individuals. It is one of the great laws of Heaven. And nations, like
individuals, may well measure their nearness to God and to his glory by
the conformity of their conduct to this duty.
* * * * *
In response to arguments founded on economy, the true nature of man,
and Christianity, I hear the skeptical note of some advocate of the
transmitted order of things, some one among the "fire-worshippers" of
War, saying, All this is beautiful, but visionary; it is in advance
of the age, which is not yet prepared for the great change. To such
I answer: Nothing can be beautiful that is not true; but all this is
true, and the time has come for its acceptance. Now is the dawning day,
and now the fitting hour.
The name of Washington is invoked as authority for a prejudice which
Economy, Human Nature, and Christianity repudiate. Mighty and reverend
as is his name, more mighty and more reverend is Truth. The words
of counsel which he gave were in accordance with the spirit of his
age,--which was not shocked by the slave-trade. But his great soul,
which loved virtue and inculcated justice and benevolence, frowns upon
those who would use his authority as an incentive to War. God forbid
that his sacred character should be profanely stretched, like the skin
of John Ziska, on a militia-drum, to arouse the martial ardor of the
American people!
The practice of Washington, during the eight years of his
administration, compared with that of the last eight years for which we
have the returns, may explain his real opinions. His condemnation of
the present wasteful system speaks to us from the following table.[103]
[103] Executive Document No. 15, Twenty-eighth Congress, First Session.
+----------------------+----------------+---------------+
| Years. | Military | Naval |
| | Establishment. | Establishment.|
+----------------------+----------------+---------------+
| 1789-91 | $835,618 | $570 |
| 1792 | 1,223,594 | 53! |
| 1793 | 1,237,620 | |
| 1794 | 2,733,539 | 61,409 |
| 1795 | 2,573,059 | 410,562 |
| 1796 | 1,474,672 | 274,784 |
| Total, during eight |} ----------- | -------- |
| years of Washington, |} $10,078,102 | $747,378 |
| | | |
| 1835 | $9,420,313 | $3,864,939 |
| 1836 | 19,667,166 | 5,807,718 |
| 1837 | 20,702,929 | 6,646,915 |
| 1838 | 20,557,473 | 6,131,581 |
| 1839 | 14,588,664 | 6,182,294 |
| 1840 | 12,030,624 | 6,113,897 |
| 1841 | 13,704,882 | 6,001,077 |
| 1842 | 9,188,469 | 8,397,243 |
| | | |
| Total, during eight |} ------------ | ----------- |
| recent years, |} $119,860,520 | $49,145,664 |
+----------------------+----------------+---------------+
Thus the expenditures for the national armaments under the sanction
of Washington were less than _eleven million_ dollars, while during
a recent similar period of eight years they amounted to upwards of
_one hundred and sixty-nine millions_,--an increase of nearly _fifteen
hundred per cent_! To him who quotes the precept of Washington I
commend the example. He must be strongly possessed by the martial mania
who will not confess, that, in this age, when the whole world is at
peace, and our national power is assured, _there is less need_ of these
Preparations than in an age convulsed with War, when our national power
was little respected. The only semblance of argument in their favor
is the increased wealth of the country; but the capacity to endure
taxation is no criterion of its justice, or even of its expediency.
Another fallacy is also invoked, that _whatever is is right_. A
barbarous practice is elevated above all those authorities by which
these Preparations are condemned. We are made to count principles
as nothing, because not yet recognized by nations. But they are
practically applied in the relations of individuals, towns, counties,
and states in our Union. _All these have disarmed._ It remains only
that they should be extended to the grander sphere of nations. Be it
our duty to proclaim the principles, whatever the practice. Through us
let Truth speak.
* * * * *
From the past and the present auspicious omens cheer us for the future.
The terrible wars of the French Revolution were the violent rending of
the body preceding the exorcism of the fiend. Since the morning stars
first sang together, the world has not witnessed a peace so harmonious
and enduring as that which now blesses the Christian nations. Great
questions, fraught with strife, and in another age heralds of War, are
now determined by Mediation or Arbitration. Great political movements,
which a few short years ago must have led to bloody encounter, are
now conducted by peaceful discussion. Literature, the press, and
innumerable societies, all join in the work of inculcating good-will
to man. The Spirit of Humanity pervades the best writings, whether the
elevated philosophical inquiries of the "Vestiges of the Creation," the
ingenious, but melancholy, moralizings of the "Story of a Feather," or
the overflowing raillery of "Punch." Nor can the breathing thought and
burning word of poet or orator have a higher inspiration. Genius is
never so Promethean as when it bears the heavenly fire to the hearths
of men.
In the last age, Dr. Johnson uttered the detestable sentiment, that
he liked "a good Hater." The man of this age will say that he likes
"a good Lover." Thus reversing the objects of regard, he follows a
higher wisdom and a purer religion than the renowned moralist knew.
He recognizes that peculiar Heaven-born sentiment, the Brotherhood of
Man, soon to become the decisive touchstone of human institutions. He
confesses the power of Love, destined to enter more and more into the
concerns of life. And as Love is more heavenly than Hate, so must its
influence redound more to the true glory of man and the approval of
God. A Christian poet--whose few verses bear him with unflagging wing
in immortal flight--has joined this sentiment with Prayer. Thus he
speaks, in words of uncommon pathos and power:--
"He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
"He prayeth best who loveth best
All things, both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all."[104]
[104] Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Part VII.
The ancient Law of Hate is yielding to the Law of Love. It is seen in
manifold labors of philanthropy and in missions of charity. It is seen
in institutions for the insane, the blind, the deaf, the dumb, the
poor, the outcast,--in generous efforts to relieve those who are in
prison,--in public schools, opening the gates of knowledge to all the
children of the land. It is seen in the diffusive amenities of social
life, and in the increasing fellowship of nations; also in the rising
opposition to Slavery and to War.
There are yet other special auguries of this great change,
auspicating, in the natural progress of man, the abandonment of all
international Preparations for War. To these I allude briefly, but with
a deep conviction of their significance.
Look at the Past, and see how War itself is changed, so that its
oldest "fire-worshipper" would hardly know it. At first nothing but
savagery, with disgusting rites, whether in the North American Indian
with Powhatan as chief, or the earlier Assyrian with Nebuchadnezzar as
king, but yielding gradually to the influence of civilization. With the
Greeks it was less savage, but always barbarous,--also with Rome always
barbarous. Too slowly Christianity exerted a humanizing power. Rabelais
relates how the friar Jean des Entommeures clubbed twelve thousand
and more enemies, "without mentioning women and children, which is
understood always." But this was War, as seen by that great genius in
his day. This can be no longer. Women and children are safe now. The
divine metamorphosis has begun.
Look again at the Past, and observe the _change in dress_. Down to a
period quite recent the sword was the indispensable companion of the
gentleman, wherever he appeared, whether in street or society; but he
would be deemed madman or bully who should wear it now. At an earlier
period the armor of complete steel was the habiliment of the knight.
From the picturesque sketch by Sir Walter Scott, in the "Lay of the
Last Minstrel," we learn the barbarous constraint of this custom.
"Ten of them were sheathed in steel,
With belted sword, and spur on heel;
They quitted not their harness bright,
Neither by day nor yet by night:
They lay down to rest
With corslet laced,
Pillowed on buckler cold and hard;
They carved at the meal
With gloves of steel,
And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred."
But all this is changed now.
Observe the _change in architecture and in domestic life_. Places
once chosen for castles or houses were savage, inaccessible retreats,
where the massive structure was reared to repel attack and to enclose
its inhabitants. Even monasteries and churches were fortified,
and girdled by towers, ramparts, and ditches,--while a child was
stationed as watchman, to observe what passed at a distance, and
announce the approach of an enemy. Homes of peaceful citizens in
towns were castellated, often without so much as an aperture for
light near the ground, but with loopholes through which the shafts
of the crossbow were aimed. The colored plates now so common, from
mediæval illustrations, especially of Froissart, exhibit these
_belligerent armaments_, always so burdensome. From a letter of
Margaret Paston, in the time of Henry the Sixth, of England, I draw
supplementary testimony. Addressing in dutiful phrase her "right
worshipful husband," she asks him to procure for her "some crossbows,
and wyndacs [grappling-irons] to bind them with, and quarrels [arrows
with square heads]," also "two or three short pole-axes to keep within
doors"; and she tells her absent lord of apparent preparations by a
neighbor,--"great ordnance within the house," "bars to bar the door
crosswise," and "wickets on every quarter of the house to shoot out at,
both with bows and with hand-guns."[105] Savages could hardly live in
greater distrust. Let now the Poet of Chivalry describe another scene:--
"Ten squires, ten yeomen, mail-clad men,
Waited the beck of the warders ten;
Thirty steeds, both fleet and wight,
Stood saddled in stable day and night,
Barbed with frontlet of steel, I trow,
And with Jedwood axe at saddle-bow;
A hundred more fed free in stall:
Such was the custom of Branksome Hall."
[105] Paston Letters, CXIII. (LXXVII. Vol. III. p. 315.)
This also is all changed now.
The principles causing this change are not only active still, but
increasing in activity; nor can they be confined to individuals.
Nations must soon declare them, and, abandoning martial habiliments and
fortifications, enter upon peaceful, _unarmed life_. With shame let it
be said, that they continue to live in the very relations of distrust
towards neighbors which shock us in the knights of Branksome Hall, and
in the house of Margaret Paston. They pillow themselves on "buckler
cold and hard," while their highest anxiety and largest expenditure
are for the accumulation of new munitions of War. The barbarism which
individuals have renounced nations still cherish. So doing, they take
counsel of the wild-boar in the fable, who whetted his tusks on a tree
of the forest when no enemy was near, saying, that in time of Peace he
must prepare for War. Has not the time come, when man, whom God created
in his own image, and to whom he gave the Heaven-directed countenance,
shall cease to look down to the beast for an example of conduct? Nay,
let me not dishonor the beasts by the comparison. The superior animals,
at least, prey not, like men, upon their own species. The kingly lion
turns from his brother lion; the ferocious tiger will not raven upon
his kindred tiger; the wild-boar of the forest does not glut his
sharpened tusks upon a kindred boar.
"Sed jam serpentum major concordia: parcit
Cognatis maculis similis fera: quando leoni
Fortior eripuit vitam leo? quo nemore unquam
Exspiravit aper majoris dentibus apri?
Indica tigris agit rabida cum tigride _pacem
Perpetuam_."[106]
[106] Juvenal, Sat. XV. 159-164.
To an early monarch of France just homage has been offered for effort
in the cause of Peace, particularly in abolishing the Trial by Battle.
To another monarch of France, in our own day, descendant of St. Louis,
and lover of Peace worthy of the illustrious lineage, Louis Philippe,
belongs the honest fame of first from the throne publishing the truth
that Peace is endangered by Preparations for War. "The sentiment, or
rather the principle," he says, in reply to an address from the London
Peace Convention in 1843, "that in Peace you must prepare for War,
_is one of difficulty and danger; for while we keep armies on land to
preserve peace, they are at the same time incentives and instruments
of war_. He rejoiced in all efforts to preserve peace, for that was
what all needed. He thought the time was coming when we should get
rid entirely of war in all civilized countries." This time has been
hailed by a generous voice from the Army itself, by a Marshal of
France,--Bugeaud, the Governor of Algiers,--who, at a public dinner
in Paris, gave as a toast these words of salutation to a new and
approaching era of happiness: "To the pacific union of the great human
family, by the association of individuals, nations, and races! To the
annihilation of War! To the transformation of destructive armies into
corps of industrious laborers, who will consecrate their lives to
the cultivation and embellishment of the world!" Be it our duty to
speed this consummation! And may other soldiers emulate the pacific
aspiration of this veteran chief, until _the trade of War_ ceases from
the earth![107]
[107] There was a moment when the aspiration of the French marshal
seemed fulfilled even in France, if we may credit the early Madame de
Lafayette, who, in the first sentence of her Memoirs, announces perfect
tranquillity, where "no other arms were known than instruments for the
cultivation of the earth and for building, and the troops were employed
on these things." Part of their work was to divert the waters of the
Eure, so that the fountains at Versailles should have a perpetual
supply: but this was better than War.--MADAME DE LAFAYETTE, _Mémoires
de la Cour de France pour les Années 1688 et 1689_, p. 1.
To William Penn belongs the distinction, destined to brighten as men
advance in virtue, of first in human history establishing the _Law
of Love_ as a rule of conduct in the intercourse of nations. While
recognizing the duty "to support power in reverence with the people,
and to secure the people from the abuse of power,"[108] as a great
end of government, he declined the superfluous protection of arms
against foreign force, and aimed to "reduce the savage nations by just
and gentle manners to the love of civil society and the Christian
religion." His serene countenance, as he stands with his followers in
what he called the sweet and clear air of Pennsylvania, all unarmed,
beneath the spreading elm, forming the great treaty of friendship with
the untutored Indians,--whose savage display fills the surrounding
forest as far as the eye can reach,--not to wrest their lands by
violence, but to obtain them by peaceful purchase,--is to my mind the
proudest picture in the history of our country. "The great God," said
the illustrious Quaker, in words of sincerity and truth addressed to
the Sachems, "hath written his law in our hearts, by which we are
taught and commanded to love and help and do good to one another. It
is not our custom to use hostile weapons against our fellow-creatures,
for which reason we come unarmed. Our object is not to do injury, but
to do good. We are now met on the broad pathway of good faith and good
will, so that no advantage is to be taken on either side, but all is
to be openness, brotherhood, and love, while all are to be treated as
of the same flesh and blood."[109] These are words of True Greatness.
"Without any carnal weapons," says one of his companions, "we entered
the land, and inhabited therein, as safe as if there had been thousands
of garrisons." What a sublime attestation! "This little State," says
Oldmixon, "subsisted in the midst of six Indian nations without so
much as a militia for its defence." A great man worthy of the mantle
of Penn, the venerable philanthropist, Clarkson, in his life of the
founder, pictures the people of Pennsylvania as armed, though without
arms,--strong, though without strength,--safe, without the ordinary
means of safety. According to him, the constable's staff was the only
instrument of authority for the greater part of a century; and never,
during the administration of Penn, or that of his proper successors,
was there a quarrel or a war.[110]
[108] Preface to Penn's Frame of Government of the Province of
Pennsylvania: Hazard's Register of Pennsylvania, Vol. I. p. 338. See
also Clarkson's Memoirs of Penn, Vol. I. p. 238, Philadelphia, 1814.
[109] Clarkson's Memoirs of Penn, Vol. I. Ch. 18.
[110] Ibid., Vol. II. Ch. 23.
Greater than the divinity that doth hedge a king is the divinity that
encompasses the righteous man and the righteous people. The flowers of
prosperity smiled in the footprints of William Penn. His people were
unmolested and happy, while (sad, but true contrast!) other colonies,
acting upon the policy of the world, building forts, and showing
themselves in arms, were harassed by perpetual alarm, and pierced by
the sharp arrows of savage war.
This pattern of a Christian commonwealth never fails to arrest the
admiration of all who contemplate its beauties. It drew an epigram of
eulogy from the caustic pen of Voltaire, and has been fondly painted by
sympathetic historians. Every ingenuous soul in our day offers willing
tribute to those graces of justice and humanity, by the side of which
contemporary life on this continent seems coarse and earthy.
Not to barren words can we confine ourselves in recognition of virtue.
While we see the right, and approve it too, we must dare to pursue it.
Now, in this age of civilization, surrounded by Christian nations, it
is easy to follow the successful example of William Penn encompassed
by savages. Recognizing those two transcendent ordinances of God, the
_Law of Right_ and the _Law of Love_,--twin suns which illumine the
moral universe,--why not aspire to the true glory, and, what is higher
than glory, the great good, of taking the lead in _the disarming of the
nations_? Let us abandon the system of Preparations for War in time
of Peace, as irrational, unchristian, vainly prodigal of expense, and
having a direct tendency to excite the evil against which it professes
to guard. Let the enormous means thus released from iron hands be
devoted to labors of beneficence. Our battlements shall be schools,
hospitals, colleges, and churches; our arsenals shall be libraries; our
navy shall be peaceful ships, on errands of perpetual commerce; our
army shall be the teachers of youth and the ministers of religion. This
is the cheap defence of nations. In such intrenchments what Christian
soul can be touched with fear? Angels of the Lord will throw over the
land an invisible, but impenetrable panoply:--
"Or if Virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her."[111]
[111] These are the concluding words of that most exquisite creation
of early genius, the "Comus." Beyond their intrinsic value, they have
authority from the circumstance that they were adopted by Milton as a
motto, and inscribed by him in an album at Geneva, while on his foreign
travels. This album is now in my hands. The truth thus embalmed by the
grandest poet of modern times is also illustrated in familiar words by
the most graceful poet of antiquity:--
"Integer vitæ scelerisque purus Non eget Mauris jaculis, neque arcu,
Nec venenatis gravida sagittis, Fusce, pharetra."
HOR., _Carm._ I. xxii. 1-4.
Dryden pictures the same in some of his most magical lines:--
"A milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged, Fed on the lawns, and in
the forest ranged; Without unspotted, innocent within, _She feared no
danger, for she knew no sin_."
_The Hind and the Panther_, Part I. 1-4.
At the thought of such a change, the imagination loses itself in
vain effort to follow the multitudinous streams of happiness which
gush forth from a thousand hills. Then shall the naked be clothed
and the hungry fed; institutions of science and learning shall crown
every hill-top; hospitals for the sick, and other retreats for the
unfortunate children of the world, for all who suffer in any way, in
mind, body, or estate, shall nestle in every valley; while the spires
of new churches leap exulting to the skies. The whole land shall
testify to the change. Art shall confess it in the new inspiration of
the canvas and the marble. The harp of the poet shall proclaim it in
a loftier rhyme. Above all, the heart of man shall bear witness to it,
in the elevation of his sentiments, in the expansion of his affections,
in his devotion to the highest truth, in his appreciation of true
greatness. The eagle of our country, without the terror of his beak,
and dropping the forceful thunderbolt from his pounces, shall soar,
with the olive of Peace, into untried realms of ether, nearer to the
sun.
* * * * *
I pause to review the field over which we have passed. We have beheld
War, sanctioned by International Law as a mode of determining _justice_
between nations, elevated into an _established custom_, defined and
guarded by a complex code known as the Laws of War; we have detected
its origin in an appeal, not to the moral and intellectual part of
man's nature, in which alone is Justice, but to that low part which
he has in common with the beast; we have contemplated its infinite
miseries to the human race; we have weighed its sufficiency as a
mode of determining justice between nations, and found that it is
a rude invocation to force, or a gigantic game of chance, in which
God's children are profanely treated as a pack of cards, while, in
unnatural wickedness, it is justly likened to the monstrous and impious
custom of Trial by Battle, which disgraced the Dark Ages,--thus
showing, that, in this day of boastful civilization, justice between
nations is determined by the same rules of barbarous, brutal
violence which once controlled the relations between individuals.
We have next considered the various prejudices by which War is
sustained, founded on a false belief in its necessity,--the practice
of nations, past and present,--the infidelity of the Christian
Church,--a mistaken sentiment of honor,--an exaggerated idea of the
duties of patriotism,--and finally, that monster prejudice which
draws its vampire life from the vast Preparations for War in time
of Peace;--especially dwelling, at this stage, upon the thriftless,
irrational, and unchristian character of these Preparations,--hailing
also the auguries of their overthrow,--and catching a vision of the
surpassing good that will be achieved, when the boundless means thus
barbarously employed are dedicated to works of Peace, opening the
serene path to that righteousness which exalteth a nation.
* * * * *