iately to great principles, to liberty,
justice, and manhood, as things apart from material gain or loss, and in
our consciousness truly spiritual; and such a cause, preeminently, was
the war for the Union, heavy as it was with the fate of mankind under
democracy. In such crises, which seldom arise, material good is
subordinated for the time being, and life and property, our great
permanent interests, are held cheap in the balance with that which is
their great charter of value, as we conceive our country.

Yet even here material interests are not far distant. Such issues are
commonly found to be involved with material interests in conflict, or
are alloyed with them in the working out; and these interests are a
constituent, though, it may be, not the controlling matter. It is
commonly felt, indeed, that some warrant of material necessity is
required in any great political act, for politics, as has been said, is
an affair of life, not of free ideas; and without such a plain
authorization reform is regarded as an invasion of personal liberty of
thought, expression, or action, which is the breeding-place of
progressive life and therefore carefully guarded from intrusion. In
proportion as the material interests are less clearly affected
injuriously, a cause is removed into the region of moral suasion, and
loses political vigour. Religious issues constitute the extreme of
political action without regard to material interests, wars of
conversion being their ultimate, and they are more potent with less
developed races. For this reason the humanitarian and moral sphere of
fraternity lies generally outside of politics, in social institutions
and habits, which political action may sometimes favour as in public
charities, but which usually rely on other resources for their support.
On occasions of crisis, however, a great idea may marshal the whole
community in its cause; and, more and more, the cause so championed
under democracy is the spiritual right of man.

But fraternity finds, perhaps, its great seal of sovereignty in that
principle of persuasion which has been spoken of already, and in that
substitution of it for force, in the conduct of human affairs, which
democracy has made, as truly as it has replaced tyranny with the
authority of a delegated and representative liberty. Persuasion, in its
moral form, outside of politics,--which is so largely resorted to in a
community that does not naturally regard the imposition of v