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the great parties of civilization--the conservatives and the radicals. It is, therefore, preeminently a just war, because waged in the combined interests of liberty and order. But, it is objected, you, in effect, deny the right of revolution. No; on the contrary, we establish it. For the right of revolution is no right for any people unless they have wrongs. The right of revolution is not an absolute, it is a relative right. Like all such rights, it has its limitations--the limitation of the public law and the public conscience. For neither the public law nor the public conscience sanctions revolution for the sole sake of revolution. That brave old revolutionist of early Rome, Brutus, understood this well, and though his country was groaning under the oppression of Tarquin, he sighed for 'a cause.' There must be a cause for revolution, and such a cause as will commend itself to men's consciences, as well as to the just principles of law and equity. Some men seem to think that revolution is, of itself, a blessed thing. They love change in government for the sake of change. When Julius Caesar invaded Gaul he found just such men, and he characterized them, in his terse military way, as those who 'studied new things,' that is, desired constantly a renewal of public affairs, or renovation of government. He found these men, moreover, his most ready tools, even in his designs against their country's liberties; and it would seem as though this revolutionary characteristic of the early inhabitants of Gaul had remained impressed upon their descendants ever since. We repeat that the right of revolution is a limited right. An absolute and unlimited right of revolution would only be the other extreme of an absolute and unlimited government; and this is not the age of absolutism in matters of government. Just as absolute liberty is an impracticable thing, in the present constitution of human beings, so the absolute right of revolution, which derives its highest title from the sacred right of liberty, is equally impracticable. We must be careful how we use these words liberty and revolution. Words are things in a time of earnest work like the present. The war is settling the old scholastic dispute for us, and is making us all realists. Liberty and loyalty and law are no longer brave words merely: they are things, and things of tremendous power; and some men slink away from them. But we need to remember that liberty does not mean
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