gradual but certain rise to superior power on the part

of the free States, and others like these-behind all, I

say,

is the great plea which absorbs all, the Right of Revolution. The revolting States claim that they are contending for their independence, and draw a parallel between their own struggle and that of the fathers of the Revolution. Never was there a more unfounded claim, or a more fallacious inference. The fathers were struggling against a despotism, hateful to all sense of justice and destructive of all principles of liberty. They were rebels against an oppressive and tyrannical government, which allowed them no share in its administration. But the rebels of our day are striving to perpetuate a despotism, as hateful as any that the world has seen. They have taken arms against a mild, beneficent, forbearing government, whose gift of freedom and whose offer of participation in the direction of affairs, they reject with scorn.

What is the Right of Revolution? It is the last resort-the ultima ratio-of an oppressed people, when all other means have failed, to secure the possession of rights and liberties which are endangered, or to regain them when they have been lost. I firmly believe in that right. It is the salvation of the people from the encroachments of a rapacious, unscrupulous and cruel despotism. When the popular voice is hushed; when popular representation is refused; when popular liberty is trampled under foot-then the people have the right to turn against the oppressor, and to achieve their independence, if possible, by the weapons which God and nature have put into their hands. The progress of civilization tends to induce obedience to unjust laws, while there is a hopeful prospect of their repeal. But

when that prospect is hopeless, civilization demands revolution, for the sake of justice itself. While men submit to a particular oppressive enactment, they assail with all disposable force, the system from which it proceeds. Thus, as intelligence widens, and the ideas of popular justice and popular liberty become better understood, local outbreaks become less frequent, while, as the ultimate, revolutions become more powerful and more wide. The victories of peace are achieved by the revolutions of opinion. When war can no longer be avoided, the victories of freedom are achieved by revolutions of force. "There can be no doubt," says Henry Thomas Buckle, speaking on this point with equal wisdom and vigor, "There can be no doubt, that this change is beneficial; partly because it is always good to rise from effects to causes, and partly because revolutions being less frequent than insurrections, the peace of society would be more rarely disturbed, if men confined themselves to the larger remedy. At the same time, insurrections are generally wrong; revolutions are always right. An insurrection is too often the mad and passionate effort of ignorant persons, who are impatient under some immediate injury, and never stop to investigate its remote and general causes. But a revolution, when it is the work of the nation itself, is a splendid and imposing spectacle, because to the moral quality of indignation produced by the presence of evil, it adds the intellectual qualities of foresight and combination; and, uniting in the same act some of the highest properties of our nature, it achieves a double purpose, not only punishing the oppressor, but relieving the oppressed." It is true, that there is such a thing as a destroying revolution as well as a preserving revolu

tion. The latter is indeed a magnificent exhibition of the will and power of a people. The former is a spectacle which has no element of sublimity other than the terror which it excites. A people, rising against the prescriptions of a long-existing despotism, and successfully disputing the assumed prerogatives of ancient tyranny and wrong, commands the admiration of all men. A people, in the interest of injustice, attempting to assert the rights of oppression against the progress of ideas and the welfare of the human race, commands their detestation. A people, deluded by false ideas of independence, voluntarily committing suicide, by resisting the requirements of justice and rejecting the offers of freedom, commands their pity.

The Right of Revolution, which the fathers of the Republic asserted, was evolved from the first of these movements. A revolution, such as was that which resulted in our national independence, was "a splendid and imposing spectacle." The nations of the world looked upon its progress with amazement, and its event with undisguised approbation. It was the vindication of the power of ideas over the mere force of armies and fleets. It was the united action of a people, few in number indeed, and scattered over a wide territory, but strong in the might of a noble purpose, and utterly invincible in the faith of great principles. On the fields of the war of the Revolution, the power of a people for self-government armed itself against the power of kings. Democracy contended with monarchy for the possession of the Western Continent. So far as events are concerned, the history of the Revolutionary war has no remarkable characteristics. The armies were few in number. The battles were scarcely more

than skirmishes. The sieges were but little more than obstinate blockades. The campaigns were not much greater than marches and counter-marches-alternate advance and retreat. New England was saved by a few companies of militia, acting almost independently of each other, even in battle, and then melting away. New York was preserved by the accidental discovery of a shallow conspiracy. The Middle States were freed by a few nocturnal adventures. The South was delivered by partizan warfare of the most irregular kind. The most interesting operations of the war were at Bunker Hill, at the beginning, and at Yorktown, at the close-paralleled, it may be, in our time, by Bull Run and Richmond. The rest were the different acts of a drama, whose closing scene was the freedom of a continent. That, in brief, is the story of the Revolutionary The soldiers were undisciplined and the officers unpracticed. Compared with the gigantic movements of European armies, and the training of the regular soldiers of the old world; compared with the immense array and the sanguinary battles of the present contest, the war in which our ancestors were engaged was an insignificant affair. But there is a force behind fleets and armies and above the clouds of battle-an invisible, sometimes incomprehensible, almost always invincible, force-the concentrated, earnest energy of a people who are willing to dare and to endure all things for their liberty. The three millions, flinging their patience into the scale, fairly outweighed the thirty mil lions with their brute strength. What gives that war of our fathers such interest for ourselves and such value in the progress of civilization, is its character as a struggle for great principles and ideas. For the realization

war.

of such ideas, and the application of those principles to national life, as they were expressed in the Declaration of Independence and afterwards consolidated in the Constitution which made the United States a power in the world, the right of revolution was affirmed—was maintained—was established. It was the right of revolution against the power of tyranny. It was an enterprise undertaken with earnestness, yet with sorrow; for England was the mother country still. When all other means and measures failed to secure the freedom of the people, the sword was taken, and was taken not in vain. The contest ended, as all such contests must end, in the complete triumph of civilization, humanity and justice.

But what security was there against the repetition of those scenes? The fathers affirmed the right of revolution. In the throes of the contest the nation was born. What should prevent, in future years, the birth of other nations? How should all the various parts be held together, so that, to the end of time, a people, living in the practice of Democratic theories and successfully governing themselves, should dwell beneath one flag-shielded beneath one broad ægis? The fathers could not ensure the nation against treason. But they did ensure it against revolution. Whatever could be done to preserve the Republic, by placing around it the safeguards of popular protection, they did. They removed the dangers of revolution by removing all occasion for it. They left to the people the power and the opportunity of governing themselves. What was wrong in the government could be rectified by the people, because in the people the government itself resided. The source of all power was in the people.