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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. 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 enquire into its consistency with the Moral Law. If it is defensible he may, by enquiry, 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 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 enquiries 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 enquiry, 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 enquirer 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 their effects.

CAUSES OF WAR.

Of these Causes one undoubtedly consists in the want of enquiry. We have been accustomed from earliest life to a familiarity with its " pomp and cir

cumstance;" 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 enquired 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 enquiry 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 enquire 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 enquiry 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 enquired 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.*

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 vretence or colour that it was done either for the good of the church or in obedience to any ecclesiastical power whatsoever." This declaration 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 arts in themselves most unjust, immoral, and wicked, are not only justified and excused, but very merito. rious 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 inconsis

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 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 every where 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 reason ably 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 feuds 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 weariness 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

tency? 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 the practices of war, there are scarcely tens who even perceive their own inconsistency.Mem. in the MS.

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 would 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 enquiry, 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 may be offered: "In 1789, a small Spanish vessel committed some violence 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 avcided. 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 competition 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

• Smollett's England.

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 enquire 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 reputation public opinion holds the arbitrium et jus et norma; and public opinion is in favour of war.

The army and the navy, therefore, afford to the middle and higher classes a most acceptable profession. The profession of arms is like the profession of law or physic-a regular source of employment and profit. Boys are educated for the army as they are educated for the bar; and parents appear to have no other idea than that war is part of the business of the world. Of younger sons, whose fathers, in pursuance of the unhappy system of primogeniture, do not choose to support them at the expense of the heir, the army and the navy are the common resource. They would not know what to do with out them. To many of these the news of a peace is a calamity; and though they may not lift their voices in favour of new hostilities for the sake of gain, it is unhappily certain that they often secretly desire it.

It is in this manner that much of the rank, the influence, and the wealth of a country become interested in the promotion of wars; and when a custom is promoted by wealth, and influence, and rank, what is the wonder that it should be continued? It is said, (if my memory serves me, by Sir Walter Raleigh,) "he that taketh up his rest to live by this profession shall hardly be an honest

man.

By depending upon war for a subsistence, a powerful inducement is given to desire it; and when the question of war is to be decided, it is to be feared that the whispers of interest will prevail, and that humanity, and religion, and conscience will be sacrificed to promote it.

Of those causes of war which consist in the ambition of princes or statesmen or commanders, it is not necessary to speak, because no one to whom the world will listen is willing to defend them.

Statesmen however have, besides ambition, many purposes of nice policy which make wars convenient; and when they have such purposes, they are sometimes cool speculators in the lives of men. They who have much patronage have many dependents, and they who have many dependents have much power. By a war, thousands become dependent on a minister; and if he be disposed, he can often pursue schemes of guilt, and intrench himself in unpunished wickedness, because the war enables him to silence the clamour of opposition by an office, and to secure the suffrages of venality by a bribe. He has therefore many motives to war-in ambition, that does not refer to conquest; or in fear, that extends only to his office or his pocket: and fear or ambition, are sometimes more interesting considerations than the happiness and the lives of men. Cabinets have, in truth, many secret motives to wars of which the people know little. They talk in public of invasions of right, or breaches of treaty, of the support of honour, of the necessity of retaliation, when these motives have no influence on their determinations. Some untold purpose of expediency, or the private quarrel of a prince, or the pique or anger of a minister, are often the real motives to a contest, whilst

its promoters are loudly talking of the honour or the safety of the country.

But perhaps the most operative cause of the popularity of war, and of the facility with which we engage in it, consists in this; that an idea of glory is attached to military exploits, and of honour to the military profession. The glories of battle, and of those who perish in it, or who return in triumph to their country, are favourite topics of declamation with the historian, the biographer, and the poet. They have told us a thousand times of dying heroes, who "resign their lives amidst the joys of conquest, and, filled with their country's glory, smile in death;" and thus every excitement that eloquence and genius can command, is employed to arouse that ambition of fame which can be gratified only at the expense of blood.

Into the nature and principles of this fame and glory we have already enquired; and in the view alike of virtue and of intellect, they are low and bad.* "Glory is the most selfish of all passions except love."-"I cannot tell how or why the love of glory is a less selfish principle than the love of riches."‡ Philosophy and intellect may therefore well despise it, and Christianity silently, yet emphatically, condemns it. "Christianity," says Bishop Watson, "quite annihilates the disposition for martial glory." Another testimony, and from an advocate of war, goes further-No part of the heroic character is the subject of the "commendation, or precepts, or example of Christ;" but the character the most opposite to the heroic is the subject of them all. §

Such is the foundation of the glory which has for so many ages deceived and deluded multitudes of mankind! Upon this foundation a structure has been raised so vast, so brilliant, so attractive, that the greater portion of mankind are content to gaze in admiration, without any enquiry into its basis or any solicitude for its durability. If, however, it should be, that the gorgeous temple will be able to stand only till Christian truth and light become predominant, it surely will be wise of those who seek a niche in its apartments as their paramount and final goed, to pause ere they proceed. If they desire a reputation that shall outlive guilt and fiction, let them look to the basis of military fame. If this fame should one day sink into oblivion and contempt, it will not be the first instance in which wide-spread glory has been found to be a glittering bubble, that has burst, and been forgotten. Look at the days of chivalry. Of the ten thousand Quixotes of the middle ages, where is now the honour or the name ? yet poets once sang their praises, and the chronicler of their achievements believed he was recording an everlasting fame. Where are now the glories of the tournament? glories

"Of which all Europe rang from side to side." Where is the champion whom princesses caressed and nobles envied ? Where are now the triumphs of Duns Scotus, and where are the folios that perpetuated his fame? The glories of war have indeed outlived these: human passions are less mutable than human follies; but I am willing to avow my convic tion, that these glories are alike destined to sink into forgetfulness; and that the time is approaching when the applauses of heroism, and the splendours of conquest, will be remembered only as follies and iniquities that are past. Let him who seeks for fame, other than that which an era of Christian purity will

See Essay 2, c. 10.

+ West. Rev. No. 1, for 1827.

Mem, and Rem. of the late Jane Taylor. Paley: Evidences of Christianity, p. 2, c. 2.

M

allow, make haste; for every hour that he delays its acquisition will shorten its duration. This is certain, if there be certainty in the promises of heaven.

Of this factitious glory as a cause of War, Gibbon speaks in the Decline and Fall. "As long as mankind," says he, "shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters." "Tis strange to imagine," says the Earl of Shaftesbury, that war, which of all things appears the most savage, should be the passion of the most heroic spirits."But he gives us the reason.-"By a small misguidance of the affection, a lover of mankind becomes a ravager; a hero and deliverer becomes an oppressor and destroyer." *

These are amongst the great perpetual causes of war. And what are they? First, that we do not enquire whether War is right or wrong. Secondly, That we are habitually haughty and irritable in our intercourse with other nations. Thirdly, That War is a source of profit to individuals, and establishes professions which are very convenient to the middle and higher ranks of life. Fourthly, That it gratifies the ambition of public men, and serves the purposes of state policy. Fifthly, That notions of glory are attached to Warlike affairs; which glory is factitious and impure.

In the view of reason, and especially in the view of religion, what is the character of these Causes? Are they pure? Are they honourable? Are they, when connected with their effects, compatible with the Moral Law?-Lastly, and especially, Is it probable that a system of which these are the great ever-during Causes, can itself be good or right?

CONSEQUENCES OF WAR.

To expatiate upon the miseries which War brings upon mankind, appears a trite and a needless employment. We all know that its evils are great and dreadful. Yet the very circumstance that the knowledge is familiar, may make it unoperative upon our sentiments and our conduct. It is not the intensity of misery, it is not the extent of evil alone, which is necessary to animate us to that exertion which evil and misery should excite: if it were, surely we should be much more averse than we now are to contribute, in word or in action, to the promotion of War.

But there are mischiefs attendant upon the system which are not to every man thus familiar, and on which, for that reason, it is expedient to remark. In referring especially to some of those Moral consequences of war which commonly obtain little of our attention, it may be observed, that social and political considerations are necessarily involved in the moral tendency for the happiness of society is always diminished by the diminution of morality; and enlightened policy knows that the greatest support of a state is the virtue of the people.

And yet the reader should bear in mind-what nothing but the frequency of the calamity can make him forget the intense sufferings and irreparable deprivations which one battle inevitably entails upon private life. These are calamities of which the world thinks little, and which, if it thought of them, it could not remove. A father or a husband can seldom be replaced; a void is created in the domestic felicity which there is little hope that the future will fill. By the slaughter of a war, there are thousands who weep in unpitied and unnoticed secrecy, whom the world does not see; and thousands who

Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Ilumour.

retire, in silence, to hopeless poverty, for whom it does not care. To these, the conquest of a kingdom is of little importance. The loss of a protector or a friend is ill repaid by empty glory. An addition of territory may add titles to a king, but the bril liancy of a crown throws little light upon domestic gloom. It is not my intention to insist upon these calamities, intense, and irreparable, and unnumbered as they are; but those who begin a war without taking them into their estimates of its consequences, must be regarded as, at most, half-seeing politicians. The legitimate object of political measures is the good of the people;-and a great sum of good a war must produce, if it outbalances even this portion of its mischiefs.

Nor should we be forgetful of that dreadful part of all warfare, the destruction of mankind. The frequency with which this destruction is represented to our minds, has almost extinguished our perception of its awfulness and horror. Between the years 1141 and 1815, an interval of six hundred and seventy years, our country has been at war, with France alone, two hundred and sixty-six years. If to this we add our wars with other countries, probably we shall find that one-half of the last six or seven centuries has been spent by this country in war! A dreadful picture of human violence! How many of our fellow-men, of our fellow-Christians, have these centuries of slaughter cut off! What is the sum total of the misery of their deaths? *

When political writers expatiate upon the extent and the evils of taxation, they do not sufficiently bear in mind the reflection, that almost all our taxation is the effect of war. A man declaims upon national debts. He ought to declaim upon the parent of those debts. Do we reflect that if heavy taxation entails evils and misery upon the community, that misery and those evils are inflicted upon us by war? The amount of supplies in Queen Anne's reign was about seventy millions; † and of this about sixtysix millions was expended in war. Where is our equivalent good?

Such considerations ought, undoubtedly, to influence the conduct of public men in their disagreements with other states, even if higher considerations do not influence it. They ought to form part of the calculations of the evil of hostility. I believe that a greater mass of human suffering and loss of human enjoyment are occasioned by the pecuniary distresses of a war, than any ordinary advantages of a war compensate. But this consideration seems too remote to obtain our Lotice. Anger at offence or hope of triumph, overpowers the sober calculations of reason, and outbalances the weight of after and long-continued calamities. The only question appears to be, whether taxes enough for a war can be raised, and whether a people will be willing to pay them. But the great question ought to be, (setting questions of Christianity aside,) whether the nation will gain as much by the war as they will lose by taxation and its other calamities.

If the happiness of the people were, what it ought to be, the primary and the ultimate object of national measures, I think that the policy which pursued this object, would often find that even the pecuniary distresses resulting from a war make a greater deduction from the quantum of felicity, than those evils which the war may have been designed to avoid.

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"But war does more harm to the morals of men than even to their property and persons." If, indeed, it depraves our morals more than it injures our persons and deducts from our property, how enormous must its mischiefs be!

I do not know whether the greater sum of moral evil resulting from war, is suffered by those who are immediately engaged in it, or by the public. The mischief is most extensive upon the community, but upon the profession it is most intense.

"Rara fides pietasque viris qui castra sequuntur."

LUCAN.

No one pretends to applaud the morals of an army, and for its religion, few think of it at all. The fact is too notorious to be insisted upon, that thousands who had filled their stations in life with propriety, and been virtuous from principle, have lost, by a military life, both the practice and the regard of morality; and when they have become habituated to the vices of war, have laughed at their honest and plodding brethren, who are still spiritless enough for virtue or stupid enough for piety.

Does any man ask, What occasions depravity in military life? I answer in the words of Robert Hall,t" War reverses, with respect to its objects, all the rules of morality. It is nothing less than a temporary repeal of all the principles of virtue. It is a system out of which almost all the virtues are excluded, and in which nearly all the vices are incorporated." And it requires no sagacity to discover, that those who are engaged in a practice which reverses all the rules of morality--which repeals all the principles of virtue, and in which nearly all the vices are incorporated, cannot, without the intervention of a miracle, retain their minds and morals undepraved.

Look for illustration to the familiarity with the plunder of property and the slaughter of mankind which war induces. He who plunders the citizen of another nation without remorse or reflection, and bears away the spoil with triumph, will inevitably lose something of his principles of probity. He who is familiar with slaughter, who has himself often perpetrated it, and who exults in the perpetration, will not retain undepraved the principles of virtue. His moral feelings are blunted; his moral vision is obscured; his principles are shaken; an inroad is made upon their integrity, and it is an inroad that makes after inroads the more easy. Mankind do not generally resist the influence of habit. If we rob and shoot those who are "enemies" to-day, we are in some degree prepared to shoot and rob those who are not enemies to-morrow. Law may indeed still restrain us from violence; but the power and efficiency of Principle is diminished: and this alienation of the mind from the practice, the love, and the perception of Christian purity, therefore, of ne cessity extends its influence to the other circumstances of life. The whole evil is imputable to war; and we say that this evil forms a powerful evidence against it, whether we direct that evidence to the abstract question of its lawfulness, or to the practical question of its expediency. That can scarcely be lawful which necessarily occasions such widespread immorality. That can scarcely be expedient, which is so pernicious to virtue, and therefore to the state.

The economy of war requires of every soldier an implicit submission to his superior; and this submis

Erasmus.

+ Sermon, 1822.

See Smollett's England, vol. 4, p. 376. "This terrible truth, which I cannot help repeating, must be acknowledged: -indifference and selfishness are the predominant feelings in an army." Miot's Mémoires de l'Expédition en Egypte, &c. Mem. in the MS.

sion is required of every gradation of rank to that above it. "I swear to obey the orders of the officers who are set over me: so help me, God." This system may be necessary to hostile operations, but I think it is unquestionably adverse to intellectual and moral excellence.

The very nature of unconditional obedience implies the relinquishment of the use of the reasoning powers. Little more is required of the soldier than that he be obedient and brave. His obedience is that of an animal, which is moved by a goad or a bit, without judgment of his own; and his bravery is that of a mastiff that fights whatever mastiff others put before him. * It is obvious that in such agency the intellect and the understanding have little part. Now I think that this is important. He who, with whatever motive, resigns the direction of his conduct implicitly to another, surely cannot retain that erectness and independence of mind, that manly consciousness of mental freedom, which is one of the highest privileges of our nature. A British Captain declares that "the tendency of strict discipline, such as prevails on board ships of war, where almost every act of a man's life is regulated by the orders of his superiors, is to weaken the faculty of independent thought." Thus the Rational Being becomes reduced in the intellectual scale: an encroachment is made upon the integrity of its independence. God has given us, individually, capacities for the regulation of our individual conduct. To resign its direction, therefore, to the absolute disposal of another, appears to be an unmanly and unjustifiable relinquishment of the privileges which he has granted to us. And the effect is obviously bad; for although no character will apply universally to any large class of men, and although the intellectual character of the military profession does not result only from this unhappy subjection; yet it will not be disputed, that the honourable exercise of intellect amongst that profession is not relatively great. It is not from them that we expect, because it is not from them that we generally find, those vigorous exertions of intellect which dignify our nature and which extend the boundaries of human knowedge.

But the intellectual effects of military subjection form but a small portion of its evils. The great mischief is, that it requires the relinquisl:ment of our moral agency; that it requires us to do what is opposed to our consciences, and what we know to be wrong. A soldier must obey, how criminal soever the command, and how criminal soever he knows it to be. It is certain, that of those who compose armies, many commit actions which they believe to be wicked, and which they would not commit but for the obligations of a military life. Although a soldier determinately believes that the war is unjust, although he is convinced that his particular part of the service is atrociously criminal, still he must proceed he must prosecute the purposes of injustice or robbery, he must participate in the guilt, and be himself a robber.

To what a situation is a rational and responsible being reduced, who commits actions, good or bad, at the word of another? I can conceive no greater degradation. It is the lowest, the final abjectness of the moral nature. It is this if we abate the glitter of war, and if we add this glitter it is nothing

more.

Such a resignation of our moral agency is not contended for, or tolerated in any one other cir

By one article of the Constitutional Code even of republican France, "the army were expressly prohibited from deliberating on any subject whatever."

+ Captain Basil Hall: Voyage to Loo Choo, c. 2. We make no distinction between the military and naval professions, and employ one word to indicate both.

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