l make his convictions of
what is right and expedient regulate the community so far as his
fractional share of the government extends. If one has come to the
conclusion, be it right or wrong, that any particular institution or
statute is a violation of the sovereign law of God, it is to be expected
that he will choose to be represented by those who share his belief, and
who will in their wider sphere do all they legitimately can to get rid of
the wrong in which they find themselves and their constituents involved.
To prevent opinion from organizing itself under political forms may be
very desirable, but it is not according to the theory or practice of
self-government. And if at last organized opinions become arrayed in
hostile shape against each other, we shall find that a just war is only
the last inevitable link in a chain of closely connected impulses of
which the original source is in Him who gave to tender and humble and
uncorrupted souls the sense of right and wrong, which, after passing
through various forms, has found its final expression in the use of
material force. Behind the bayonet is the law-giver's statute, behind the
statute the thinker's argument, behind the argument is the tender
conscientiousness of woman, woman, the wife, the mother,--who looks upon
the face of God himself reflected in the unsullied soul of infancy. "Out
of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, because
of thine enemies."

The simplest course for the malcontent is to find fault with the order of
Nature and the Being who established it. Unless the law of moral
progress were changed, or the Governor of the Universe were dethroned, it
would be impossible to prevent a great uprising of the human conscience
against a system, the legislation relating to which, in the words of so
calm an observer as De Tocqueville, the Montesquieu of our laws, presents
"such unparalleled atrocities as to show that the laws of humanity have
been totally perverted." Until the infinite selfishness of the powers
that hate and fear the principles of free government swallowed up their
convenient virtues, that system was hissed at by all the old-world
civilization. While in one section of our land the attempt has been
going on to lift it out of the category of tolerated wrongs into the
sphere of the world's beneficent agencies, it was to be expected that the
protest of Northern manhood and womanhood would grow louder and stronger
unti