In this lack of first principles, it is not settled in the popular consciousness, that there is such a thing as an absolute right, a great law of God, which we are to keep, come what will come. So the nation is not upright, but goes stooping. Hence, in private affairs, law takes the place of conscience, and, in public, might of right. So the bankrupt pays his shilling in the pound, and gets his discharge, but afterwards, becoming rich, does not think of paying the other nineteen shillings. He will tell you the law is his conscience; if that be satisfied, so is he. But you will yet find him letting money at one or two per cent. a month, contrary to law; and then he will tell you that paying a debt is a matter of law, while letting money is only a matter of conscience. So he rides either indifferently--now the public hack, and now his own private nag, according as it serves his turn. So a rich State borrows money and "repudiates" the debt, satisfying its political conscience, as the bankrupt his commercial conscience, with the notion that there is no absolute right; that expediency is the only justice, and that King People can do no wrong. No calm voice of indignation cries out from the pulpit and the press and the heart of the people, to shame the repudiators into decent morals; because it is not settled in the popular mind that there is any absolute right. Then, because we are strong and the Mexicans weak, because we want their land for a slave-pasture and they cannot keep us out of it, we think that is reason enough for waging an infamous war of plunder. Grave men do not ask about "the natural justice" of such an undertaking, only about its cost. Have we not seen an American Congress vote a plain lie, with only sixteen dissenting voices in the whole body; has not the head of the nation continually repeated that lie; and do not both parties, even at this day, sustain the vote? Now and then there rises up an honest man, with a great Christian heart in his bosom, and sets free a score or two of slaves inherited from his father; watches over and tends them in their new-found freedom: or another, who, when legally released from payment of his debts, restores the uttermost farthing. We talk of this and praise it, as an extraordinary thing. Indeed it is so; justice is an unusual thing, and such men deserve the honor they thus win. But such praise shows that such honesty is a rare honesty. The northern man, born on the battle-ground of freedom, goes to the South and becomes the most tyrannical of slave-drivers. The son of the Puritan, bred up in austere ways, is sent to Congress to stand up for truth and right, but he turns out a "dough-face," and betrays the duty he went to serve. Yet he does not lose his place, for every dough-faced representative has a dough-faced constituency to back him.