in the simplest and most
legitimate self-defence. I do not allow my thoughts to rest upon the
soldiers who are advancing to oppress it--mere instruments as they are
in the hands of their leaders--but upon the leaders themselves. One of
these, without the least necessity, with a calculating coolness, to
which he sacrifices all the feelings of a man, or under the sway of one
of those ferocious instincts which at times gain the mastery over the
soul, gives up a town, a village, to all the horrors of slaughter,
pillage, and fire. The blood of the victims will scarcely, perhaps, have
grown cold, the last gleams of the fire will not yet be extinct, when
this man shall be receiving the praises of his superiors. Men will laud
the bravery and daring of his exploit; his sovereign will place upon
his breast a brilliant cross, the august sign of the world's redemption;
he will return to his country amidst the acclamations of the multitude,
and drink in with delight the shouts of triumph which greet him as he
moves on his way. For such things as these, is there to be no penalty
but troublesome recollections which may sometimes be banished, and a few
timid protests soon hushed by the loud voice of success? Verily there
are perpetrated beneath the sun acts which cry aloud for vengeance. Have
you never felt it--that mighty cry--rising from your own bosom, at the
sight of some odious crime, or on reading such and such a page of
history? And it must be so; it must be that the cry for vengeance will
rise, until the soul has learnt to transform imprecation into prayer,
and the desire for justice into supplication for the guilty. But if, in
the presence of crime, we were forced to believe that there will never
be either vengeance or pardon, the mainspring of the moral life would be
broken, and humanity would at length exclaim, like Brutus in the plains
of Philippi:--"Virtue! thou art but a name!"

The conscience is a reality; but its voice is troublesome, and the
captious arguments which go to deny its value find support in the evil
tendencies of our nature. If it has no faith in eternal justice it runs
the risk of being blunted by contact with the world. So doubt takes
place, doubt still deeper and more agonizing than that which bears upon
the processes of the understanding. The questions which arise are such
as these:--"This voice of duty--whence comes it? and what would it have?
May not conscience be a prejudice, the result of education a