From “Past and Present.”

IN this God’s world, with its wild whirling eddies and mad foam oceans, where men and nations perish as if without law, and judgment for an unjust thing is sternly delayed, dost thou think that there is therefore no justice? It is what the fool hath said in his heart. It is what the wise, in all times, were wise because they denied, and knew for ever not to be. I tell thee again, there is nothing else but justice. One strong thing I find here below: the just thing, the true thing. My friend, if thou hadst all the artillery of Woolwich trundling at thy back in support of an unjust thing; and infinite bonfires visibly waiting ahead of thee, to blaze centuries long for thy victory on behalf of it, I would advise thee to call halt, to fling down thy baton, and say, “In God’s name, No!” Thy “success”? Poor devil, what will thy success amount to? If the thing is unjust, thou hast not succeeded; no, not though bonfires blazed from north to south, and bells rang, and editors wrote leading articles, and the just things lay trampled out of sight, to all mortal eyes an abolished and annihilated thing. Success? In a few years thou wilt be dead and dark—all cold, eyeless, deaf; no blaze of bonfires, dingdong of bells, or leading articles visible or audible to thee again at all for ever. What kind of success is that? It is true all goes by approximation in this world; with any not insupportable approximation we must be patient. There is a noble Conservatism as well as an ignoble. Would to Heaven, for the sake of Conservatism itself, the noble alone were left, and the ignoble, by some kind severe hand, were ruthlessly lopped away, forbidden any more to show itself! For it is the right and noble alone that will have victory in this struggle; the rest is wholly an obstruction, a postponement, and fearful imperilment of the victory. Towards an eternal centre of right and nobleness, and of that only, is all this confusion tending. We already know whither it is tending; what will have victory, what will have none! The Heaviest will reach the centre. The Heaviest, sinking through complex fluctuating media and vortices, has its deflections, its obstructions, nay, at times its resiliences, its reboundings; whereupon some blockhead shall be heard jubilating: “See, your Heaviest ascends!” but at all moments it is moving centreward, fast as is convenient for it; sinking, sinking; and, by laws older than the world, old as the Maker’s first plan of the world, it has to arrive there.

  Await the issue. In all battles, if you await the issue, each fighter has prospered according to his right. His right and his might, at the close of the account, were one and the same. He has fought with all his might, and in exact proportion to all his right he has prevailed.