He considered, too, that
the evil would be certain, while the good was, at best, a contingency,
and (to the clear, practical foresight with which he looked into the
future) scarcely so much as that, attended as the movement was and must
be during its progress, with the aggravated injury of those whose
condition it aimed to ameliorate, and terminating, in its possible
triumph,--if such possibility there were,--with the ruin of two races
which now dwelt together in greater peace and affection, it is not too
much to say, than had ever elsewhere existed between the taskmaster and
the serf.
Of course, there is another view of all these matters. The theorist may
take that view in his closet; the philanthropist by profession may strive
to act upon it uncompromisingly, amid the tumult and warfare of his life.
But the statesman of practical sagacity--who loves his country as it is,
and evolves good from things as they exist, and who demands to feel his
firm grasp upon a better reality before he quits the one already gained--
will be likely here, with all the greatest statesmen of America, to stand
in the attitude of a conservative. Such, at all events, will be the
attitude of Franklin Pierce.
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