43 South. I have always done justice to the sentiments of the Southerners, persuaded that, had I been placed in the same circumstances, I should have acted and thought the same. At the time of the second election of Mr. Lincoln, in fine, I did not believe that, in order energetically to sustain his election, it was necessary not to render justice to the services and character of McClellan. Well ! it is this moderate man that says to you, If you do not make an immediate decision on the- question of negro suffrage, if you do not now end the negro question, you will one day bewail this lost opportunity with tears of blood ; you will bewail, but you will never regain it. THE DUTY OF FINISHING WHAT HAS BEEN BEGUN. XII. Opportunities are great things in politics. You know it better than any one—you Americans, who remember that slavery might easily have been abolished among you in the last century, and who have just seen at the price of what convulsions it has been necessary to compensate in this century for that mistake committed by your glorious ancestors— the loss of an opportunity. I cannot believe, Mr. President, that this mistake will be repeated by their descendants. To-day it would be inexcusable ; to-day the political mistake would be complicated almost with a moral error. And, to confine myself to the political mistake, who is ignorant that the first principle of good policy in public affairs is to finish questions. Every finished question procures peace ; every unfinished question brings forth war. The reason of this is simple. When a question is finished, it is necessary to be resigned to necessity, and we resign ourselves before an accomplished fact. When a question is unfinished, the adversaries of the good cause are wounded and not killed ; they are exasperated and not subjected ; they
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=