It is a noteworthy fact, that the popular lecturer, though the devoted advocate of freedom to the slave, has rarely been regarded as either a trustworthy or an important man in the party which has represented his principles in this country. He has always been too free to be a partisan, too radical and intractable for a party seeking power or striving to preserve it. No party of any considerable magnitude has ever regarded him as its expositor. A thousand times have party-speakers and party-organs, professing principles identical with his own, washed their hands of all responsibility for his utterances. Even now, when the sound of falling shackles is in the air, and the smoke of the torment of the oppressor fills the sky, old partisans of freedom cannot quite forget their stupid and hackneyed animosities, but still bemoan the baleful influence of this fiery itinerant. Representative of none but himself, disowned or hated by all parties, acknowledging responsibility to God and his own conscience only, he has done his work, and done it well,—done it amid careful questionings and careless curses,—done it, and been royally paid for it, when speakers who fairly represented the political and religious prejudices of the people could not have called around them a baker's dozen, with tickets at half-price or at no price at all.
When the cloud which now envelops the country shall gather up its sulphurous folds and roll away, tinted in its retiring by the smile of God beaming from a calm sky upon a nation redeemed to freedom and justice, and the historian, in the light of that smile, shall trace home to their fountains the streams of influence and power which will then join to form the river of the national life, he will find one, starting far inland among the mountains, longer than the rest and mightier than most, and will recognize it as the confluent outpouring of living, Christian speech, from ten thousand lecture-platforms, on which free men stood and vindicated the right of man to freedom.
THE HOUR OF VICTORY.
Meridian moments! grandly given
To cheer the warrior's soul from heaven!
God's ancient boon, vouchsafed to those
Who battle long with Freedom's foes,—
Oh, what in life can claim the power
To match with that divinest hour?
I see the avenging angel wave
His banner o'er the embattled brave;
I hear above Hate's trumpet-blare
The shout that rends the smoking air,
And then I know at whose command
The victor sweeps the Rebel land!
Enduring Valor lifts his head
To count the flying and the dead;
Returning Virtue still maintains
The right to break unhallowed chains;
While sacred Justice, born of God,
Walks regnant o'er the bleeding sod.
THE CAUSES OF FOREIGN ENMITY TO THE UNITED STATES.
The hostility of foreign governments to the United States is due as much at least to dread of their growing power as dislike of their democracy; and accordingly the theory of the Secessionists as to the character of our Union has been as acceptable to the understandings of our foreign enemies as the acts of the Rebels against its government have been pleasing to their sympathies. They well know that a union of States whose government recognized the right of Secession would be as weak as an ordinary league between independent sovereignties; and as the rapid growth of the States in population, wealth, and power is certain, they naturally desire, that, if united, these States shall be an aggregation of forces, neutralizing each other, rather than a fusion of forces, which, for general purposes, would make them a giant nationality. Accordingly, centralized France reads to us edifying homilies on the advantages of disintegration; and England, rich with the spoils of suppressed insurrections, adjures us most plaintively to respect the sacred rights of rebellion. The simple explanation of this hypocrisy or irony is, that both France and England are anxious that the strength of the United States shall not correspond to their bulk. The looser the tie of union, the greater the number of confederacies into which the nation should split, the safer they would feel. The doctrine of the inherent and undivided sovereignty of the States will therefore find resolute champions abroad as long as it has the most inconsiderable faction to support it at home.