omes of a dull race
that has been taught for generations to think itself better than the
rest of mankind, and has learned to believe it and practise on it. But
if nations are fast becoming educated to a state in which they are
competent to manage their own interests, we wish these privileged
personages to recognize it, for their own sake, as well as for that of
the people.

The spirit of republican America is not that of a wild propagandism. It
is not by war that we have sought or should ever seek to convert the Old
World to our theories and practice in government. If this young nation
is permitted, in the Providence of God, to unfold all its possibilities
into powers, the great lesson it will teach will be that of peaceful
development. Where the public wealth is mainly for the governing class,
the splendid machinery of war is as necessary as the jewels which a
province would hardly buy are to the golden circlet that is the mark of
sovereignty. Where the wealth of a country is for the people, this
particular form of pyrotechnics is too costly to be indulged in for
amusement. American civilization hates war, as such. It values life,
because it honors humanity. It values property, because property is for
the comfort and good of all, and not merely plunder, to be wasted by a
few irresponsible lawgivers. It wants all the forces of its population
to subdue Nature to its service. It demands all the intellect of its
children for construction, not for destruction. Its business is to build
the world's great temple of concord and justice; and for this it is not
Dahlgren and Parrott that are the architects, but men of thought, of
peace, of love.

Let us not, therefore, waste our strength in threats of vengeance
against those misguided governments who mistook their true interest in
the prospect of our calamity. We can conquer them by peace better than
by war. When the Union emerges from the battle-smoke,--her crest
towering over the ruins of traitorous cities and the wrecks of Rebel
armies, her eye flashing defiance to all her evil-wishers, her breast
heaving under its corselet of iron, her arm wielding the mightiest
enginery that was ever forged into the thunderbolts of war,--her triumph
will be grand enough without her setting fire to the stubble with which
the folly of the Old World has girt its thrones. No deeper humiliation
could be asked for our foreign enemies than the spectacle of our
triumph. If we have any legal claims