If demagogues on the "stump," or in the legislative halls, or in their Fourth of-July addresses, can find no fitter subjects "to point a moral or adorn a tale," we must be content to bear their misrepresentations and abuse.
[Footnote 1: Sumner's Oration.] Unjust wars, as well as unjust litigation, are immoral in their effects and also in their cause.

But just wars and just litigation are not demoralizing.

Suppose all wars and all courts of justice to be abolished, and the wicked nations as well as individuals to be suffered to commit injuries without opposition and without punishment; would not immorality and unrighteousness increase rather than diminish?
Few events rouse and elevate the patriotism and public spirit of a nation so much as a just and patriotic war.

It raises the tone of public morality, and destroys the sordid selfishness and degrading submissiveness which so often result from a long-protracted peace.

Such was the Dutch war of independence against the Spaniards; such the German war against the aggressions of Louis XIV., and the French war against the coalition of 1792.