of him who would import Nature’s goods and pay no duties?  For Nature has her own system of impost, and permits no smuggling.  There was a tax on truth ere there was one on tea or on silver plate.  Character, genius, high parts in history are all assessed upon.  Nature lets out her houses and lands on liberal terms; but resorts to distraint, if her dues be not forthcoming.  Be sure, therefore, that little success and little honor will wait upon any would-be thieving from God.  He who attempts to purloin on this high scale has set all the wit of the universe at work to thwart him, and will certainly be worsted sorely in the end.

The moment, therefore, that any man is found engaged in this business, how to estimate him is clear.  Daniel O’Connell tried the experiment of being an heroic patriot and making money by it.  It is conceded by his friends that he applied to his private uses, to sustaining the magnificence of his household, the rent-moneys sweated from the foreheads of Irish peasants.  But, they say, he had sacrificed many ambitions in taking up the role of a patriot; and he felt entitled to revenues as liberal as any indulgence of them could have procured him!  The apology puts his case beyond all apology.  He who—­to employ the old phraseology—­seeks to exact the same bribe of God that he might have obtained from the Devil is always the Devil’s servant, no matter whose livery he wears.  Had one often to apply the good word patriot to such men, it would soon blister his mouth.  I find, in fact, no vice so bad as this spurious virtue, no sinners so unsavory as these mock saints.

To nations, also, this comprehensive law applies.  Would you have a noble and orderly freedom?  Buy it, and it is yours.  “Liberty or death,” cried eloquent Henry; and the speech is recited as bold and peculiar; but, by an enduring ordinance of Nature, the people that does not in its heart of hearts say, “Liberty or death,” cannot have liberty.  Many of us had learned to fancy that the stern tenure by which ancient communities held their civilization was now become an obsolete fact, and that without peril or sacrifice we might forever appropriate all that blesses nations; but by the iron throat of this war Providence is thundering down upon us the unalterable law, that man shall hold no ideal possession longer than he places all his lower treasures at its command.

But there was a special form of cost, invited by the virtue of our national existence; and it is this in particular that we are now paying,—­paying it, I am sorry to say, in the form of retribution because the nation declined to meet it otherwise.  But the peculiarity of the case is, as has been affirmed, that it was chiefly the virtue and nobility of the nation which created this debt at the outset.