pulls down only to build better. It bears a freight of new ideas, doctrines, and institutions, rich with fruits of peace, joy, and prosperity. Its violent manifestations are only the fight which it has to wage for its birth-right. It is true, indeed, that the blood which is spilled upon its garments leaves deep stains; nay more, that those stains must be washed out in long suffering and patient toil and steady devotion to duty before the movement can renew its march. The fight is never over when the banner is furled and the arms are returned to the arsenal. On the contrary, that is just when the fight begins — a new fight and a hard one; not a fight of guns, but of ideas; not of artillery, but of discussion. The warfare of the battle-field only secures freedom of discussion and tames the party which sought to cut it short by an appeal to arms. Then arises a new question: whether those who won the victory under the inspiration of physical combat have the patience, the tenacity, and the self-denial to secure its fruits by establishing and spreading sound principles, by founding and fostering good institutions, and by engrafting upon the culture and civilization of their country the new convictions which they have won. To destroy old traditions is easy, but no nation can do without traditions unless it is willing to become the prey of demagogues and mountebanks and to chase every day a new chimera. But traditions must be cared for through a tender process of germination until they take root and acquire vitality and that is a labor of time, patience, and self-sacrifice.
Ten years ago this tide of modern history reached to one of the inherited institutions of this nation. Foremost in many respects as we were in our sympathy as a nation with all the new ideas and institutions, we yet
