But there are also in history four examples of men who seem to have been statesmen from the nursery,--who early took a leading part in great designs which affected the whole course of human affairs,--and whom octogenarians like Nesselrode and Palmerston would be compelled to call statesmen of the first class. These are Octavius Cæsar, more successful in the arts of policy than even the great Julius, never guilty of youthful indiscretion, or, we are sorry to say, of youthful virtue; Maurice of Saxony, the preserver of the Reformed religion in Germany, in that contest where his youthful sagacity proved more than a match for the veteran craft of Charles the Fifth; the second William of Orange, the preserver of the liberties of Europe against the ambition of Louis XIV., and who, as a child, may be said to have prattled treaties and lisped despatches; and William Pitt, Prime-Minister of England at the age of twenty-four, and stereotyped on the French imagination as he whose guineas were nearly as potent as Napoleon's guns.
But it is not so much by eminent examples of young statesmen as it is by the general influence of young men in resisting the corrupting tendencies of politics, that their influence in the social state is to be measured. They oppose the tendency of political life to deprave political character, to make it cold, false, selfish, distrustful, abandoned to the greed of power and the greed of gain. They interfere with the projects of those venerable politicians who are continually appealing to the public to surrender, bit by bit, its humanity, its morality, its Christianity, for what are ludicrously misnamed practical advantages, and who slowly sap the moral vitality of a people through an insinuating appeal to their temporary interests. The heart of a nation may be eaten out by this process, without its losing any external signs of prosperity and strength; but the process itself is resisted, and the nation kept alive and impelled forward, by the purifying, though disturbing forces, which come from the generous sentiments and fervid aspirations of youth. Wise old heads may sneer as much as they please at the idea of heart in politics; but if history teaches anything, it teaches that human progress is possible only because the benevolent instincts of the heart are permanent, while the reasonings of the head are shifting. "When God," says Montesquieu, "endowed human beings with brains, he did not intend to guaranty them." And the sarcasm of the French philosopher is fully justified, when we reflect that nothing mean, base, or cruel has ever been done in this world, which has not been supported by arguments. To the mere head every historical event, whether it be infamous or glorious, is like the case at law which attracted the attention of the Irish barrister. "It was," he said, "a very pretty case, and he should like a fee of a hundred pounds to argue it either way." Who is there, indeed, who has not heard the most atrocious measures recommended by the most convincing arguments? Why, the persecutions of the early Christians, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Spanish Inquisition, the Reign of Terror, the institution of Slavery, the _coup d' état_ of Louis Napoleon, are under the condemnation of history from no lack of arguments in their favor which it might puzzle a plain man to answer. But opinion in such matters is not determined by arguments, but by instincts. God, in his wrath, has not left this world to the mercy of the subtlest dialectician; and all arguments are happily transitory in their effect, when they contradict the primal intuitions of conscience and the inborn sentiments of the heart. And if wicked institutions, laboriously organized by dominant tyranny and priestcraft, and strong with the might, not merely of bad passions, but of perverted learning and prostituted logic,--if these have been swept away in the world's advancing movement, it has been by the gradual triumph of indestructible sentiments of freedom and humanity, kept fresh and bright in the souls of the young.