nal
dissensions and crush out the hydra of internal treason; at a time when
the mother country has gone to every length short of open war to aid and
assist those who are striving for our downfall, and her press is
exhausting every epithet of vituperation and scurrilous abuse of us, who
are battling so earnestly in our own defence, and who are entitled by
every truth of human nature to her warmest sympathy--a press which,
adopting the phraseology of its Secession friends and allies, scruples
not to place the civilization of the slaveholding States far in advance
of that of the 'Northern mudsills'--even now, when the cry of the
starving operatives of the English mills comes to us across the water,
forgetting for the time all the abuse and maltreatment we have received,
all the enmity and bitter hostility which the traitorous perfidy of
England has engendered, more than one full-freighted vessel has left our
ports bearing grain to those whom their own proud aristocracy is either
powerless or too niggardly to sustain. Is this not evidence of a
civilization considerably advanced beyond any which history has yet
recorded?--a civilization based upon the golden rule of Christianity,
and upon that still more precious command: 'Love those that hate you,
and do good to those that persecute you.' For it is in its moral aspect
that every civilization must in the end be judged; and that society
which develops such noble principles and feelings as these, which
manifests itself in this higher region of spiritual excellence, in the
exercise of these finer feelings of the heart, is certainly nearest to
perfection, in that it follows most closely the law of God, the truths
of divine revelation. When instances such as these occur on the part of
any of the older nations of the world, it will do for them to boast of a
civilization superior to ours; but until their faith is shown by their
works, suffering humanity the world over will accord to us the palm. Nor
will it answer to ascribe to us an unworthy motive in this matter--a
desire to win credit in the eyes of the world. An individual might, with
some degree of plausibility, fall under such an imputation, but a great
people does not move spontaneously and unitedly in one direction from
such a motive, since none but a pure and just principle can produce
unity in the masses. Such an unworthy and degrading motive is the
property of individuals, not of nations, even if it were possible for
such