ependence on
things as they are. "If my father in his grave could hear of this
war," said a Spanish peasant, "his bones would not rest." Yet what
earthly interest, what intelligible concern had Spanish peasants in
the rivalships and struggles of princes who thought of nothing but
their own or their family aggrandizement. Of such loyalty, of such
patriotism, there never has been much in this country, and there never
will be. The loyal and patriotic States have risen up as one man to
maintain the government, because the government represents the great
ideas of order and liberty. It is not an excitement of irritation
merely, or of wounded vanity, or of a selfish and discomfited
ambition. It is, as I have said, a great moral force, a reverence for
order and liberty; an excitement, if you will have it so, but an
excitement resting on solid and intelligible principle, and one,
therefore, which trial and sacrifice will be likely to convert into
earnest and solemn purpose.

I suppose some are full of concern as to the effect which trial and
sacrifice will really have on this new outbreak of public spirit. They
fear that suffering for our principles will abate our confidence in
them, or at least our interest in them, and so the ardor will die
away. So doubtless, it will in some cases, for every community has
its representatives of "the seed that was sown on stony ground"; but
it will be the exception and not the rule. Human nature, if it has
fair play, will never lead a single individual to think less of a
privilege or blessing, merely because it has cost more. When has
religion interested men the most, and the most generally? Precisely at
those times when men were religious at the greatest sacrifices.
Indeed, it is on this principle that we explain the decay of a proper
love of country among us for the last twenty or thirty years; it is
because we have had so little to do for our country. A foreign war,
even a famine or a pestilence, if it had been sufficiently severe,
would have saved us from our present trouble and humiliation. So long
as the people think and feel together, they hold each other up, and
the sacrifices in which they express their public spirit, instead of
wearing it out, will purify it and keep it alive.

And this is not all. From the language sometimes used in speaking of
sacrifices for the public good, it might almost be supposed that the
making of them is simply painful, simply distressing. But is it so? O