Page:The future of Africa.djvu/98

92 fore the clear brain and the cool common sense of mankind.

Why should we haste, with foolish, blind zeal, to pick up the chaff, and rust, and offal, which wise nations ajre throwing away? Why not seize upon their cautious, prudent eclecticism, now, in our masculine youth, instead of going the round of a stale, perhaps a foul, experience? Why not make a precedent? Why should we not profit by the centuries of governmental history, if even we should appear venturesome?

If I mistake not, the great desideratum of the nations is, a rigid honesty; a clear, straightforward rectitude; the absence of chicane, of guile, and cunning; the cleaving the meshes of policies and heartless diplomacy; and the constant and happy consciousness of the ideas of God, of truth, and of duty. We sec it now nowhere among the nations; in some there is an approach, a desire, an aspiration,—so strong, in some