to
a separate national existence. With all these petty nations on this
continent, there must be standing armies, leagues, and complications, as
in Europe. Diplomacy, with its intrigues, and wars to maintain the
'balance of power,' will make up the great body of national history and
absorb those energies which should be employed in advancing the means of
human well-being.

But we will not speculate upon probabilities so remote. We will presume
the success of rebellion, and one nation south, another north. The evil
would still be very great. There must be armed thousands maintained by
the two Governments to be ready for war at any moment. Two such nations,
even if both were free, and still less with slavery in one of them,
could not exist by the side of each other without frequent broils and
collisions. Standing armies exhaust the resources of nations and retard
the progress of civilization by a double result. They withdraw
able-bodied men from the productive energies of the country, and are at
the same time a tax upon the industrial forces which remain. The
enormous daily expense of the present war must give us some idea of the
cost of maintaining a standing army of two or three hundred thousand men
even in times of peace. This has done a great deal to retard the
progress of Europe; and that we, as a nation, have heretofore been free
from this encumbrance, is doubtless one of the reasons why we have made
such rapid strides in so much that makes a nation great and happy. But
standing armies imply war, and the international wars of Europe have
done much to exhaust her resources and paralyze her prosperity. Guizot
says--and we may see it in history for ourselves--that 'for nearly three
centuries, foreign relations form the most important part of history.'
Foreign relations, wars, treaties, alliances, alone occupy the attention
and fill the page of history. Sad result of the political divisions of a
continent! Unhappy fruits of maintaining the balance of power among
neighboring nations! Let this continent be warned! And now is the
crisis when this warning needs most to be heeded. And even if this
critical juncture should be safely passed, we have need to guard against
others, and these truths should be universally recognized as elements of
our national preservation. We may profit by the shipwreck of others, to
avoid the rock on which they split. There are causes clearly discernible
in the history of Europe, for the divisions