the name of _rebels_ and insurgents then lavished upon us, all in virtue of social order by the English government, Louis XVI. and his ministers had expressly recognized the sovereignty of the United States, founded as it was upon the principles of their immortal declaration of independence. “These principles, since received into the bosom of the constituent assembly, proclaimed in a degree, sworn to by the king and his august brother amidst the greatest of our patriotic solemnities, have been since acknowledged, even in the usurpations of the imperial despotism,—they were since repeated from this tribune as a protecting truth by the friends of the charter and the royal throne on the 19th of March, 1815, for then it was not said that the charter was the counter-revolution; and, indeed, in order to ascertain the share due to the revolution of the rights recognized by the charter, that share which has so often been denied, it would suffice to read again an august proclamation, dated from Verona in July, 1795. These principles, professed at this day among that people who are our natural allies, outweigh all the exploded pretensions which we have since renewed, the moment that a noble effort of the nations subjected by our arms had forced their old governments in spite of themselves to recover the independence which they had so completely, so servilely, so affectionately alienated for the benefit of their conqueror; to whom, in a recent note from Troppau, they have preserved the noblest title he ever bore, in calling him the _soldier of the Revolution_. “In truth, gentlemen, the crimes and misfortunes which we deplore are no more the Revolution than the Saint Bartholomew was religion, or those you would call monarchical, the eighteen thousand judicial murders of the Duke of Alva.... “I will only make one remark as to the public instruction. The constitution of ’91 said, ‘There shall be organized a system of public instruction open to all citizens, gratuitous with respect to the indispensable parts of education, and widely disseminated.’ Your committee, on the contrary, exalting themselves to the height of the emperor of Austria’s address to the professors at Laybach, look upon gratuitous instruction as a _social disorder_, and are particularly desirous to suppress the amount destined for the encouragement of elementary instruction, principally because it serves to favor the Lancasterian system, which your committee does not think will harmonize with the spirit of our institutions. Now, gentlemen, the Lancasterian system is, since the invention of printing, the greatest step which has been made for the extension of prompt, easy, and popular instruction....