ver yet
attained, because they had no press, and no universal comparison of
notes; and consider, in the meanwhile, whether so cheerful, and
intelligent, and just a state, seeing fair play between body and mind,
and educated into habits of activity, would be likely to uneducate
itself into what was neither respected nor customary. Prove, in the
meanwhile, that nations are cowardly and effeminate, that have been long
unaccustomed to war; that the South Americans are so; or that all our
robust countrymen, who do not "go for soldiers," are timid
agriculturists and manufacturers, with not a quoit to throw on the
green, or a saucy word to give to an insult. Moral courage is in
self-respect and the sense of duty; physical courage is a matter of
health or organization. Are these predispositions likely to fail in a
community of instructed freemen? Doubters of advancement are always
arguing from a limited past to an unlimited future; that is to say, from
a past of which they know but a point, to a future of which they know
nothing. They stand on the bridge "between two eternities," seeing a
little bit of it behind them, and nothing at all of what is before; and
uttering those words unfit for mortal tongue, "man ever was" and "man
ever will be." They might as well say what is beyond the stars. It
appears to be a part of the necessity of things, from what we see of the
improvements they make, that all human improvement should proceed by the
co-operation of human means. But what blinker into the night of next
week,--what luckless prophet of the impossibilities of steam-boats and
steam-carriages,--shall presume to say how far those improvements are to
extend? Let no man faint in the co-operation with which God has honoured
him.

As to those superabundances of population which wars and other evils are
supposed to be necessary in order to keep down, there are questions
which have a right to be put, long before any such necessity is assumed:
and till those questions be answered, and the experiments dependent upon
them tried, the interrogators have a right to assume that no such
necessity exists. I do not enter upon them--for I am not bound to do so;
but I have touched upon them in the poem; and the "too rich," and other
disingenuous half-reasoners, know well what they are. All passionate
remedies for evil are themselves evil, and tend to re-produce what they
remedy. It is high time for the world to show that it has come to man's
estate