proceed to
punish you."

"By refusing me?"

"No; by giving it to you. I said, did I not, that rebellion does not
necessarily bring war?"

"That is the postulate," I replied.

"Then, first, what is rebellion?"

"Rebellion," said I, "rebellion--rebellion," seeking a definition,
"rebellion is armed hostility, within a nation or state, to the
legalized government of the nation or state."

"I am willing to accept that," said the Doctor; "now let us see if there
have not been cases of rebellion without war. What do you say of
Jeroboam and the ten tribes?"

"I say that there was about to be war, and the Almighty put a stop to
it."

"That is all I pray for," said the Doctor; "then, what do you say of
Monk?"

"What Monk?"

"The general of the commonwealth, who restored Charles the Second."

"Monk simply decided a dilemma," said I. "I don't count that a
rebellion; the people were glad to settle matters."

"Well, we won't count Monk; what do you say--"

"No more, Doctor," I interrupted; "I admit that rebellion does not bring
war when, the other party won't fight."

"But it is wrong to fight," he said.

"Then every rebellion ought to succeed," said I.

"Certainly it ought, at least for a time. What I am contending is that
every revolution should be peaceable. Would not England have been wiser
if she had not endeavoured to subdue the colonies? Suppose the principle
of peace were cherished: the ideas that would otherwise cause rebellion
would be patiently tested; the men of new or opposite ideas would no
longer be rebels; they would be statesmen; a rebellion would be
accepted, tried, and defeated by a counter rebellion, both peaceable. It
is simply leaving things to the will of the majority. Right ideas will
win, no matter what the opposition to them. Better change the arena of
conflict. A single champion of an idea would once challenge a doubter
and prove his hypothesis by the blood of the disputant; you do the same
thing on a great scale. The Southern people--very good people as you and
I have cause to know--think the constitution gives them the right, or
rather cannot take away the right, to withdraw from the Union; you
Northern people think they deserve death for so thinking, and you
proceed to kill them off; you intend keeping it up until too few of them
are left to think fatally; but they _will_ think, and your killing them
will not prove your ideas right."

"And so you would settle it by letting them a