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What a school of morals, into which to drain off the youthful part of the population of country, after some years of education in it, to be turned back upon society! All habits of regular industry gone, accustomed to take by force, familiarized with wounds and blood, their duty slaughtering, and their diversion gambling or debauchery, what is to be expected when they are disbanded? What, but that which always happens-robberies, murders, crowded gaols, disgusting executions. The commencement of peace sometimes doubles, and more than doubles, the number of criminals; uniformly shews a fearful increase. The influx of such characters is like inoculating society with a moral pestilence.

This combination of calamity and guilt must, and has, proved a gloomy interruption of that progress which may still be traced in the history of mankind, and it clouds our prospects of futurity. It is as if an individual should resolve, at certain intervals, to give himself to mischief, and forget all distinction of right and wrong, virtue and vice, good and evil: to abandon the study of truth, and the acquisition of goodness. Such an abandonment is war, to nations.

It prevents civilization. Tribes are kept in the savage state by wars with each other, and with their more polished neighbours. The Slave-Trade fomented hostility through a thousand petty kingdoms, which might have been won by friendly

intercourse to quietness, harmony, commerce, and improvement. Did America pursue a more gene rous policy towards the Aborigines of that continent, they might have all been induced, like those of them among whom the Quakers settled, to modify their habits and gain a social existence, instead of being destined, as they apparently are, to be exterminated by the sword of aggression. Civilization to some degree has been the occasional and accidental result of conquest. It never was the object—and might have been better attained by better means. On the other hand, the most refined have been barbarized, and Rome itself, the luxurious and magnificent, beheld her sun go back in the heavens to the darkness from which it arose.

The cultivation of literature, the peaceful arts of life, the intercourse of different nations, which soften and obliterate prejudice, and diffuse the discoveries and superiorities of one over all others, these great principles of improvement are all suspended by war, and for the time almost annihilated. The sword divides where oceans could not separate. It elevates prejudice and destroys philanthropy. Millions of men are taught to hate other millions, from whom they might receive useful knowledge, to whom they might render important service, with whom they might exchange affection and esteem. As war hires to execute slaughter the arm that should labour, it also hires to plan that slaughter the mind that

should enlighten with philosophy and science. Its brutalizing magic transforms even the energies of intellect into machines of desolation.

How fatal are wars to liberty! Standing armies make tyrants, where they do not find them. Why does all the world speak of Washington as a singular character? He commanded a victorious army, and did not become a military despot. The exception is likely to remain unparalleled. The absolute obedience of soldiers, and power of generals, is fatal to civil liberty. Its death-warrant is signed in any country which aspires to conquest and military glory. Thus was Rome ruined. The armies made their commanders emperors, who, by their aid made the people slaves, until the citizens, who in their days of freedom looked down on sovereigns, held property and life at the caprice of any fool, or wretch, or villain, to whom the Prætorian bands gave the imperial crown, or sold it by public auction. Freedom is as essential to improvement, as the air we breathe to our existence. The ornamental arts, or lighter literature, may be the trappings of a tyrant's throne, but genius cannot breathe the atmosphere of slavery. Its productions wither in the shade of the despot's palace, though glittering with splendid ornaments, while they flourish on the barren rock, exposed to the winds, and beaten by the The captive Hebrews hung their harps on the willows of the proud Euphrates, but by

storm.

the lowlier stream of Jordan they struck them joyously to the sweetest and loftiest songs of Zion. With liberty, farewell the strength, and pride, and glory of intellect - oppression first forges its fetters, and then digs its grave.

And are mankind always to be driven by ambition, like sheep to the shambles? Is there in the road of improvement, to be at every step, a stumbling-block? Yes, say some philosophers, whose doctrines have, from various causes, obtained a temporary prevalence, the world must always be subject to the scourge of war, to keep down the excess of population: and even were we arrived at Utopian felicity, this same tendency to excessive population, would prevent its permanence, and bring back war to avert starvation. This, if true, drops the curtain on our hopes, and falsifies the wishes of benevolence and the promises of heaven. The effect on a state of high improvement, once gained, belongs to our next Lecture. We only ask now, what is really the effect of wars on population? The evil of excessive population consists, not in the absolute number, but in its extending beyond the means of subsistence. While there is food, numbers are advantageous. Their increase is a good, provided the means of subsistence increase also. As war is now conducted, that increase may be stopped, or retarded; but the means of subsistence are diminished also, and in a greater proportion. By

withdrawing hands from agriculture, and by enormous waste and destruction, it is the fact that war destroys the means of living, in a greater proportion than it destroys life; and consequently leaves society in a worse condition, as to the real or imagined evil of a redundant population, than at its commencement. It is as if a community, in danger of famine, should destroy a hundred of its members, and in the struggle waste the food of two hundred-they would be in greater danger than before. And while the effect of war on the amount of population compared with the means of subsistence has been overlooked, its influence .on the absolute amount has been greatly overrated. Even during the late destructive contests, the population of the greater part of Europe increased considerably. To a certain extent, war Facts rather as a stimulus than as a check. The demand for men produces a supply; and while he can pay for them, the slaughter-house of the conqueror, like that of the butcher, will not want a supply of victims. But enough of an objection which is only formidable because it is fashionable.

The hope that nations may ever have sufficient wisdom and goodness to decide their differences by a more rational mode than hiring men to cut throats and burn towns, is so commonly scouted as visionary, that it is expedient to appeal to fact and experience, and inquire what improvement has already taken place on this very subject.

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