While we hold the moral aspect of the great question now before the country to be cardinal, there are also some practical ones which the Republican party ought never to lose sight of.  To move a people among whom the Anglo-Saxon element is predominant, we will not say, with Lord Bacon, that we must convince their pockets, but we do believe that moral must always go hand in hand with common sense.  They will take up arms for a principle, but they must have confidence in each other and in their leaders.  Conscience is a good tutor to tell a man on which side to act, but she leaves the question of How to act to every man’s prudence and judgment.  An over-nice conscience has before now turned the stomach of a great cause on the eve of action.  Cromwell knew when to split hairs and when skulls.  The North has too generally allowed its strength to be divided by personal preferences and by-questions, till it has almost seemed as if a moral principle had less constringent force to hold its followers together than the gravitation of private interest, the Newtonian law of that system whereof the dollar is the central sun, which has hitherto made the owners of slaves unitary, and given them the power which springs from concentration and the success which is sure to follow concert of action.  We have spent our strength in quarrelling about the character of men, when we should have been watchful only of the character of measures.  A scruple of conscience has no right to outweigh a pound of duty, though it ought to make a ton of private interest kick the beam.  The great aim of the Republican party should be to gain one victory for the Free States.  One victory will make us a unit, and is equal to a reinforcement of fifty thousand men.  The genius of success in politics or war is to know Opportunity at first sight.  There is no mistress so easily tired as Fortune.  We must waste no more time in investigating the motives of our recruits.  Have we not faith enough in our cause to believe that it will lift all to its own level of patriotism and devotion?  Let us, then, welcome all allies, from whatever quarter, and not inquire into their past history as minutely as if we were the assignees of the Recording Angel and could search his books at pleasure.  When Soult was operating in the South of France, the defection of two German regiments crippled all his combinations and gave the advantage to Wellington.  Ought Wellington to have refused their aid?  For our own part, if Mr. Douglas be the best tactician, the best master of political combination, we are willing to forget all past differences and serve under him cheerfully, rather than lose the battle under a general who has agreed with us all his life.  When we remember, that, of the two great cathedrals of Europe, one is dedicated to Saint Peter who denied his Lord under temptation, and the other to Saint Paul who spent his early manhood in persecuting true believers, and that both these patrons of the Church, differing as they did in many points of doctrine, were united in martyrdom for their belief, we cannot but think that there is room even for repentant renegades in the camp of the faithful.