atriot and making money by it. It is conceded by
his friends that he applied to his private uses, to sustaining the
magnificence of his household, the rent-moneys sweated from the
foreheads of Irish peasants. But, they say, he had sacrificed many
ambitions in taking up the _role_ of a patriot; and he felt entitled
to revenues as liberal as any indulgence of them could have procured
him! The apology puts his case beyond all apology. He who--to employ
the old phraseology--seeks to exact the same bribe of God that he
might have obtained from the Devil is always the Devil's servant, no
matter whose livery he wears. Had one often to apply the good word
_patriot_ to such men, it would soon blister his mouth. I find, in
fact, no vice so bad as this spurious virtue, no sinners so unsavory
as these mock saints.

To nations, also, this comprehensive law applies. Would you have
a noble and orderly freedom? Buy it, and it is yours. "Liberty or
death," cried eloquent Henry; and the speech is recited as bold and
peculiar; but, by an enduring ordinance of Nature, the people that
does not in its heart of hearts say, "Liberty or death," cannot have
liberty. Many of us had learned to fancy that the stern tenure by
which ancient communities held their civilization was now become an
obsolete fact, and that without peril or sacrifice we might forever
appropriate all that blesses nations; but by the iron throat of this
war Providence is thundering down upon us the unalterable law, that
man shall hold no ideal possession longer than he places all his lower
treasures at its command.

But there was a special form of cost, invited by the virtue of our
national existence; and it is this in particular that we are now
paying,--paying it, I am sorry to say, in the form of retribution
because the nation declined to meet it otherwise. But the peculiarity
of the case is, as has been affirmed, that it was chiefly the virtue
and nobility of the nation which created this debt at the outset.

And now what is the peculiar virtue and glory of this nation? Why,
that its national existence is based upon a recognition of the
absolute rights and duties of humanity. Theoretically this is our
basis; practically there is a commixture; much of this cosmopolitan
faith is mingled with much of confined self-regard. But the
theoretical fact is the one here in point: since the question now
is not of the national _un_faith or infidelity, but of the national
faith. And