I invite the attention of conservative men to the fact that in this due paying of costs lies the true conservation.  I invite them to observe, that, as every living body has a principle which makes it alive, makes it a unit, harmonizing the action of its members,—­as every crystal has a unitary law, which commands the arrangement of its particles, the number and arrangement of its faces and angles,—­so it is with every orderly or living state.  To this also there is a central, clarifying, unifying faith.  Without this you may collect hordes into the brief, brutal empire of a Chingis Khan or Tamerlane; but you can have no firm, free, orderly, inspiring national life.

Whenever and wherever in history this central condition of national existence has been destroyed, there a nation has fallen into chaos, into imbecility, losing all power to produce genius, to generate able souls, to sustain the trust of men in each other, or to support any of the conditions of social health and order.  Even advances in the right line of progress have to be made slowly, gradually, lest the shock of newness be too great, and break off a people from the traditions in which its faith is embodied; but a mere recoil, a mere denial and destruction of its centralizing principle, is the last and utmost calamity which can befall any nation.

This is no fine-spun doctrine, fit for parlors and lecture-rooms, but not for counting-rooms and congressional halls.  It is solid, durable fact.  History is full of it; and he is a mere mole, and blinder than midnight, who cannot perceive it.  The spectacle of nations falling into sudden, chronic, careless imbecility is frequent and glaring enough for even wilfulness to see; and the central secret of this sad phenomenon, so I am sure, has been suggested here.  When the socializing faith of a nation has perished, the alternative for it becomes this, that it can be stable only as it is stagnant, and vigorous only as it is lawless.

Of this I am sure; but whether Bullion Street can be willing to understand it I am not so sure.  Yet if it cannot, or some one in its behalf, grass will grow there.  And why should it refuse heed?  Who is more concerned?  Does Bullion Street desire chaos?  Does it wish that the pith should be taken out of every statute, and the chief value from every piece of property?  If not, its course is clear.  This nation has a vital faith,—­or had one,—­well grounded in its traditions.  Conserve this; or, if it has been impaired, renew its vigor.  This faith is our one sole pledge of order, of peace, of growth, of all that we prize in the present, or hope for the future.  That it is a noble faith, new in its breadth, its comprehension and magnanimity,—­this would seem in my eyes rather to enhance than diminish the importance of its conservation.  Yet the only argument against it is, that it is generous, broad, inspiring; and the only appeal in opposition to it must be made to the coldness of skepticism, the suicidal miserliness of egotism, or the folly and fatuity of ignorance.