the result is the same,--society is instructed, or may be.

Such are the limitations of the common mind, and so thoroughly
engrossing are the cares of common life, that only the few among
men can discern through the glitter and dazzle of present prosperity
the dark outlines of approaching disasters, even though they may have
come up to our very gates, and are already within striking distance.
The yawning seam and corroded bolt conceal their defects from the mariner
until the storm calls all hands to the pumps. Prophets, indeed,
were abundant before the war; but who cares for prophets while
their predictions remain unfulfilled, and the calamities of which
they tell are masked behind a blinding blaze of national prosperity?

It is asked, said Henry Clay, on a memorable occasion,
Will slavery never come to an end? That question, said he,
was asked fifty years ago, and it has been answered by fifty years
of unprecedented prosperity. Spite of the eloquence of the earnest
Abolitionists,--poured out against slavery during thirty years,--
even they must confess, that, in all the probabilities of the case,
that system of barbarism would have continued its horrors far beyond
the limits of the nineteenth century but for the Rebellion,
and perhaps only have disappeared at last in a fiery conflict,
even more fierce and bloody than that which has now been suppressed.

It is no disparagement to truth, that it can only prevail
where reason prevails. War begins where reason ends.
The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.
What that thing is, we have been taught to our cost. It remains now
to be seen whether we have the needed courage to have that cause
entirely removed from the Republic. At any rate, to this grand work