and history of sacred law-givers, of prophets and apostles, of saints,
evangelists, and martyrs. In vain you may seek for the pure and simple
light of universal truth in the Augustan ages of antiquity. In the Bible
only, is the poet's wish fulfilled,--
"And like the sun be all one boundless eye."
T. S. Grimke.


V.

WHAT WE OWE TO THE SWORD.

To the question, "What have the People ever gained but by Revolution?" I
answer, boldly, If by revolution be understood the law of the sword,
Liberty has lost far more than she ever gained by it. The sword was the
destroyer of the Lycian Confederacy and the Achaan League. The sword
alternately enslaved and disenthralled Thebes and Athens, Sparta, Syracuse,
and Corinth. The sword of Rome conquered every other free State, and
finished the murder of Liberty in the ancient world, by destroying herself.
What but the sword, in modern times, annihilated the Republics of Italy,
the Hanseatic Towns, and the primitive independence of Ireland, Wales, and
Scotland? What but the sword partitioned Poland, assassinated the rising
liberty of Spain, banished the Huguenots from France, and made Cromwell the
master, not the servant, of the People? And what but the sword of
Republican France destroyed the independence of half of Europe, deluged the
continent with tears, devoured its millions upon millions, and closed the
long catalogue of guilt, by founding and defending to the last, the most
powerful, selfish, and insatiable of military despotisms?

The sword, indeed, delivered Greece from the Persian invader, expelled the