to strike vigorously and strike home, knowing that on his resolution will depend the restoration and defence of liberty.  But he will always remember that restraint is the great attribute that separates man from beast, that retaliation is the vicious resource of the tyrant and the slave; that magnanimity is the splendour of manhood; and he will remember that he strikes not at his enemy’s life, but at his misdeed, that in destroying the misdeed, he makes not only for his own freedom, but even for his enemy’s regeneration.  This may be for most of us perhaps too great a dream.  But for him who reads into the heart of the question and for the true shaping of his course it will stand; he will never forget, even in the thickest fight, that the enemy of to-day and yesterday may be the genuine comrade of to-morrow.

V

If it is imperative that we should fix unalterably our guiding principles before we are plunged unprepared into the fight, it is even more urgent we should clear the mind to the truth now, for we have fallen into the dangerous habit of deferring important questions on the plea that the time is not ripe.  In a word, we lack moral strength; and so, that virtue that is to safeguard us in time of war is the great virtue that will redeem us in time of servility.  It need not be further laboured that in a state enslaved every mean thing flourishes.  The admission of it makes clear that in such a state it is more important that every evil be resisted.  In a normal condition of liberty many temporary evils may arise; yet they are not dangerous—­in the glow of a people’s freedom they waste and die as disease dies in the sunlight.  But where independence is suppressed and a people degenerate, a little evil is in an atmosphere to grow, and it grows and expands; and evils multiply and destroy.  That is why men of high spirit working to regenerate a fallen people must be more insistent to watch every little defect and weak tendency that in a braver time would leave the soul unruffled.  That is why every difficulty, once it becomes evident, is ripe for settlement.  To evade the issue is to invite disaster.  Resolution alone will save us in our many dangers.  But a plea for policy will be raised to evade a particular and urgent question:  “People won’t unite on it”; that’s one cry.  “Ignorant people will be led astray”; that’s another cry.  There is always some excuse ready for evasion.  The difficulty is, that every party likes some part of the truth; no party likes it all; but we must have it all, every line of it.  We want no popular editions and no philosophic selections—­the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  This must be the rule for everything concerning which a man has a public duty and ought to have a public opinion.  There is a dangerous tendency gaining ground of slurring over vital things because the settlement of them involves great difficulty, and may involve