Liberty is the gift of God, and ought to be dear to every man; not,
however, that licentious liberty which is not in subordination to his
commands. Men are not independent of God. He is their creator,
preserver, and benefactor. In his hand their breath is, and he has a
right to do what he will with his own; and the Judge of all the earth
will do right. As man is not the creator and proprietor of man, he has
no right to infringe on his liberty or life without his express divine
command; and then he acts only as the executor of God. Man, therefore,
bears a very different relation to God from what he does to his
fellow-man.
The whole system of war is tyrannical and subversive of the fundamental
principles of liberty. It often brings the great mass of community under
the severe bondage of military despotism, so that their lives and
fortunes are at the sport of a tyrant. Where martial law is proclaimed,
liberty is cast down, and despotism raises her horrid ensign in its
place and fills the dungeons and scaffolds with her victims.
Soldiers in actual service are reduced to the most abject slavery, not
able to command their time for a moment, and are constantly driven about
like beasts by petty tyrants. In them is exhibited the ridiculous
absurdity of men rushing into bondage and destruction to preserve or
acquire their liberty and save their lives.
When the inhabitants of a country are cruelly oppressed by a despotic
government, and they rise in mass to throw off the yoke, they are as
often as otherwise crushed beneath the weight of the power under which
they groaned, and then their sufferings are greatly increased; and if
they gain their object after a long and sanguinary struggle, they
actually suffer more on the whole than they would have suffered had they
remained in peace. It is generally the providence of God, too, to make a
people who have thrown off the yoke of their oppressor smart more
severely under the government of their own choice than they did under
the government which they destroyed. This fact ought well to be
considered by every one of a revolutionary spirit.
War actually generates a spirit of anarchy and rebellion which is
destructive to liberty. When the inhabitants of a country are engaged in
the peaceable employments of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce,
anarchy and rebellion seldom happen. When these useful employments
flourish, abundance flows in on every side, gentleness and humanity cast
a smile over the land, and pleasure beams in almost every countenance.
To turn the attention of a nation from these honest employments to _that
of war_ is an evil of unspeakable magnitude. The great object in times
of war is to rouse up what is styled the spirit of the country,--which,
in fact, is nothing but inflaming the most destructive passions against
its own peace and safety. If you infuse into a nation the spirit of war
for the sake of fighting a foreign enemy, you do that which is often
most dangerous to its own liberties; for if you make peace with the
common enemy, you do not destroy the spirit of war among your own
inhabitants; pride, discontent, and revenge will generally agitate the
whole body, so that anarchy and confusion will fill the land, and
nothing but a despotic power can restrain it; and often absolute
despotism is too feeble to withstand it, and the only remedy is again to
seek a common enemy. Nations have sometimes waged war against other
nations because there was such a spirit of war among their own
inhabitants that they could not be restrained from fighting, and if they
had not a common foe they would fight one another. So when a nation once
unsheathes the sword, it cannot easily return the sword again to the
scabbard, but must keep it crimsoned with the blood of man until "they
who take the sword shall perish with the sword," agreeably to the
denunciation of Heaven.
To inflame a mild republic with the _spirit of war_ is putting all its
liberties to the utmost hazard, and is an evil that few appear to
understand or appreciate. No person can calculate the greatness of the
evil to transform the citizens of a peaceful, industrious republic into
a band of furious soldiers; and yet the unhappy policy of nations is to
cultivate a martial spirit that they may appear grand, powerful, and
terrific, when in fact they are kindling flames that will eventually
burn them up root and branch.
In confirmation of what has been said, if we examine the history of
nations we shall find that they have generally lost their liberties in
consequence of the spirit and practice of war. Thus have republics who
have boasted of their freedom lost their liberty one after another, and
that this has resulted from the very nature of war and its inseparable
evils is evident from the fact that so violent and deadly is this
current of ruin, republics have generally sunk down to the lowest abyss
of tyranny and despotism, or have been annihilated and their inhabitants
scattered to the four winds of heaven. Indeed, what nation that has
become extinct did not first lose its liberty by war, and then hasten to
its end under the dominion of those passions which war inflames?
Do nations ever enjoy so much liberty as when most free from the spirit
of war? Are their liberties ever so little endangered as when this
spirit is allayed and all its foreign excitements removed? Do not
nations that have partially lost their civil liberties gradually regain
them in proportion as they continue long without war? Is it not a common
sentiment that the liberties of a people are in danger when war
engrosses their attention? On the whole, is it not undeniable that peace
is favorable to liberty, and that war is its enemy and its ruin? If so,
what can be more unwise, what more opposite to every dictate of sound
wisdom and policy, than the spirit and practice of war?