Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/41

Rh put an end to the work of civilisation which down to that date religion and philanthropy had not unhopefully carried on. Before that time there had been only two wars between the New Englanders and the Indians in half a century. A spirit more akin to that of Eliot and Penn is now again in the ascendant, and a fresh hope dawns for the Indian tribes.

No doubt American society, like European society, has its peculiar evils. It has some which even a foreign observer sees, and many more, we may be sure, which a foreign observer does not see, but which Americans themselves know and feel, and which give birth to political and social complaints there as mournful in tone as any that are heard here. It is not by sudden and vigorous bounds, but by slow and tottering steps that humanity advances. Probably in many things the balance, here inclined too much one way, is there inclined too much the other way, and needs time and training to adjust it to the point of perfect equity. Such of the national virtues as are virtues of circumstance, have yet to be proved in a severer school; while of the faults and absurdities some at least are those of youth, and as the nation advances in years will pass away. After all America is not a new world, but the embryo of a new world. Many things deemed peculiar to it are common to all colonies, and will be modified as the colony becomes a nation. Of the energy of the people, hitherto almost absorbed in the work of reclaiming a continent, a larger share will be spared for learning, art, and science. With higher cultivation finer tastes will be introduced, vulgarity will be purged away, extravagance will be chastened, more independent intellects will arise, and the servility of thought, of which