hat if it seek allies? what if it be based on interests
which may be given it by the majority? what if it appeal to the passions
of the North, as the slavery party appeals to those of the South? I do
not see, in truth, why this should astonish us. I am far from believing
that all the acts of abolitionism are worthy of approbation; I say only
that it would be puerile to repudiate a great party for the sole reason
that it has the bearing of a party. The duty of citizens in a free
country is to choose between parties, and to unite with that whose cause
is just and holy. Let them protest against wrong measures, let them
refuse to participate in them--nothing can be better; but to withdraw
into a sort of political Thebais because the noblest parties have stains
on their banner, is, in truth, to turn their back on the civil
obligations of real life.

The abolition party is a noble one. Several of its champions have given
their lives to propagate their faith. But lately, indeed, the Texan
journals took pains to tell us that a number of them had just been hung
in that State; and, without even speaking of these noble victims, whose
death completes the dishonor of the Southern cause, are there any bolder
deeds in the history of mankind than those of the citizens of New
England who, to wrest Kansas from slavery, went thither to build their
cabins, thus braving a fearful struggle, not only with the slaveholders,
but with the President, his illegal measures, and the troops charged
with maintaining them?

We must fight to conquer. This seems little understood by those who
reproach abolitionism with having been a party militant; to hear them,
the true way of bringing about the abolition of slavery was to let it
alone: to attack was to exasperate it.

This argument is so unfortunate as to be employed in all bad causes. I
remember that when measures were taken against the slave trade, we were
told that the sufferings of the slaves would be thus increased, and that
the slavers would be _exasperated_. Later, when we held up to the
indignation of the whole world the Protestant intolerance of Sweden, we
were assured that these public denunciations would put back the question
instead of accelerating it. We persevered, and we did rightly. Sweden
is advancing, though at too slow a pace, towards religious liberty. It
would be difficult to cite any social iniquities that have reformed of
themselves; and, since the existence of the world, the m