ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 115 



to go, though by what seemed to unpractical minds, which 

 let go the possible to grasp at the desirable, a longer road. 



Undoubtedly the highest function of statesmanship is by 

 degrees to accommodate the conduct of communities to 

 ethical laws, and to subordinate the conflicting self-interests 

 of the day to higher and more permanent concerns. But it 

 is on the understanding, and not on the sentiment, of a 

 nation that all safe legislation must be based. Voltaire s 

 saying, that &quot; a consideration of petty circumstances is the 

 tomb of great things,&quot; may be true of individual men, but 

 it certainly is not true of governments. It is by a multi 

 tude of such considerations, each in itself trifling, but all 

 together weighty, that the framers of policy can alone 

 divine what is practicable, and therefore wise. The imputa 

 tion of inconsistency is one to which every sound politician 

 and every honest thinker must sooner or later subject him 

 self. The foolish and the dead alone never change their 

 opinion. The course of a great statesman resembles that of 

 navigable rivers, avoiding immovable obstacles with noble 

 bends of concession, seeking the broad levels of opinion on 

 which men soonest settle and longest dwell, following and 

 marking the almost imperceptible slopes of national ten 

 dency, yet always aiming at direct advances, always 

 recruited from sources nearer heaven, and sometimes burst 

 ing open paths of progress and fruitful human commerce 

 through what seem the eternal barriers of both. It is 

 loyalty to great ends, even though forced to combine the 

 small and opposing motives of selfish men to accomplish 

 them ; it is the anchored cling to solid principles of duty 

 and action, which knows how to swing with the tide, but is 

 never carried away by it that we demand in public men, 

 and not sameness of policy, or a conscientious persistency 

 in what is impracticable. JFor the impracticable, however 

 theoretically enticing, is always politically unwise, sound 

 statesmanship being the application of that prudence to 

 the public business which is the safest guide in that of 

 private men. 



No doubt slavery was the most delicate and embarrassing 



