HON.  HENRY HASTINGS SIBLEY,  LL.D.                331
Not less did his glance foresee the unsuspected decay and fall
of the same empire, sapped by its own corruptions, a prey to
still other barbarian hordes, avenging a thirst for dominion
marked by successive wars, not in defense of the empire, but
for enlargement of power and possession already too great.
The judgments of Heaven are a part of "God's law of prog-
ress" to punish the crimes of "man's law of progress;" and,
to carry the account of man's crimes over to the credit of God's
law, in the name of Christian civilization, is not only a very
unstatesmanlike thing, but it is an infidel theory of human
progress which postulates the vindication of man at the ex-
pense of the condemnation of God. It is not true that the
race inferior in civilization must yield to the race superior.
Barbarians conquered both Greece and Eome, the two most
civilized of all the nations of antiquity. "God's law of eter-
nal progress" is something more than a Spanish bull-fight.
It is a moral law which, as Matthew Arnold says, " makes for
righteousness," a "moral order of the universe," as Fichte
called it, and reveals itself by judgment no less than by bless-
ing. He gives to barbarous tribes the abused favors he dis-
pensed to the civilized nations smitten before them. Goth,
Vandal, and Hun, learned all that Eome could bestow, even as
Eome sat at the feet of Greece to study philosophy, science,
and art. While barbarism has become civilized, civilization
has become barbarized. The Indian becomes a Christian and
ceases to scalp. The Christian becomes a savage, scalps, pays
bounty for scalps, and treasures his trophies of shame in places
of public resort. In a community nursing the pleasure of
such things, Eeligion can have no power, and Truth no place.
Humanity becomes inhuman, Progress is turned back, Civiliza-
tion is ashamed, Faith scarcely can lift up her eyes, and Hope
seems quenched in rayless night. Hard-hearted Mammon,
degrading Mammon alone, will rule, and Conscience and God
go to the ditch. The doctrine of extermination is that of the
Black Flag, of Ghoorkas, and Bashi-Bazouks, the doctrine of
cruelty, lies, injustice, perjury, perfidy, fraud, and brute force,
as the measure of right between man and man. It was the
maxim of bloodstained Eome,—"Spare the submissive, destroy
the resisting,"—a maxim whereby it became necessary, in every
quarrel, to conquer or perish, and, by these alternatives, bind
the empire either to die or subdue mankind. No state has a
right to make the submission of men, outside its lawful juris-