This impulse ought, in my opinion, to have been given in this war; and
it ought to have been continued to it at every instant. It is made, if
ever war was made, to touch all the great springs of action in the human
breast. It ought not to have been a war of apology. The minister had, in
this conflict, wherewithal to glory in success, to be consoled in
adversity, to hold high his principle in all fortunes. If it were not
given him to support the falling edifice, he ought to bury himself under
the ruins of the civilized world. All the art of Greece and all the
pride and power of Eastern monarchs never heaped upon their ashes so
grand a monument.
There were days when his great mind was up to the crisis of the world he
is called to act in.[29] His manly eloquence was equal to the elevated
wisdom of such sentiments. But the little have triumphed over the great:
an unnatural, (as it should seem,) not an unusual victory. I am sure you
cannot forget with how much uneasiness we heard, in conversation, the
language of more than one gentleman at the opening of this
contest,--"that he was willing to try the war for a year or two, and, if
it did not succeed, then to vote for peace." As if war was a matter of
experiment! As if you could take it up or lay it down as an idle frolic!
As if the dire goddess that presides over it, with her murderous spear
in her hand and her Gorgon at her breast, was a coquette to be flirted
with! We ought with reverence to approach that tremendous divinity, that
loves courage, but commands counsel.
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