In this God's-world, with its wild-whirling eddies and mad
foam-oceans, where men and nations perish as if without law, and
judgment for an unjust thing is sternly delayed, dost thou think
that there is therefore no justice? It is what the fool hath
said in his heart. It is what the wise, in all times, were wise
because they denied, and knew forever not to be. I tell thee
again, there is nothing else but justice. One strong thing I
find here below: the just thing, the true thing. My friend, if
thou hadst all the artillery of Woolwich trundling at thy back in
support of an unjust thing; and infinite bonfires visibly
waiting ahead of thee, to blaze centuries long for thy victory on
behalf of it,--I would advise thee to call halt, to fling down
thy baton, and say, "In God's name, No!" Thy 'success?' Poor
devil, what will thy success amount to? If the thing is unjust,
thou hast not succeeded; no, not though bonfires blazed
from North to South, and bells rang, and editors wrote
leading-articles, and the just thing lay trampled out of sight,
to all mortal eyes an abolished and annihilated thing. Success?
In few years, thou wilt be dead and dark,--all cold, eyeless,
deaf; no blaze of bonfires, ding-dong of bells or leading-articles
visible or audible to thee again at all forever: What kind of
success is that!--

It is true all goes by approximation in this world; with any not
insupportable approximation we must be patient. There is a noble
Conservatism as well as an ignoble. Would to Heaven, for the
sake of Conservatism itself, the noble alone were left, and the
ignoble, by some kind severe hand, were ruthlessly lopped away,
forbidden ever more to skew itself! For it is the right and
noble alone that will have victory in this struggle; the rest is