It was the leaders who were responsible for the crimes of the sedition; and what of humanity could be expected from men degenerated in blood? What of noble intelligence could be looked for from mental faculties long since degraded? What evidence of a Christian spirit could be hoped for from men who had openly perverted or denied all the divine precepts, upon which revolve the well-being of the human race? "If we had triumphed," says one of its apostles, at this late day of forgiveness and repentance--"if we had triumphed, I should have favored stripping them naked. Pardon! They might have appealed for pardon, but I would have seen them damned before I would have granted it!" When Suwarrow forced his way by the sword into the heart of Poland, dividing the realm, devastating the land, and destroying multitudes of people, he offered blasphemous thanks to Heaven for victories obtained over men fighting in the sacred cause of liberty, and for all the human heart holds dear. XXIII. To judge correctly of the magnitudes of these immolations, these crimes, history must wait for a calmer period, when prejudice shall have relaxed its hold upon the understanding, and when time shall have rolled up its accumulated materials of accusation and denial, of proof and exoneration. At present we can form some idea of their designs, and the degree of the implacability of their souls, from the evidence already placed before us, as we measure inaccessible heights by the awful shadows which they project. Pity appears to have been with them only a vain, fleeting emotion, if the soul was disturbed at all; and whenever an act of humanity was displayed, there seems to have been the secret motive of gain at work. In defining the natural sentiments of pity, they would have declared them the illusions of the imagination. The brutalizing scenes of Slavery had modified and affected their natural feelings, as the gladiatorial combats and exposures of the Christians to the attacks of infuriated wild beasts had inspired the vile populace of Rome with the love of blood and cruelty. When these men, with sonorous rhetoric, proclaimed themselves as the guiding minds of the republic, the patrons, the judges of the correct ideas and principles of civilization,--when they arrogated to themselves the appearance of the wisdom of Lacedæmon with the politeness of Athens,--they forgot or despised those cardinal virtues of society, "justice and truth--these are the first duties of man; humanity, country--these his first affections." XXIV. "I fear," writes the rebel War Clerk, observing from his secure position in the war office, "I fear this government in future times will be denounced as a cabal of bandits and outlaws, making and executing the most despotic decrees."