--At the great Republican meeting in
Cincinnati, on Monday night,
Secretary Chase appeared.
He made a long speech, and alluded to foreign affairs in the following significant terms:
‘
We are showing our strength to the nations of the earth, and if we simply go on showing our strength there will be no danger whatever of intervention.
There will be no danger, because it will not pay. [Cheers.] It is true that
Great Britain has behaved very unneighborly.
We used to think this great Anglo-
Saxon family was to stand together the world over to establish freedom of the press, freedom of the ballot-box, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and freedom for all; but of late years we have seen manifestations of a very unkind and unfriendly spirit; and sometimes I have felt as if I wanted to take old mother
England by the hair and give her a mightily good shaking.
[Loud laughter and applause.] I am not sure that this is the wisest plan; but of this I feel tolerably sure, that
England will not send any more pirate ships out against us; and I think that when
England thinks the matter over calmly — when she reflects of the
Alabama, fitted out in a British port, manned by British seamen, armed by British guns, and ever since roving over the seas, plundering merchant vessels, without bringing a single one into any port — when they come to look over these things, they will conclude it is best to pay the
American merchants for all the pillage the
Alabama has done.
[Loud cheers.]
’
We have got a sort of new empire upon our borders in
Mexico.
Well, gentlemen, I am not much disturbed about that.
Empires will not last long in
Central America.
[Cheers.] I don't know how long this empire — if it gets born — will last.
There was an attempt to make an empire in
Mexico some time ago, and, if I am not mistaken, was no great success.
I do not know that this Austrian Emperor will find his bed of roses there, but I am strongly inclined to think that the roses will be very few and the bed very hard.
[Cheers and loud laughter.] I am willing to trust to the future, and I am perfectly sure, taking all things into consideration, that the
European monarchs will, in the end, think it best to keep their institutions at home.
I am confident of this.
[Cheers.] I do not propose any particular measures just now. It is never wise to advance what you are going to do a great while in advance of doing it; but I think the time will come when the world will reconsider these things, and when this Republic of ours will be re-established from the
Gulf towards the Pole, and from the
Atlantic to the
Pacific, based upon freedom and free labor, gathering strength from our present contest, and rising from it grander than ever.
