For we have, throughout Europe, the character of a sage and meditative people.

Our history has been read by the degraded Nations of the Continent with admiration, and some portions of it with awe; with a recognition of superiority and distance, which was honourable to us--salutary for those to whose hearts, in their depressed state, it could find entrance--and promising for the future condition of the human race.

We have been looked up to as a people who have acted nobly; whom their constitution of government has enabled to speak and write freely, and who therefore have thought comprehensively; as a people among whom philosophers and poets, by their surpassing genius--their wisdom--and knowledge of human nature, have circulated--and made familiar--divinely-tempered sentiments and the purest notions concerning the duties and true dignity of individual and social man in all situations and under all trials.

By so readily acceding to the prayers with which the Spaniards and Portugueze entreated our assistance, we had proved to them that we were not wanting in fellow-feeling.

Therefore might we be admitted to be judges between them and their enemies--unexceptionable judges--more competent even than a dispassionate posterity, which, from the very want comparatively of interest and passion, might be in its examination remiss and negligent, and therefore in its decision erroneous.