est and holiest and at the same time the most victorious of causes; and when our people labor in the sweat of their brow to pay the debt which the Rebellion has loaded upon us, they do it with the proud consciousness that the heavy price they have paid is infinitely overbalanced by the value of the results they have gained: slavery abolished; the great American Republic purified of her foulest stain; the American people no longer a people of masters and slaves, but a people of equal citizens; the most dangerous element of disturbance and disintegration wiped out from among us; this country put upon the course of harmonious development, greater, more beautiful, mightier than ever in its self-conscious power. And thus, whatever losses, whatever sacrifices, whatever sufferings we may have endured, they appear before us in a blaze of glory.

But how do the Southern people stand there? All they have sacrificed, all they have lost, all the blood they have spilled, all the desolation of their homes, all the distress that stares them in the face, all the wreck and ruin they see around them-all for nothing, all for a wicked folly, all for a disastrous infatuation; the very graves of their slain nothing but monuments of a shadowy delusion; all their former hopes vanished forever; and the very magniloquence which some of their leaders are still indulging in, nothing but a mocking illustration of their utter discomfiture! Ah, sir, if ever human efforts broke down in irretrievable disaster, if ever human pride was humiliated to the dust, if ever human hopes were turned into despair, there you behold them.

You may say that they deserved it all. Yes, but surely, sir, you cannot say that the Rebellion has gone entirely unpunished. Nor will the senator from Indiana, with all his declamation (and I am sorry not now to see him before me), make any sane man believe that had no political disabilities ever been imposed, the history of the Rebellion, as long as the memory of men retains the recollection of the great story, will ever encourage a future generation to rebel again, or that if even this great example of disaster should fail to extinguish the spirit of rebellion, his little scare-crow of exclusion from office will be more than a thing to be laughed at by little boys.

And yet, sir, it is certainly true that after the close of the War we treated the rebels with a generosity never excelled in the history of the world. And thus, in advising a general amnesty it is not merely for the rebels I plead. But I plead for the good of the country, which in its best interests will be benefited by amnesty just as much as the rebels are benefited themselves, if not more.

Nay, sir, I plead also for the colored people of the South, whose path will be smoothed by a measure calculated to assuage some of the prejudices and to disarm some of the bitternesses which still confront them;

and I am sure that nothing better could happen to them, nothing could be more apt to make the growth of good feeling between them and the former master-class easier, than the destruction of a system which, by giving them a political superiority, endangers their peaceable enjoyment of equal rights.

And I may say to my honorable friend from Massachusetts [Mr. Sumner], who knows well how highly I esteem him, and whom I sincerely honor for his solicitude concerning the welfare of the lowly, that my desire to see their wrongs righted is no less sincere and no less unhampered by any traditional prejudice than his; although I will confess that as to the constitutional means to that end we may sometimes seriously differ; but I cannot refrain from expressing my regret that this measure should be loaded with anything that is not strictly germane to it, knowing as we both do that the amendment he has proposed cannot secure the necessary two-thirds vote in at least one of the Houses of Congress, and that therefore it will be calculated to involve this measure also in the danger of common failure. I repeat, it is not merely for the rebels I plead; it is for the whole American people, for there is not a citizen in the land whose true interests, rightly understood, are not largely concerned in every measure affecting the peace and welfare of any State of this Union.

Believe me, senators, the statesmanship which this period of our history demands is not exhausted by high-sounding declamation about the greatness of the crime of rebellion, and fearful predictions as to what is going to happen unless the rebels are punished with sufficient severity. We have heard so much of this from some gentlemen, and so little else, that the inquiry naturally suggests itself whether this is the whole compass, the be-all and the end-all of their political wisdom and their political virtue; whether it is really their opinion that the people of the South may be plundered with impunity by rascals in power, that the substance of those States may be wasted, that their credit may be ruined, that their prosperity may be blighted, that their future may be blasted, that the poison of bad feeling may still be kept working where we might. do something to assuage its effects; that the people may lose more and more their faith in the efficiency of self-government and of republican institutions; that all this may happen, and we look on complacently, if we can only continue to keep a thorn in the side of our late enemies, and to demonstrate again and again, as the senator from Indiana has it, our disapprobation of the crime of rebellion?

Sir, such appeals as these, which we have heard so frequently, may be well apt to tickle the ear of an unthinking multitude. But unless I am grievously in error, the people of the United States are a multitude

not unthinking. The American people are fast becoming aware that, great as the crime of rebellion is, there are other villainies beside it; that much as it may deserve punishment there are other evils flagrant enough to demand energetic correction; that the remedy for such evils. does, after all, not consist in the maintenance of political disabilities, and that it would be well to look behind those vociferous demonstrations of exclusive and austere patriotism to see what abuses and faults of policy they are to cover, and what rotten sores they are to disguise. The American people are fast beginning to perceive that good and honest government in the South, as well as throughout the whole country, restoring a measurable degree of confidence and contentment, will do infinitely more to revive true loyalty and a healthy national spirit, than keeping alive the resentments of the past by a useless degradation of certain classes of persons; and that we shall fail to do our duty unless we use every means to contribute our share to that end. And those, I apprehend, expose themselves to grievous disappointment who still think that, by dinning again and again in the ears of the people the old battlecries of the Civil War, they can befog the popular mind as to the true requirements of the times, and overawe and terrorize the public sentiment of the country.

Sir, I am coming to a close. One word more. We have heard protests here against amnesty as a measure intended to make us forget the past and to obscure and confuse our moral appreciation of the great events of our history. No, sir; neither would I have the past forgotten, with its great experiences and teachings. Let the memory of the grand uprising for the integrity of the republic; let those heroic deeds and sacrifices before which the power of slavery crumbled into dust, be forever held in proud and sacred remembrance by the American people. Let it never be forgotten, as I am sure it never can be forgotten, that the American Union, supported by her faithful children, can never be undermined by any conspiracy ever so daring, nor overthrown by any array of enemies ever so formidable. Let the great achievements of our struggle for national existence be forever a source of lofty inspiration to our children and children's children.

But surely, sir, I think no generous resolution on our part will mar the luster of those memories, nor will it obliterate from the Southern mind the overwhelming experience that he who raises his hand against the majesty of this republic is doomed to disastrous humiliation and ruin. I would not have it forgotten; and, indeed, that experience is so indelibly written upon the Southern country that nothing can wipe it out. But, sir, as the people of the North and of the South must live together as one people, and as they must be bound together by the bonds

of a common national feeling, I ask you, will it not be well for us so to act that the history of our great civil conflict, which cannot be forgotten, can never be remembered by Southern men without finding in its closing chapter this irresistible assurance: that we, their conquerors, meant to be, and were after all, not their enemies, but their friends? When the Southern people con over the distressing catalogue of the misfortunes they have brought upon themselves, will it not be well, will it not be "devoutly to be wished" for our common future, if at the end of that catalogue they find an act which will force every fair-minded man in the South to say of the Northern people, "When we were at war they inflicted upon us the severities of war; but when the contest had closed and they found us prostrate before them, grievously suffering, surrounded by the most perplexing difficulties and on the brink of new disasters, they promptly swept all the resentments of the past out of their way and stretched out their hands to us with the very fullest measure of generosity-anxious, eager to lift us up from our prostration?" Sir, will not this do something to dispel those mists of error and prejudice which are still clouding the Southern mind? I ask again, will it not be well to add to the sad memories of the past which forever will live in their minds, this cheering experience, so apt to prepare them for the harmony of a better and common future?

No, sir; I would not have the past forgotten, but I would have its history completed and crowned by an act most worthy of a great, noble, and wise people. By all the means which we have in our hands, I would make even those who have sinned against this republic see in its flag, not the symbol of their lasting degradation, but of rights equal to all; I would make them feel in their hearts that in its good and evil fortunes their rights and interests are bound up just as ours are, and that therefore its peace, its welfare, its honor, and its greatness may and ought to be as dear to them as they are to us.

I do not, indeed, indulge in the delusion that this act alone will remedy all the evils which we now deplore. No, it will not; but it will be a powerful appeal to the very best instincts and impulses of human nature; it will, like a warm ray of sunshine in springtime, quicken and call to light the germs of good intention wherever they exist; it will give new courage, confidence, and inspiration to the well-disposed; it will weaken the power of the mischievous, by stripping off their pretexts and exposing in their nakedness the wicked designs they still may cherish; it will light anew the beneficent glow of fraternal feeling and of national spirit; for, sir, your good sense as well as your heart must tell you that, when this is truly a people of citizens equal in their political rights, it will then be easier to make it also a people of brothers.

§ 12

COPYRIGHT

By Thomas Babington Macaulay

(Delivered in the House of Commons, February 5, 1841.)

Though, Sir, it is in some sense agreeable to approach a subject with which political animosities have nothing to do, I offer myself to your notice with some reluctance. It is painful to me to take a course which may possibly be misunderstood or misrepresented as unfriendly to the interests of literature and literary men. It is painful to me, I will add, to oppose my honorable and learned friend on a question which he has taken up from the purest motives, and which he regards with a parental interest. These feelings have hitherto kept me silent when the law of copyright has been under discussion. But as I am, on full consideration, satisfied that the measure before us will, if adopted, inflict grievous injury on the public, without conferring any compensating advantage on men of letters, I think it my duty to avow that opinion and to defend it.

The first thing to be done, Sir, is to settle on what principles the question is to be argued. Are we free to legislate for the public good, or are we not? Is this a question of expediency, or is it a question of right? Many of those who have written and petitioned against the existing state of things treat the question as one of right The law of nature, according to them, gives to every man a sacred and indefeasible property in his own ideas, in the fruits of his own reason and imagination. The legislature has indeed the power to take away this property, just as it has the power to pass an act of attainder for cutting off an innocent man's head without a trial. But, as such an act of attainder would be legal murder, so would an act invading the right of an author to his copy be, according to these gentlemen, legal robbery.

Now, Sir, if this be so, let justice be done, cost what it may. I am not prepared, like my honorable and learned friend, to agree to a compromise between right and expediency, and to commit an injustice for the public convenience. But I must say, that his theory soars far beyond the reach of my faculties. It is not necessary to go, on the present

THOMAS BABINGTON (LORD) MACAULAY. Born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, October 25, 1800; died at Kensington, London, December 28, 1859; educated at Trinity College, Cambridge; elevated to the peerage in 1857.