PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.

THE following pages were written in the darkest hour of the War for the Union. Unable to take an active part in the contest, and unwilling not to put my convictions upon record, I gave them expression in these pages. They have met, I am told, a general want, and I gladly offer them anew in this Centennial Edition.

To make them more acceptable in a class-room, if they should find their way there, I have added to them an Analytical Table of Contents.

G. W. G.

WIND MILL COTTAGE,

EAST GREENWICH, R. I.

April 1, 1876

PREFACE.

THE

HE following Lectures were written for the Lowell Institute of Boston in 1862, and read before it in the January and February of 1863. A part of them was also read before the Cooper Institute of New York in March and April of the same year. Relating to a past of great present value, they have already, I am told, done some good; and I publish them in the hope that, in a more accessible form, they may do still more. No nation can neglect the study of its own history without exposing itself to the danger and disgrace of repeating past errors. No statesman can confine his attention to the present, without losing sight of the principles from which the present grew, and thus becoming a groper in the dark, instead of a trustworthy guide.

It is impossible to read our history without seeing that we, like all other historical nations, have been controlled by general laws. It is a universal law that every principle works out its own development; and hence, as an inevitable corollary, if you accept the principle, you must sooner or later accept its consequences. Our Puritan forefathers claimed freedom of judgment for themselves, and founded their Colonies that they might have a home of their own to exercise it in. But

they failed to see that what was true for one was true for all; and the dark pages of their history are the pages which record their fruitless struggle with the fundamental principle of their own institutions.

It is a principle of English law, that the King cannot take the subject's money without the subject's consent. Denying this principle, England attempted to tax the Colonies through the Imperial Parliament instead of the Colonial Assemblies, and lost them. Appealing to this principle, the Colonists claimed the right to dispose freely of the fruits of their own labors, and established their claim by the War of Independence. But they failed to see that, if the principle was true, it was true as a law of universal humanity, and therefore must sooner or later demand and obtain universal application. And this failure to accept all the consequences of the accepted principle left the bitter and bloody war — bella plus quam civilia through which we are now passing as a part of their legacy to their children. Will not history say that wise statesmanship should have foreseen this as a logical sequence, and consistent Christianity should recognize it as the act of that divine justice which could not have imposed the obligation of personal responsibility without according the right of personal freedom?

The conduct too of the War of Independence is full of lessons. More than half its waste of blood, treasure, and time was caused by the want of an efficient general government. What a comment is the history of the civil government of the Revolution upon the doctrine of State rights! When Washington, in his proclamation of the 25th of January, 1777, called upon those