178 INTRODUCTION
with him a bereavement for which he can give no consola- tion to himself.
You wished to know something of Stanley's views con- cerning the war. I can only say they were more sensible than romantic, and needed perhaps but five years of experi- ence to have saved his life. I will not enlarge on these till I see you, but simply say that he defended the right of Revolution, as of the South against the North, and also the right of saving the Union, as of the North against the South. To my doubts of the result, he replied that he be- lieved in mathematics, and that, after the loss of a whole generation of men, the North would subdue the South. Unhappily, he noticed not that the unknown quantities in the calculation were out of proportion to the known, and that there was no algebra applicable to them. At first he defended slavery on the ground that every nation should adopt the system most favorable to its own agri- culture. But, upon my applying the idea to his uncle's farm at Wilton, and remarking that it would doubtless thrive better if he himself were impressed to work on it, he did not insist on the notion.
His views, therefore, in enlisting, were purely patriotic, not the most comprehensive among human motives, but certainly the most admired and necessarily unselfish. As he was too much given to argumentation, and had a very inquisitive mind, I do not doubt that he said many things with a purpose of posing me ; but he was very ready to admit any new idea that seemed to him true. When I enlarged on the dangers of a great national debt in a country which had only universal suffrage to back the obligation, and on the impossibility of fixing the legal tender of paper at the par value of gold, oft tried in the past, he did not see the force of the suggestion, expressing his conviction of the
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