and there an unselfish, far-seeing, patriotic man, whose admonitions were
not heeded by the people ranging on opposing sides of party lines. The two
most potential of the party leaders were Mr. Davis and Mr. Seward. The
South might have seen and known that the one hope of the institution of
slavery lay in the Union. However it ended, disunion led to abolition. The
world--the whole trend of modern thought--was set against slavery. But
politics, based on party feeling, is a game of blindman's buff. And
then--here I show myself a son of Scotland--there is a destiny. "What is to
be," says the predestinarian Mother Goose, "will be, though it never come
to pass."

That was surely the logic of the irrepressible conflict--only it did come
to pass--and for four years millions of people, the most homogeneous,
practical and intelligent, fought to a finish a fight over a quiddity; both
devoted to liberty, order and law, neither seeking any real change in the
character of its organic contract.

Human nature remains ever the same. These days are very like those days. We
have had fifty years of a restored Union. The sectional fires have quite
gone out. Yet behold the schemes of revolution claiming the regenerative.
Most of them call themselves the "uplift!"

Let us agree at once that all government is more or less a failure; society
as fraudulent as the satirists describe it; yet, when we turn to the
uplift--particularly the professional uplift--what do we find but the same
old tunes, hypocrisy and empiricism posing as "friends of the people,"
preaching the pussy gospel of "sweetness and light?"

"Words, words, words," says Hamlet. Even as veteran writers for the press
have come through disheartening experience to a realizing sense of the