The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-11-02
Gods Dealings with Nations.

From the ~. y, Independent.
That penalty waits upon crime, and that
punishment sooner or later overtalles the
guilty, was no revelation of Moses or of Christ.
The experience of mankind had taught them
this truth long before the thunders of Sinai
or the milder effulgence of the Mount OF
Olives. The heather typifed the truth and
evoked divinities out of their imaginations,
whom they invested with this Office of chas-
tisement. Horace, in his sweetest and saddest
strains, tells how Terror and Vengeance en-
bark in the beaked trireme with their vic
Tins, and how gloomy Carl mounts behind
the swiftest horseman. But the ancients did
not fully apply this philosophy to men col
lected into nations, nor understand that the
same law of penalty governs the fate of en-
pires as well as of individuals. And the
mOderns, with all the light of purer religion,
and all the experience of the elder world
have not more than half discerned this preg-
nant truth.
Nations have always deemed themselves
wiser than Omniscience and mightier than
Omnipotence, and have endeavored to build
themselves on injustice and wrong. And,
though they may have seemed to flourish for
a season, the divine justice has always over
taken them at last. Passing by the ancient
nations though they are most signal examples
of this order of Providence, let us glance at
the modern world. Two centuries ago Spain
was the terror of Europe, the leading power of
the world and now where is she Abject,
degraded, the pest of her own people and the
scOrn Of all other nations. The Inquisition
and her colonial policy account for it all-for
these were injustice and cruelty organized into
institutions. Two hundred years ago what
seemed more established forever than the
Bourbons in France! A despOtism, the
most absolute and perfect that the world
had ever seen, had been consolidating itself
for two centuries and more, and it looked as
II it must endure forever. But the breath of
handful of encyclopedias, and play-writers,
and pamphleteers blew the mighty fabric
doWn-their strength proceeding from the
contempt Of human rights on which that
fabric rested. And what saved England,
whose medieval institutions were even less
free than those of France, excepting that the
wisdom Of Eliot, and Vane, and Sydney dis
cerned the true rule of liberty and Justice for
the supremacy Of which they labored and
died And in the exact proportions that that
rule was adhered to has England been great
and prosperous And it is to her deviatiOns
from 1t that she owes most of her wars and all
her intes inc distresses, from Jacobitism down
to Fenianism.
The present Bonaparte too is fast learn
ing how vain it is to attempt to erect an
imperial pyramid by placing It on its apex
and propping it up with bayonets. Having
waded through slaughter to his throne, and
endeavored to strengthen and perpetuate it
by injustio, and violence and fraud, at home
and abroad, il seems now as if he would re-
ceive the punishment of his crimes in his own
day and generation. His interference in the
affairs of other nations, from those of Turkey
to those of Mexico, have come to naught. His
apparent successes have built up rival nation
in Italy, and embittered the nation he unin-
tentonally created through his attempt to
maintain the Pope as a peaoe-offering to the
priests and peasantFy Of France. Aud now