Charles Sumner, “The True Grandeur of Nations”

4 July, 1845

Can there be in our age any peace that is not honorable, any war that is not dishonorable? The true grandeur of a nation is conspicuous only in deeds of justice and beneficence, security and advancing human happiness.

What has taught you, O man! Thus to find glory in an act, performed by a nation, which you condemn as a crime or a barbarism, when committed by an individual? In what vain conceit of wisdom and virtue do you find this incongruous morality? Man is immortal, but Nations are mortal. Man has a higher destiny than Nations. Can Nations be less amenable to the supreme moral law? Each individual is an atom of the mass. Must not the mass, in its conscience, be like the individuals of which it is composed? As in the physical creation, so in the moral, there is but one rule of the individual and the mass. It was the lofty discovery of Newton, that the simple law which determines the fall of an apple prevails everywhere throughout the Universe—ruling each particle in reference to every other particle, large or small—reaching from earth to heaven, and controlling the infinite motions of the spheres. So, with equal scope, another simple law, the Law of Right, which binds the individual, binds also two or three when gathered together—binds villages, towns, and cities—binds states, nations, and races—clasps the whole human family in its sevenfold embrace.

According to the old idea, still too prevalent, man is made for State, not the State for man. Far otherwise is the truth. The state is an artificial body, for the security of the people. Not that I love country less, but Humanity more, do I now and here plead the cause of a higher and truer patriotism. I cannot forget that we are men by a more sacred bond than we are citizens.