Admirers of military heroism, and dazzled by military success in common with other men, We are yet even _here_ conscious of some qualification and distinction in our feelings: We acknowledge ourselves apt to look with more complacency on bravery and skill, when displayed in the service of our Country, than when We see them directed against its interests or its safety; and, however equal the claims to admiration in either case may be, We feel our hearts grow warmer at the recital of what has been atchieved by HOWE, by JERVIS, or by DUNCAN, than at the “_glorious victory of Jemappe_,” or “_the immortal battle of the bridge of Lodi_”. In MORALS We are equally old-fashioned. We have not yet learned the modern refinement of referring in all considerations upon human conduct, not to any settled and preconceived principles of right and wrong, not to any general and fundamental rules which experience, and wisdom, and justice, and the common consent of mankind have established, but to the internal admonitions of every man’s judgment or conscience in his own particular instance. We do not dissemble,—that We reverence LAW,—We acknowledge USAGE,—We look even upon PRESCRIPTION without hatred or horror. And we do not think these, or any of them, less safe guides for the moral actions of men, than that new and liberal system of ETHICS, whose operation is not to bind but to loosen the bands of social order; whose doctrine is formed not on a system of reciprocal duties, but on the supposition of individual, independent, and unconnected rights; which teaches that all men are pretty equally honest, but that some have different notions of honesty from others, and that the most received notions are for the greater part the most faulty. We do not subscribe to the opinion, that a sincere conviction of the truth of no matter what principle, is a sufficient defence for no matter what action; and that the only business of moral enquiry with human conduct is to ascertain that in each case the principle and the action agree. We have not yet persuaded ourselves to think it a sound, or a safe doctrine, that every man who can divest himself of a moral sense in theory, has a right to be with impunity and without disguise a scoundrel in practice. It is not in our creed, that ATHEISM is as good a faith as CHRISTIANITY, provided it be professed with equal sincerity; nor could We admit it as an excuse for MURDER, that the murderer was in his own mind conscientiously persuaded that the murdered might for many good reasons be better out of the way.