390 WAR-INTRODUCTION. [ESSAY III. lators or that public men are so indifferent to their fame? Who would now be willing that biography should record of him,—This man defended the slave-trade? The time will come when the record,-This man opposed the abolition of slavery,—will occasion a great deduction from the public estimate of worth of character. When both these atrocities are abolished, and but for the page of history forgotten, that page will make a wide difference between those who aided the abolition and those who obstructed it. The one will be ranked among the Howards that are departed, and the other among those who, in ignorance or in guilt, have employed their little day in inflicting misery upon mankind CHAPTER XIX. WAR. It is one among the numerous moral phenomena of the present times that the inquiry is silently yet not slowly spreading in the world-Is War compatible with the Christian religion? There was a period when the question was seldom asked, and when war was regarded almost by every man both as inevitable and right. That period has certainly passed away; and not only individuals but public societies, and societies in distant nations, are urging the question upon the attention of mankind. The simple circumstance that it is thus urged contains no irrational motive to investigation for why should men ask the question if they did not doubt; and how, after these long ages of prescription, could they begin to doubt, without a reason? It is not unworthy of remark, that while disquisitions are frequently issuing from the press of which the tendency is to show that war is not compatible with Christianity, few serious attempts are made to show that it is. Whether this results from the circumstance that no individual peculiarly is interested in the proof,—or that there is a secret consciousness that proof cannot be brought,- -or that those who may be desirous of defending the custom rest in security that the impotence of its assailants will be of no avail against a custom so established and so supported, -I do not know: yet the fact is remarkable that scarcely a defender is to be found. It cannot be doubted that the question is one of the utmost interest and importance to man. Whether the custom be defensible or not, every man should inquire into its consistency with the moral law. If it is defensible, he may, by inquiry, dismiss the scruples which it is certain subsist in the minds of multitudes, and thus exempt himself from the offence of participating in that which, though pure, he "esteemeth to be unclean." If it is not defensible, the propriety of investigation is increased in a tenfold degree. It may be a subject therefore of reasonable regret to the friends and the lovers of truth, that the question of the moral lawfulness of war is not brought fairly before the public. I say fairly; because though many of the publications which impugn its lawfulness advert to the ordinary arguments in its favour, yet it is not to be assumed that they give to those arguments all that vigour and force which would be imparted by a stated and an able advocate Few books, it is probable, would tend more powerfully CHAP. 19.] CAUSES OF WAR. 391 to promote the discovery and dissemination of truth than one which should frankly and fully and ably advocate upon sound moral principles the practice of war. The public would then see the whole of what can be urged in its favour without being obliged to seek for arguments, as they now must, in incidental or imperfect or scattered disquisitions: and possessing in a distinct form the evidence of both parties, they would be enabled to judge justly between them. Perhaps, if, invited as the public are to the discussion, no man is hereafter willing to adventure in the cause, the conclusion will not be unreasonable that no man is destitute of a consciousness that the cause is not a good one. Meantime it is the business of him whose inquiries have conducted him to the conclusion that the cause is not good, to exhibit the evidence upon which the conclusion is founded. It happens upon the subject of war, more than upon almost any other subject of human inquiry, that the individual finds it difficult to contemplate its merits with an uninfluenced mind. He finds it difficult to examine it as it would be examined by a philosopher to whom the subject was new. He is familiar with its details; he is habituated to the idea of its miseries; he has perhaps never doubted, because he has never questioned, its rectitude; nay, he has associated with it ideas, not of splendour only, but of honour and of merit. That such an inquirer will not, without some effort of abstraction, examine the question with impartiality and justice, is plain; and therefore the first business of him who would satisfy his mind respecting the lawfulness of war, is to divest himself of all those habits of thought and feeling which have been the result, not of reflection and judgment, but of the ordinary associations of life. And perhaps he may derive some assistance in this necessary but not easy dismissal of previous opinions, by referring first to some of the ordinary causes and consequences of war. The reference will enable us also more satisfactorily to estimate the moral character of the practice itself; for it is no unimportant auxiliary in forming such an estimate of human actions or opinions, to know how they have been produced, and what are thei effects. CAUSES OF WAR. Of these causes one undoubtedly consists in the want of inquiry We have been accustomed from earliest life to a familiarity with its "pomp and circumstance;" soldiers have passed us at every step, and battles and victories have been the topic of every one around us. It therefore becomes familiarized to all our thoughts, and interwoven with all our associations. We have never inquired whether these things should be the question does not even suggest itself. We acquiesce in it, as we acquiesce in the rising of the sun, without any other idea than that it is a part of the ordinary processes of the world. And how are we to feel disapprobation of a system that we do not examine, and of the nature of which we do not think? Want of inquiry has been the means by which long-continued practices, whatever has been their enormity, have obtained the general concurrence of the world, and by which they have continued to pollute or degrade it, long after the few who inquire 392 INDIFFERENCE TO HUMAN MISERY. [ESSAY III. into their nature have discovered them to be bad. It was by these means that the slave-trade was so long tolerated by this land of humanity. Men did not think of its iniquity. We were induced to think, and we soon abhorred, and then abolished it. Of the effects of this want of inquiry we have indeed frequent examples upon the subject before us. Many who have all their lives concluded that war is lawful and right have found, when they began to examine the question, that their conclusions were founded upon no evidence; that they had believed in its rectitude, not because they had possessed themselves of proof, but because they had never inquired whether it was capable of proof or not. In the present moral state of the world, one of the first concerns of him who would discover pure morality should be, to question the purity of that which now obtains. Another cause of our complacency with war, and therefore another cause of war itself, consists in that callousness to human misery which the custom induces. They who are shocked at a single murder on the highway hear with indifference of the slaughter of a thousand on the field. They whom the idea of a single corpse would thrill with terror contemplate that of heaps of human carcasses mangled by human hands with frigid indifference. If a murder is committed, the narrative is given in the public newspaper, with many adjectives of horror, with many expressions of commiseration, and many hopes that the perpetrator will be detected. In the next paragraph the editor, perhaps, tells us that he has hurried a second edition to the press, in order that he may be the first to glad the public with the intelligence, that in an engagement which has just taken place, eight hundred and fifty of the enemy were killed. Now, is not this latter intelligence eight hundred and fifty times as deplorable as the first? Yet the first is the subject of our sorrow, and this-of our joy! The inconsistency and disproportionateness which has been occasioned in our sentiments of benevolence offers a curious moral phenomenon. The immolations of the Hindoos fill us with compassion or horror, and we are zealously labouring to prevent them: the sacrifices of life by our own criminal executions are the subject of our anxious commiseration, and we are strenuously endeavouring to diminish their number. We feel that the life of a Hindoo or a malefactor is a serious thing, and that nothing but imperious necessity should induce us to destroy the one or to permit the destruction of the other. Yet what are these sacrifices Part of the Declaration and Oath prescribed to be taken by Catholics is this: "I do solemnly declare before God, that I believe that no act in itself unjust, immoral, or wicked can ever be justified or excused by or under pretence or colour that it was done either for the good of the church or in obedience to any ecclesiastical power whatsoever." This decla ration is required as a solemn act, and is supposed of course to involve a great and sacred principle of rectitude. We propose the same declaration to be taken by military men, with the alteration of two words. "I do solemnly declare before God, that I believe that no act in itself unjust, immoral, or wicked can ever be justified or excused by or under pretence or colour that it was done either for the good of the state or in obedience to any military power whatsoever." How would this declaration assort with the customary practice of the soldier? Put state for church, and military for ecclesiastical, and then the world thinks that acts in themselves most unjust, immoral, and wicked are not only justified and excused, but very meritorious: for in the whole system of warfare justice and morality are utterly disregarded. Are those who approve of this Catholic declaration conscious of the grossness of their own inconsistency? Or will they tell us that the interests of the state are so paramount to those of the church, that what would be wickedness in the service of one is virtue in the service of the other? The truth we suppose to be, that so intense is the power of public opinion, that of the thousands who approve the Catholic declarations and practices of war, there are scarcely tens who even perceive their own inconsistency. Mem. in the MS. CHAP. 19.1 NATIONAL IRRITABILITY. 393 of life in comparison with the sacrifices of war? In the late campaign in Russia, there fell, during one hundred and seventy-three days in succession, an average of two thousand nine hundred men per day. More than five hundred thousand human beings in less than six months! And most of these victims expired with peculiar intensity of suffering. We are carrying our benevolence to the Indies, but what becomes of it in Russia, or at Leipsic? We are labouring to save a few lives from the gallows, but where is our solicitude to save them on the field? Life is life wheresoever it be sacrificed, and has everywhere equal claims to our regard. I am not now saying that war is wrong, but that we regard its miseries with an indifference with which we regard no others; that if our sympathy were reasonably excited respecting them, we should be powerfully prompted to avoid war; and that the want of this reasonable and virtuous sympathy is one cause of its prevalence in the world. And another consists in national irritability. It is assumed (not indeed upon the most rational grounds) that the best way of supporting the dignity and maintaining the security of a nation is, when occasions of disagreement arise, to assume a high attitude and a fearless tone. We keep ourselves in a state of irritability which is continually alive to occasions of offence; and he that is prepared to be offended readily finds offences. A jealous sensibility sees insults and injuries where sober eyes see nothing; and nations thus surround themselves with a sort of artificial tentacula, which they throw wide in quest of irritation, and by which they are stimulated to revenge, by every touch of accident or inadvertency. They who are easily offended will also easily offend. What is the experience of private life? The man who is always on the alert to discover trespasses on his honour or his rights never fails to quarrel with his neighbours. Such a person may be dreaded as a torpedo. We may fear, but we shall not love him; and fear, without love, easily lapses into enmity. There are, therefore, many fends and litigations in the life of such a man, that would never have disturbed its quiet, if he had not captiously snarled at the trespasses of accident, and savagely retaliated insignificant injuries. The viper that we chance to molest we suffer to live, if he continue to be quiet; but if he raise himself in menaces of destruction, we knock him on the head. It is with nations as with men. If on every offence we fly to arms we shall of necessity provoke exasperation; and if we exasperate a people as petulant as ourselves, we may probably continue to butcher one another, until we cease only from emptiness of exchequers or weari ness of slaughter. To threaten war is therefore often equivalent to beginning it. In the present state of men's principles, it is not probable that one nation will observe another levying men, and building ships, and founding cannon, without providing men, and ships, and cannon themselves; and when both are thus threatening and defying, what is the hope that there will not be a war? If nations fought only when they could not be at peace, there woul be very little fighting in the world. The wars that are waged for "insults to flags," and an endless train of similar motives, are perhaps generally attributable to the irritability of our pride. We are at no pains to appear pacific towards the offender: our remonstrance is a threat; and the nation which would give satisfaction to an inquiry will give no other answer to a menace than a menace in return. At length we begin to fight, not because we are aggrieved, but because we are angry. One example 394 CAUSES OF WAR. [ESSAY III. may be offered. In 1789 a small Spanish vessel committed some vio lence in Nootka Sound, under the pretence that the country belonged to Spain. This appears to have been the principal ground of offence; and with this both the government and the people of England were very angry. The irritability and haughtiness which they manifested were unaccountable to the Spaniards, and "the peremptory tone was imputed by Spain, not to the feelings of offended dignity and violated justice, but to some lurking enmity and some secret designs which we did not choose to avow."* If the tone had been less peremptory and more rational, no such suspicion would have been excited, and the hostility which was consequent upon the suspicion would of course have been avoided. Happily the English were not so passionate but that before they proceeded to fight they negotiated, and settled the affair amicably. The preparations for this foolish war cost however three millions one hundred and thirty-three thousand pounds! So well indeed is national irritability known to be an efficient cause of war, that they who from any motive wish to promote it endeavour to rouse the temper of a people by stimulating their passions,-just as the boys in our streets stimulate two dogs to fight. These persons talk of the insults, or the encroachments, or the contempts of the destined enemy, with every artifice of aggravation; they tell us of foreigners who want to trample upon our rights, of rivals who ridicule our power, of foes who will crush, and of tyrants who will enslave us. They pursue their object, certainly, by efficacious means: they desire a war, and therefore irritate our passions; and when men are angry they are easily persuaded to fight. That this cause of war is morally bad,—that petulance and irritability are wholly incompatible with Christianity, these pages have repeatedly shown. Wars are often promoted from considerations of interest, as well as from passion. The love of gain adds its influence to our other motives to support them; and without other motives we know that this love is sufficient to give great obliquity to the moral judgment, and to tempt us to many crimes. During a war of ten years there will always be many whose income depends on its continuance; and a countless host of commissaries, and purveyors, and agents, and mechanics commend a war because it fills their pockets. And, unhappily, if money is in prospect, the desolation of a kingdom is often of little concern: destruction and slaughter are not to be put in competi tion with a hundred a year. In truth it seems sometimes to be the system of the conductors of a war to give to the sources of gain endless ramifications. The more there are who profit by it the more numerous are its supporters; and thus the projects of a cabinet become identified with the wishes of the people, and both are gratified in the prosecution of war. A support more systematic and powerful is however given to war, because it offers to the higher ranks of society a profession which unites gentility with profit, and which, without the vulgarity of trade, maintains or enriches them. It is of little consequence to inquire whether the distinction of vulgarity between the toils of war and the toils of commerce be fictitious. In the abstract, it is fictitious; but of this species of repu * Smollett's England. |