prospect, laugh at instructions; representatives think they have made a good bargain when they exchange the barren approval of constituencies for the smile of one whom a lucky death, perhaps, has converted into the Presidential Midas of the moment; and in a nation of adventurers, success is too easily allowed to sanctify a speculation by which a man sells his pitiful self for a better price than even a Jew could get for the Saviour of the world. It cannot he too often repeated, that the only responsibility which is of saving efficacy in a Democracy is that of every individual man in it to his conscience and his God. As long as any one of us holds the ballot in his hand, he is truly, what we sometimes vaguely boast, a sovereign, — a constituent part of Destiny; the infinite Future is his vassal; history holds her iron stylus as his scribe; Lachesis awaits his word to close or to suspend her fatal shears; — but the moment his vote is cast, he becomes the serf of circumstance, at the mercy of the white-livered representative’s cowardice, or the venal one’s itching palm. Our only safety, then, is in the aggregate fidelity to personal rectitude, which may lessen the chances of representative dishonesty, or, at the worst, constitute a public opinion that shall make the whole country a penitentiary for such treason, and turn the price of public honor to fairy-money, whose withered leaves but mock the possessor with the futile memory of self-degradation. Let every man remember, that, though he may be a nothing in himself, yet every cipher gains the power of multiplying by ten when it is placed on the right side of whatever unit for the time represents the cause of truth and justice. What we need is a thorough awakening of the individual conscience; and if we once become aware how the still and stealthy ashes of political apathy and moral insensibility are slipping under our feet and hurrying us with them toward the craters irrevocable core, it may be that the effort of self-preservation called forth by the danger will make us love the daring energy and the dependence on our individual strength, that alone can keep us free and worthy to be freemen.
While we hold the moral aspect of the great question now before the country to be cardinal, there are also some practical ones which the Republican party ought never to lose sight of. To move a people among whom the Anglo-Saxon element is predominant, we will not say, with Lord Bacon, that we must convince their pockets, but we do believe that moral must always go hand in hand with common sense. They will take up arms for a principle, but they must have confidence in each other and in their leaders. Conscience is a good tutor to tell a man on which side to act, but she leaves the question of How to act to every man’s prudence and judgment. An over-nice conscience has before now turned the stomach of a great cause on the eve of action. Cromwell knew when to split hairs and when skulls. The North has too gene rally allowed its strength to be divided by personal preferences and by-questions, till it has almost seemed as if a moral principle had less constringent force to hold its followers together than the gravitation of private interest, the Newtonian law of that system whereof the dollar is the central sun, which has hitherto made the owners of slaves unitary, and given them the power which springs from concentration and the success which is sure to follow concert of action. We have spent our strength in quarrelling about the character of men, when we should have been watchful only of the character of measures. A scruple of conscience has no right to outweigh a pound of duty, though it ought to make a ton of private interest kick the beam. The great aim of the Republican party should be to gain one victory for the Free States. One victory will make us a unit, and is equal to a reinforcement of fifty thousand men. The genius of success in politics or war is to know Opportunity at first sight. There is no mistress so easily tired as Fortune. We must waste no more time in investigating the motives of
