The resolutions were adopted with but four dissenting votes; their meaning was obvious, and the whole country understood it to be peace on any conditions that would be condescended to at Richmond. If a nation were only a contrivance to protect men in gathering gear, if territory meant only so many acres for the raising of crops, if power were of worth only as a police to prevent or punish crimes against person and property, then peace for the mere sake of peace were the one desirable thing for a people whose only history would be written in its cash-book. But if a nation be a living unity, leaning on the past by tradition, and reaching toward the future by continued aspiration and achievement,--if territory be of value for the raising of men formed to high aims and inspired to noble deeds by that common impulse which, springing from a national ideal, gradually takes authentic shape in a national character,--if power be but a gross and earthy bulk till it be ensouled with thought and purpose, and of worth only as the guardian and promoter of truth and justice among men,--then there are misfortunes worse than war and blessings greater than peace. At this moment, not the Democratic party only, but the whole country, longs for peace, and the difference is merely as to the price that shall be paid for it. Shall we pay in degradation, and sue for a cessation of hostilities which would make chaos the rule and order the exception, which would not be peace, but toleration, not the repose of manly security, but the helpless quiet of political death? Or shall we pay, in a little more present suffering, self-sacrifice, and earnestness of purpose, for a peace that shall be as lasting as honorable, won as it will be by the victory of right over wrong, and resting on the promise of God and the hope of man? We believe the country has already made up its mind as to the answer, and will prove that a democracy may have as clear a conception of its interests and duties, as fixed a purpose in defending the one and fulfilling the other, a will as united and prompt, as have hitherto been supposed to characterize forms of government where the interests were more personal and the power less diffused.