Harriet Martineau

“ There is no great promise while the citizens generally suppose, after all explanation, that England has formerly done what Commodore Wilkes did lately. There is no great promise while it is a common thing for legislators, and reformers, and popular speakers to propose to seize, at some convenient time, the territory of some other power, and to annex its inhabitants;—while men who would no more than other people dream of stealing a bank-note, or a book, or a hat, talk openly of stealing other people's islands and colonies. ”

“ This is the great republican question: if it can be answered favourably, international relations may prosper, with others: if time should afford an unfavourable answer, disorder at home must cause utter wreck abroad, and the American people must be in reality what some of them propose now in ignorant levity to render themselves,—an outlaw among the nations. ”

“ The first idea which must strike everybody who attends to the subject is that, if elective government must necessarily embody the popular sentiment and opinion of the day, it must be unfavourable to international relations which are based on certain fixed principles and rules; principles and rules which it is the very object of international society to maintain, against the caprice, interest, or passion of individual States. ”

“ Where the appeal to the national understanding and heart is complete and thorough, the national intelligence and conscience may, they think, be entrusted with the management of its own affairs—deciding for itself how far it is desirable to interpret and rule each present case by ancient principles and rules, and how far to modify and innovate as it proceeds. ”

“ There is no very good promise in the utter inability of both South and North to conceive of England and France having any other aim than getting cotton. The Southern citizens see nothing but insanity in our non-intervention, and are certainly still hoping for our aid, which they suppose to be delayed for some cunning reason. The Northern citizens either suspect us of intervention, or regard our endurance of distress for cotton as "eating humble pie;" ”

“ When we consider that the Dutch and Swiss republics, and the democratic government of Norway, which sports a king for ornament or convenience only, have not been particularly chargeable with aggressive tendencies, or with incapacity to live in peace and honour among the nations around them, we must suppose at once that American aggressiveness and impracticability may be owing to other causes than the democratic character of the national polity. ”

“ Others accounted for the national predilection for despotic governments by saying that Americans who travel are, for the most part, scholarly men, with historical or political tastes, or men weary of political turmoil (if not disappointment) at home, and delighted to be where politics were the last thing talked about, and where the citizens seemed to them supremely happy in having that sort of business transacted for them, without any thought or care on their own part. ”

“ On the whole, there is no great promise in the evidence of the collective events of the Republic that its citizens have yet to acquire the elementary conception of international i, obligation, and of the principles on which that obligation rests. At present, they clearly no more understand the international morality of other peoples than they perceive any such duty for themselves. ”

“ It is as slave-holders that the Southern citizens have needed fresh territory, and have sent their agents, Lopez and Walker and the like, into Cuba and Mexico and Nicaragua and St. Domingo. We constantly hear the question asked in every country in Europe, "Why cannot the Americans keep at home in their own half-peopled territory, and enjoy themselves in peace and plenty and progress?" ”

“ An old man, strongly interested in both countries, having a cordial sympathy with the admirers of constitutional monarchy on the one hand, and of democratic republicanism on the other, while abiding by the former, as an Englishman should do, may be allowed to state what he has observed, and what he thinks, on a subject which must become more and more interesting to society as the tendency towards democratic modes of government (which no political philosopher disputes) becomes more pronounced. ”

“ The great question is, whether a nation which has no governing class devoted to a political career can continuously act with other governments on equal terms, with the intelligence, learning, temper and manners which the vocation of diplomacy and the terms of alliance or international comity require. ”

“ It is natural that this should be the impression even of the sincere admirers of republican institutions, who are satisfied that popular self-government may in any event cope with the difficulties at home, and be trusted to deal with whatever may arise in the republic itself. ”

“ It seems very strange that, amidst all that has been written about the progress of democracy in the civilised world, from the first French Revolution to the present hour, there should be little or nothing said on the important question of the competency of democratic republics to sustain international relations. ”

“ The incessant bickerings and evil constructions arising from the unequal partnership in the care of the African coasts, in which till now England has done nearly all the work, and has had to endure endless obstruction and insult, have been the result of the insincerity of a slave-holding power pretending to stop a trade which its citizens were organised to promote with great energy. ”

“ The Dutch and the Swiss have never been aggressive as to neighbouring territory, nor have the Americans of the Northern States, except in as far as they have been compelled by unworthy fears and vanities to answer the requisitions of the Southern oligarchy established at Washington. ”

“ The whole question of their capacity for international relations hangs on the point which is all important in every view of republican existence—whether fundamental principles and inviolable rules can be so commended to the national allegiance as to abide securely amidst all changes of men and circumstance. ”

“ The ambassador informs the government that Cuba is not on sale; but this makes no sort of difference; and the unhappy man who undertakes the post at Washington has to hear something every day about what the Americans mean to do with Cuba. The British ambassador is scarcely happier. He has to make up his mind to live in an atmosphere of jealousy, suspicion, and misapprehension, and under constant irritation from evil construction and bad manners. ”

“ The Southern States have certainly taken a lesson from the Russian government in this matter; and, the mode being precisely what the Czar Peter prescribed to his descendants, it is believed that the Slave-power in America has been under the actual training of Russian political teachers. I need only remind my readers of the method. First, some citizens pass quietly into the doomed neighbour's country, and there establish themselves in pursuit of some branch of industry. There were Russian manufacturers and merchants in Caubul, just as there were American farmers in Texas, and at the same time. ”

“ It is the more remarkable, because we have always found it difficult to get on amicably for any length of time with the American government; and we have a floating impression that this is owing to the form of government existing in the United States. ”

“ If they have till now been borne with, played with, used, and allowed for, as young and way ward, they have not the less been burdened by a great national disgrace and social sin; and, now that the national responsibility for that sin and burden is abjured, a new public morality may begin to grow. ”

“ The good social understanding between Americans and king-ridden people,—or, rather, I fear I must say, the admiration of Americans for that kind of society,—is natural enough; and it may have some effect on republican diplomacy, inasmuch as the diplomatists themselves are subject to the same. beguiling influences; but there is much more in the matter than this view includes. The plain truth is that there have been grounds of sympathy between the Americans and the despotisms of Europe which do not exist as between them and free nations. There is no question of the fact on any hand ”

“ It is abundantly evident that individuals from a young nation, living beyond sea, may be swayed in their preferences, during the period of travel, by sentiment, imagination, passion, historical memories, and a new set of social sensations ”

“ While, as I said, the question has been strangely neglected in works of political philosophy, there is, I believe, a very general impression, in European society at least, that this competency can hardly exist, and can scarcely be looked for. In the United States there is no evidence that it has ever been effectually discussed at all since the great Founders of the Republic passed away from the scene of their labours. ”

“ If the ministers are amiable, the journalists are sure to be insulting; and, from one quarter or another, he is under the constant necessity of explaining matters which would never raise a question in any other country. ”

“ There is no great promise while the American legislature can pass, and the President can sanction, a Merrill tariff, with the avowed object of class profit at the expense of other nations. This symptom is mitigated, however, by the consideration that that tariff bears even more hardly upon American consumers than upon foreign producers ”