more rotten than that of Turkey, shall, if they will but observe a
hollow and uncertain neutrality (for who can trust the liar and the
oppressor?)--be allowed not only to keep their ill-gotten spoils, but
even now to play into the hands of our foe, by guarding his Polish
frontier for him, and keeping down the victims of his cruelty, under
pretence of keeping down those of their own.

It is true, the alternative is an awful one; one from which statesmen
and nations may well shrink: but it is a question, whether that
alternative may not be forced upon us sooner or later, whether we must
not from the first look it boldly in the face, as that which must be
some day, and for which we must prepare, not cowardly, and with cries
about God's wrath and judgments against us--which would be abject, were
they not expressed in such second-hand stock-phrases as to make one
altogether doubt their sincerity, but chivalrously, and with awful joy,
as a noble calling, an honour put upon us by the God of Nations, who
demands of us, as some small return for all His free bounties, that we
should be, in this great crisis, the champions of Freedom and of
Justice, which are the cause of God. At all events, we shall not escape
our duty by being afraid of it; we shall not escape our duty by
inventing to ourselves some other duty, and calling it "Order."
Elizabeth did so at first. She tried to keep the peace with Spain; she
shrank from injuring the cause of Order (then a nobler one than now,
because it was the cause of Loyalty, and not merely of Mammon) by
assisting the Scotch and the Netherlanders: but her duty was forced
upon her; and she did it at last, cheerfully, boldly, utterly, like a
hero; she put herself at the head of the battle for the freedom of the
world, and she conquered, for God was with her; and so that seemingly
most fearful of all England's perils, when the real meaning of it was
seen, and God's will in it obeyed manfully, became the foundation of