f
course both instinct and duty impel us to look out for ourselves; but
is it not equally true that both instinct and duty impel us to help
one another, and provide for the common weal? A generous and noble
deed,--simply painful, simply distressing! I will not deny that a long
life of selfishness, meanness, and servility may bring here and there
one to look on things in this light, but not until he is, in the
language of Scripture, "without natural affection." "Public spirit,"
so an eminent jurist has defined it, "is the whole body of those
affections which unite men's hearts to the commonwealth." What I
insist upon is, that these are real and natural affections, and that,
in acting them out, we find a real and natural satisfaction. Who will
say that the happiest moments of his existence have not been those in
which he was conscious of living for others, and not for himself?
There are many things in the present aspect of our public affairs to
fill us with regret and anxiety, but a gleam of light shines through
the cloud. Every man and woman and child will be moved to act more
unselfishly, more nobly; life will cost more, but it will also be
worth more.

It is extremely difficult to do justice to this human nature of
ours,--capable at once of such mean and little things, of such noble
and great things. There is, however, one distinction which all, I
suppose, will accord to it: I mean its tendency to rise up and meet
great emergencies. In every soul that lives there is an untold amount
of latent energy and public spirit which only waits for the occasion
to call it forth. Read the history of the Netherlands,--a people made
up, for the most part, of merchants and manufacturers, of traders and
artisans, growing rich and apparently thinking of little else. A blow
is struck at the free institutions which they had inherited from their
ancestors; immediately a new spirit reveals itself, and all Europe
rings with the story of their heroic daring and suffering.

The sacrifices which the country asks for in time of war are those of
_property, labor, and life_; and she does not ask in vain.

We are continually reminded that this rebellion has taken place at a
moment of great national prosperity, to blast it all. The sacrifices
of _property_, in a thousand ways, must be immense; every man,
however, from his diminished fortune, is "ready to distribute," and
"not grudgingly or of necessity." His public spirit makes him love to
give