Is there any one, capable of a moral
judgment or feeling, who will say that his opinion of America and
American statesmen, is not raised by such an act, done on such
grounds? The act itself may have been imposed by the necessity of the
circumstances; but the reasons given, the principles of action
professed, were their own choice. Putting the worst hypothesis
possible, which it would be the height of injustice to entertain
seriously, that the concession was really made solely to convenience,
and that the profession of regard for justice was hypocrisy, even so,
the ground taken, even if insincerely, is the most hopeful sign of the
moral state of the American mind which has appeared for many years.
That a sense of justice should be the motive which the rulers of a
country rely on, to reconcile the public to an unpopular, and what
might seem a humiliating act; that the journalists, the orators, many
lawyers, the Lower House of Congress, and Mr. Lincoln's own naval
secretary, should be told in the face of the world, by their own
Government, that they have been giving public thanks, presents of
swords, freedom of cities, all manner of heroic honors to the author
of an act which, though not so intended, was lawless and wrong, and
for which the proper remedy is confession and atonement; that this
should be the accepted policy (supposing it to be nothing higher) of a
Democratic Republic, shows even unlimited democracy to be a better
thing than many Englishmen have lately been in the habit of
considering it, and goes some way towards proving that the aberrations
even of a ruling multitude are only fatal when the better instructed
have not the virtue or the courage to front them boldly.
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