That he has not had more will be no objection to him in
the eyes of those who have seen the administration of the experienced
public functionary whose term of office is just drawing to a close. He
represents a party who know that true policy is gradual in its
advances, that it is conditional and not absolute, that it must deal
with facts and not with sentiments, but who know also that it is wiser
to stamp out evil in the spark than to wait till there is no help but
in fighting fire with fire. They are the only conservative party,
because they are the only one based on an enduring principle, the only
one that is not willing to pawn tomorrow for the means to gamble with
today. They have no hostility to the South, but a determined one to
doctrines of whose ruinous tendency every day more and more convinces
them.
The encroachments of Slavery upon our national policy have been like
those of a glacier in a Swiss valley. Inch by inch, the huge dragon
with his glittering scales and crests of ice coils itself onward, an
anachronism of summer, the relic of a bygone world where such monsters
swarmed. But it has its limit, the kindlier forces of Nature work
against it, and the silent arrows of the sun are still, as of old,
fatal to the frosty Python. Geology tells us that such enormous
devastators once covered the face of the earth, but the benignant
sunlight of heaven touched them, and they faded silently, leaving no
trace but here and there the scratches of their talons, and the gnawed
boulders scattered where they made their lair.
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