To nations, also, this comprehensive law applies. Would you have a noble and orderly freedom? Buy it, and it is yours. "Liberty or death," cried eloquent Henry; and the speech is recited as bold and peculiar; but, by an enduring ordinance of Nature, the people that does not in its heart of hearts say, "Liberty or death," cannot have liberty. Many of us had learned to fancy that the stern tenure by which ancient communities held their civilization was now become an obsolete fact, and that without peril or sacrifice we might forever appropriate all that blesses nations; but by the iron throat of this war Providence is thundering down upon us the unalterable law, that man shall hold no ideal possession longer than he places all his lower treasures at its command. But there was a special form of cost, invited by the virtue of our national existence; and it is this in particular that we are now paying,--paying it, I am sorry to say, in the form of retribution because the nation declined to meet it otherwise. But the peculiarity of the case is, as has been affirmed, that it was chiefly the virtue and nobility of the nation which created this debt at the outset. And now what is the peculiar virtue and glory of this nation? Why, that its national existence is based upon a recognition of the absolute rights and duties of humanity. Theoretically this is our basis; practically there is a commixture; much of this cosmopolitan faith is mingled with much of confined self-regard. But the theoretical fact is the one here in point: since the question now is not of the national _un_faith or infidelity, but of the national faith. And beyond a question, the real faith of the nation, so far as it has one, is represented by its formal declaration, made sacred by the shedding of blood. Our belief really is not in the special right or privilege of Americans, but in the prerogative of man. This prerogative we may have succeeded well or ill in stating and interpreting; the fact, that our appeal is to this, alone concerns us here. Now this national attitude, so far as history informs me, is unprecedented. The true-born son of Albion, save as an exceptional culture enlarges his soul, believes religiously that God is an Englishman, and that the interests of England precede those of the universe. When, therefore, he sees anything done which depletes the pocket of England, it affects him with a sense of infidelity in those to whom this loss is due. England professes to have a _national_ religion; she has, and in a deeper sense than is commonly meant.