Nothing
certainly could occur more for my interests, for the interests of my
people, nothing more acceptable to my country, than a religious war in
Turkey. But I have thought I perceived in the troubles of the Morea the
sign of revolution, and I have held back. Providence has not put under
my command eight hundred thousand soldiers to satisfy my ambition, but
to protect religion, morality, and justice, and to secure the prevalence
of those principles of order on which human society rests. It may well
be permitted, that kings may have public alliances to defend themselves
against secret enemies."
These, Sir, are the words which the French minister thought so important
that they deserved to be recorded; and I, too, Sir, am of the same
opinion. But if it be true that there is hereafter to be neither a
Russian policy, nor a Prussian policy, nor an Austrian policy, nor a
French policy, nor even, which yet I will not believe, an English
policy, there will be, I trust in God, an American policy. If the
authority of all these governments be hereafter to be mixed and blended,
and to flow in one augmented current of prerogative over the face of
Europe, sweeping away all resistance in its course, it will yet remain
for us to secure our own happiness by the preservation of our own
principles; which I hope we shall have the manliness to express on all
proper occasions, and the spirit to defend in every extremity. The end
and scope of this amalgamated policy are neither more nor less than
this: to interfere, by force, for any government against any people who
may resist it.
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