fied) rids the world, at one stroke, of this
degrading nuisance, the cause of war and ruin to nations. This measure
at once puts all parties right. This is borrowing, as I said, the
omnipotence of a principle. What is so foolish as the terror lest the
blacks should be made furious by freedom and wages? It is denying these
that is the outrage, and makes the danger from the blacks. But justice
satisfies everybody,--white man, red man, yellow man, and black man. All
like wages, and the appetite grows by feeding.

But this measure, to be effectual, must come speedily. The weapon is
slipping out of our hands. "Time," say the Indian Scriptures, "drinketh
up the essence of every great and noble action which ought to be
performed, and which is delayed in the execution."

I hope it is not a fatal objection to this policy that it is simple and
beneficent thoroughly, which is the attribute of a moral action. An
unprecedented material prosperity has not tended to make us Stoics or
Christians. But the laws by which the universe is organized reappear at
every point, and will rule it. The end of all political struggle is
to establish morality as the basis of all legislation. It is not free
institutions, 't is not a republic, 't is not a democracy, that is the
end,--no, but only the means. Morality is the object of government.
We want a state of things in which crime shall not pay. This is the
consolation on which we rest in the darkness of the future and the
afflictions of to-day, that the government of the world is moral, and
does forever destroy what is not.

It is the maxim of natural philosophers, that the natural forces wear
out in time all obstacles, and take place: and 't is the maxim of
history, that victory always falls at last where it ought to fall; or,
there is perpetual march and progress to ideas. But, in either case,
no link of the chain can drop out. Nature works through her appointed
elements; and ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good
and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.

* * * * *

Since the above pages were written, President Lincoln has proposed to
Congress that the Government shall cooeperate with any State that shall
enact a gradual abolishment of Slavery. In the recent series of national
successes, this Message is the best. It marks the happiest day in the
political year. The American Executive ranges itself for the first time
on the side of free