Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1862-04-03
THE ANNUAL FAST.


..snll men and nations reap as they have strawn'-
So saw they, working at their task the while
1.-THE fatal Taiment must be cleansed ere dawn
For Austria2 Italy? the Sea Queens Isle?
Der what quenched grandeur must our shroud be |
drawn!"
The season of public solemnity was appro
priateIy timed by our fathers with the planting
of the corn, as Thanksgiving was with the
reaping of the harvest. Still in the preface
and beginning of the year, with its fruits
scarcely yet prophecied in the bud, it is proper
to recognize n day of suspense, and reflection
upon events which may change the destiny
of whole races of men. The sharp experience
of war, which has come very near to many
households among us, may he prophetic
of peaceful glories, as the siege of winter is
of verdant aud fruitful spring. Our history
cannot be much unlike all other histories, i'll
which people have gained nothing worth keep
ing-not so much as a principle or a convic-
tion-exccpt through purifying flame and
strengthening peril We can well afford 10
welcome all the disasters that have happened
already, in the safe expectation that they will,
through the everything beneticence of God,
operate 10 the advantage of mankind. But
Providence does not thrust itself OH the
unwilling. Nations are neither made nor
saved without conscious and intelligent effort.
They reaped as they had strewn long before
the washers of the shroud were born. We
have now been at war full year with de-
testable enemy, whose sin we have fell
lowshipped for seventy years Tor the sake of
peace Better, infinitely better, for the many
millions whose interests have been contingent
upon the preservation of the republic unim-
paired, if its founders had strangled the SER
pent at the beginning, rather than suffered it
to acquire a power SO deadly and SO fatal
But it lvas tolerated under protest, against
the better judgment of every statesman
whose name history will think worth preserv-
ing-againststhe conscience and the example
of the civilized world-till the hard ordeal of
battle became inevitable. 1t has brought
upon great nation the worst of the traditional
scourges OF mankind. 1t has desolated the
fairest soil ever tempted into fertility by the
sun and rain. 1t has used treachery aud plum
der 10 overthrow the foundations OF govern
rnent which is the security and protection
of US all. 1t has carried the weight of uu
utterable sorrow 10 hearth stones all over tn
land. Without right, without justice, withou
any of the plausible excuses with which ba
causes often conceal their deformities, it la
haunied itself before the world first under til
insolent assumption Of equality. and then G
supremacy, which it would have establishe
upon the ruins Of the government itself-woul
have established but for the wonderful con
secration of life and treasure to the republi
which politicians witness with amazement bu
can not control. Yet there are men enougl
.alal-AAin ALL. 4I.a liaoA,, bous
eide and treason affects their blind devotion
to the monster itself, or binders them il
their favorile art of gIozing over it
outlines, and cutting cummin-seed will
the Almighty" On one pretext or an
other they throw around the chief agent o.
mischief and misrule whatever fair defence:
their ingenuity can deVise--aiming for the
sake of its contingent political power to save
it from the swift condemnation which il ha,
brought upon itself. These are the eneniies
not of equal rights only, but of institutions in
which freedom has its last and only hope.
Will they succeed? Will the fatal shroud fall
at last upon the "quenched grandeur" of this
republic, which the statesmen and sages of the
revolution, who loved liberty more wisely than
their children, thought to be immortal?