Alexandria and her Schools | Page 6

elder one of Rome. If, as then, England shall proclaim
herself the champion of freedom by acts, and not by words and paper,
she may, as she did then, defy the rulers of the darkness of this world,
for the God of Light will be with her. But, as yet, it is impossible to
look without sad forebodings upon the destiny of a war, begun upon the
express understanding that evil shall be left triumphant throughout
Europe, wheresoever that evil does not seem, to our own selfish
short-sightedness, to threaten us with immediate danger; with promises,
that under the hollow name of the Cause of Order--and that promise
made by a revolutionary Anarch--the wrongs of Italy, Hungary, Poland,
Sweden, shall remain unredressed, and that Prussia and Austria, two
tyrannies, the one far more false and hypocritical, the other even more
rotten than that of Turkey, shall, if they will but observe a hollow and
uncertain neutrality (for who can trust the liar and the oppressor?)--be
allowed not only to keep their ill-gotten spoils, but even now to play
into the hands of our foe, by guarding his Polish frontier for him, and
keeping down the victims of his cruelty, under pretence of keeping

down those of their own.
It is true, the alternative is an awful one; one from which statesmen and
nations may well shrink: but it is a question, whether that alternative
may not be forced upon us sooner or later, whether we must not from
the first look it boldly in the face, as that which must be some day, and
for which we must prepare, not cowardly, and with cries about God's
wrath and judgments against us--which would be abject, were they not
expressed in such second-hand stock-phrases as to make one altogether
doubt their sincerity, but chivalrously, and with awful joy, as a noble
calling, an honour put upon us by the God of Nations, who demands of
us, as some small return for all His free bounties, that we should be, in
this great crisis, the champions of Freedom and of Justice, which are
the cause of God. At all events, we shall not escape our duty by being
afraid of it; we shall not escape our duty by inventing to ourselves
some other duty, and calling it "Order." Elizabeth did so at first. She
tried to keep the peace with Spain; she shrank from injuring the cause
of Order (then a nobler one than now, because it was the cause of
Loyalty, and not merely of Mammon) by assisting the Scotch and the
Netherlanders: but her duty was forced upon her; and she did it at last,
cheerfully, boldly, utterly, like a hero; she put herself at the head of the
battle for the freedom of the world, and she conquered, for God was
with her; and so that seemingly most fearful of all England's perils,
when the real meaning of it was seen, and God's will in it obeyed
manfully, became the foundation of England's naval and colonial
empire, and laid the foundation of all her future glories. So it was then,
so it is now; so it will be for ever: he who seeks to save his life will lose
it: he who willingly throws away his life for the cause of mankind,
which is the cause of God, the Father of mankind, he shall save it, and
be rewarded a hundred-fold. That God may grant us, the children of the
Elizabethan heroes, all wisdom to see our duty, and courage to do it,
even to the death, should be our earliest prayer. Our statesmen have
done wisely and well in refusing, in spite of hot-headed clamours, to
appeal to the sword as long as there was any chance of a peaceful
settlement even of a single evil. They are doing wisely and well now in
declining to throw away the scabbard as long as there is hope that a
determined front will awe the offender into submission: but the day
may come when the scabbard must be thrown away; and God grant that

they may have the courage to do it.
It is reported that our rulers have said, that English diplomacy can no
longer recognise "nationalities," but only existing "governments." God
grant that they may see in time that the assertion of national life, as a
spiritual and indefeasible existence, was for centuries the central idea of
English policy; the idea by faith in which she delivered first herself,
and then the Protestant nations of the Continent, successively from the
yokes of Rome, of Spain, of France; and that they may reassert that
most English of all truths again, let the apparent cost be what it may.
It is true, that this end will not be attained without what is called