tical views are thwarted or contradicted. According to men's feelings and their peculiar interest, a war is or is not considered by them as purely defensive.-Then again, the affairs of nations are so complicated, that what appears to some persons as immediately and directly offensive war, may in the views of others be regarded as remotely and ultimately defensive. Yet, even in the strictest defensive wars, how little is really defended which can be protected by the sword? When William invaded England, from Normandy, in consequence of the refusal of the English to recognize his title to the succession, it is very easy to imagine that Harold said a number of fine things to the tools of his ambition, and William as many to his. Yet it is not easy perhaps, to say, how much the real agents gained by their victory, nor to calculate under what disadvantage each party would have laboured, had they wisely refused to draw a sword in the quarrel. It is difficult to say what, under such circumstances, would have been the wisest course for the active mass to pursue. Fighting on either part was not the best: for, look at the result on either side, a tremendous slaughter, and the remnant of the victorious party, the great multitude, quite as much in slavery as before. I may be asked here if I recommend unqualified and tame submission to an invader? Certainly not: but

here was a different question: the English were not then, as they now are, a free people: they fought against one tyrant for the sake of another, and gave a specimen how much men may be deceived by specious names. The English did not fight for any thing truly valuable. I do think it may be proved, that even in this case they could have done better for themselves by refusing to fight and having recourse to negociation. This invasion of William seems almost an extreme case, yet even he might make something of a plea in his favour; he might assert that his right ought not to be tamely yielded to an usurper, and that the English nation were opposing his just claims, and therefore, that his loyal subjects were bound to resist rebels to his authority." (Scargill's

Essays on various Subjects, pp. 164–167.)

Defensive war is a solecism. The terms ought never to have been combined. They mean, if any thing, defensive offence. To resistance, in extreme cases armed resistance, of attacks upon liberty or life, no valid objection can be urged. Man has a natural right, unrepealed by revelation, to repel force by force. To call this war, is confounding two very different things under the same name. A licence to attack is essential to war. It authorizes violence towards all belonging to the same nation as the aggressors. When a free country is invaded, let every citizen arm and fight, till the invaders be repelled. But

to plunder a merchant of his property, to lay a town in ashes, to conquer an island, because that merchant, town, or island, have a nominal and involuntary connexion with the invaders, is to become agressors equally with them, and to avenge the wrongs of the guilty on the heads of the innocent. What can be more absurd and unjust than for a French army to ravage India, because an English army had desolated France? Injustice cannot sanctify injustice, nor one crime be the justification of another. The readiest means of repelling an assault upon one unoffending party may seem to be their assaulting another unoffending party; but the readiest means of compassing a lawful object is very often not lawful in itself. If to" do evil that good may come" be iniquitous in one man, it cannot be right in millions of men combined in national union.

Paley recovers his natural tone, and writes like what he really was at heart, the friend of man, when he proceeds to enforce on the attention of rulers "two lessons of rational and sober policy:" first, "to place their glory and their emulation, not in extent of territory, but in raising the greatest quantity of happiness out of a given territory: and, secondly, never to pursue national honour, as distinct from national interest.” To his concession that it may be necessary to assert the honour of a nation, by war, the remarks of Godwin on the same subject may be

satisfactorily opposed. "True honour is to be found only in integrity and justice. It has been doubted, how far a view to reputation ought, in matters of inferior moment, to be permitted to influence the conduct of individuals; but let the case of individuals be decided as it may, reputation considered as a separate motive in the instance of nations, can perhaps never be justifiable. In individuals, it seems as if I might, consistently with the utmost real integrity, be so misconstrued, as to render my efforts at usefulness almost necessarily abortive. But this reason does not apply to the case of nations. Their real story cannot easily be suppressed. Usefulness and public spirit, in relation to them, chiefly belong to the transactions of their members among themselves; and their influence in the transactions of neighbouring nations, is a consideration evidently subordinate." (Political Justice, B. v. Ch. xvi.) That the real story of nations cannot be suppressed, is an argument not only against reputation as a separate motive, which Paley also seems to condemn, but also against the assumption that national interest can ever require the hostile assertion of national honour.

"If the cause and end of war be justifiable; all the means that appear necessary to the end are justifiable also."

This is horrible; and it is extraordinary that

the consequences of his principle did not lead Paley to question its validity, and operate as a reductio ad absurdum, or rather as a reductio ad nefandum. Every species of fraud and violence which can tend to weaken a rival nation is thus

justified. The vindication includes many barbarities which the progress of information and benevolent feeling has abolished; but which, after all, have as good an excuse as the practices which are still retained. Thus it is allowed that, "if it be lawful to kill an enemy at all, it seems lawful to do so by one mode of death as well as by another; by a dose of poison, as by the point of a sword; by the hand of an assassin, as by the attack of an army: for, if it be said that one species of assault leaves to an enemy the power of defending himself against it, and that the other does not; it may be answered, that we possess at least the same right to cut off an enemy's defence, that we have to seek his destruction. In this manner might the question be debated, if there existed no rule or law of war upon the subject." And what are laws of war, but restrictions imposed on the furious passions of combatants by the increasing benevolence of mankind, which thus marks its advance, and will finally prevail? Public opinion is the only sanction of the laws of war; and is not always an effectual one. Every article of Paley's list of