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