32 advancement, and which builds up military despotisms. It establishes the God-abhorred principle that “might makes right,” and returns man to barbarism. In no war is this tendency so favored as in civil war. It has been well said, that there is no quarrel like that of brothers. Burke has said, “ War suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated. Civil wars strike deepest of all into the manners of a people. They vitiate their politics ; they corrupt their morals ; they pervert even the natural taste of equity and justice. By teaching us to consider our fellow beings in a hostile light, the whole body of our nation becomes less dear to us. The very names of affection and kindred, which were the bond of charity whilst we agreed, become new incentives to hatred and rage," when the communion of our country is dissolved.” These truths as to the nature and tendency of all war, and especially of that in which our nation is involved, should be kept before the minds of our people, in these times, when we are all so ready to forget them and to foster in our own minds and the minds of others, the spirit of war, by indiscriminate acclamation of joy, based upon no recognized relation of warlike achievements to the promotion of truth. We are not the unthinking subjects of a despotic dynasty, or blind adherents to the fortunes of a noble family, that we should “strain our throats” at the bare sight of a particular flag floating over a conquered field. When we shout if, should be the shout of rulers, of those wrho make laws and value them. When we feel the voice of exultation rising in our throats, it becomes us as those whose shoulders bear a government, whose impulses and thoughts mould national character and law,
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