ering to its
fall,--to what is all due? Simply to the fact that no nation can long
unsay its central principle, and yet preserve it in faithfulness and
power,--that no nation can long preach the sanctity of natural right,
the venerableness of man's nature, and the identity of pure justice
with political interest, from an auction-block on which men and
maidens are sold,--that, in fine, a nation cannot continue long with
impunity to play within its own borders the part both of Gessler and
Tell, both of Washington and Benedict Arnold, both of Christ and of
him that betrayed him.

We must choose. For our national faith we must make honest payment,
so conserving it, and with it all for which nations may hope; or else,
refusing to meet these costs, we must suffer the nation's soul to
perish, and in the imbecility, the chaos, and shame that will follow,
suffer therewith all that nations may lawfully fear.

What good omens, then, attend our time, now when the first officer of
the land has put the trumpet to his mouth and blown round the world an
intimation that, to the extent of the nation's power, these costs will
begin to be paid, this true conservation to be practised! The work
is not yet done; and the late elections betoken too much of moral
debility in the people. But my trust continues firm. The work will be
done,--at least, so far as we are responsible for its doing. And then!
Then our shame, our misery, our deadly sickness will be taken away;
no more that poison in our politics; no more that degradation in our
commercial relations; no more that careful toning down of sentiment
to low levels, that it may harmonize with low conditions; no more that
need to shun the company of all healthful and heroic thoughts, such
as are fit, indeed, to brace the sinews of a sincere social order, but
sure to crack the sinews of a feeble and faithless conventionalism.
Base men there will yet be, and therefore base politics; but when once
our nation has paid the debt it owes to itself and the human race,
when once it has got out of its blood the venom of this great
injustice, it will, it must, arise beautiful in its young strength,
noble in its new-consecrated faith, and stride away with a generous
and achieving pace upon the great highways of historical progress.
Other costs will come, if we are worthy; other lessons there will be
to learn. I anticipate a place for brave and wise restrictions,--for
I am no Red Republican,--as well as fo