It is the policy of rulers to encourage this exclusive patriotism, and here they are aided by the examples of antiquity. I do not know that any one nation is permitted to reproach another with this selfishness. All are selfish. Men are taught to live, not for mankind, but only for a small portion of mankind. The pride, vanity, ambition, brutality even, which all rebuke in the individual, are accounted virtues, if displayed in the name of country. Among us the sentiment is active, while it derives new force from the point with which it has been expressed. An officer of our navy, one of the heroes nurtured by War, whose name has been praised in churches, going beyond all Greek, all Roman example, exclaimed, "Our country, _right or wrong_,"--a sentiment dethroning God and enthroning the Devil, whose flagitious character must be rebuked by every honest heart. How different was virtuous Andrew Fletcher, whose heroical uprightness, amidst the trials of his time, has become immortal in the saying, that he "would readily lose his life to _serve_ his country, but would not do a base thing to _save_ it."[76] Better words, or more truly patriotic, were never uttered. "Our country, our whole country, and _nothing but our country_," are other delusive sounds, which, first falling from the lips of an eminent American orator, are often painted on banners, and echoed by innumerable multitudes. Cold and dreary, narrow and selfish would be this life, if _nothing but our country_ occupied the soul,--if the thoughts that wander through eternity, if the infinite affections of our nature, were restrained to that place where we find ourselves by the accident of birth. [76] Character, prefixed to Political Works, p. viii.