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We shall conclude the present article with a short notice of an individual who, in the cast of his mind and in political principle, bears no very remote resemblance to the patriot and wit just spoken of, and on whose merits we should descant at greater length, but that personal intimacy might be supposed to render us partial.
Do we want an excuse for sharing the gold of our neighbours, or abusing them if they resist? Is not our mutual, our pithiest plea, 'Distress'? True, your patriot calls it 'distress of the country; but does he ever, a whit more than we do, mean any distress but his own?
They will be of some use; because, however blinded I may be by prejudice or perversity, my prejudices in this matter are not those which blind the British patriot, and therefore I am fairly sure to see some things that have not yet struck him. And first, I do not see this war as one which has welded Governments and peoples into complete and sympathetic solidarity as against the common enemy.
"It was to save the honour of Maryland gentlemen," I replied modestly. "Heretofore they have not fought in mobs. But will you not thank me for yourself?" "When you turn loyalist, yes," said she. "Almost thou persuadest me to become a traitor." "You are that already," she said with spirit. "Yes, that is the way they have written 'Patriot' since Tyranny first stalked across the world.
Speaking at a general assembly, immediately after the battle, the great patriot congratulated his countrymen on the courage which they had displayed, and at the same time pointed out the necessity of improving their discipline and military organization.
He caught the rising interest as at the springing of the tide, and rose with it until it broke in lines of foam along the shores of New England. He gained the confidence of the patriot party, of which he was the natural leader. His influence became predominant. He was the peer of the two Adamses, and touched hands right and left with the foremost men of all the colonies.
Nor when it finally yielded to the iron progress of oligarchical supremacy, was its catastrophe inglorious. Its genius was vindicated in golden sentences and with fervent arguments of impassioned logic by St John; and breathed in the intrepid eloquence and patriot soul of William Wyndham.
There in that quiet room, with only the telephone and the ticking of the clock for company, while his staff waited outside for orders, this great general, this strategist on whose strategy hung the lives of armies, this patriot and soldier at whose word men went forth to die, paced the floor. He walked over to the clock and stood looking at it, his fine head erect, his hands behind him.
If such idiotic calumnies could be believed, what patriot in the world could not be doubted? Yet they were believed. Barneveld was bought by Spanish gold. He had received whole boxes full of Spanish pistoles, straight from Brussels! For his part in the truce negotiations he had received 120,000 ducats in one lump.
The glorious visions which fill the last chapters of this wonderful book are the promise of that "All hail Hereafter," for which every Christian patriot, every lover of mankind, is always looking and longing and fighting and waiting. And he who, by the mouth of this seer, testifieth the words of the prophecy of this book saith, "Yea, I come quickly. Even so, come, Lord Jesus."