I agree with you perfectly in your disapprobation of war. Abstracted
from the inhumanity of it, I think it wrong in point of human
prudence; for whatever advantage one nation would obtain from another,
whether it be part of their territory, the liberty of commerce with
them, free passage on their rivers, etc., it would be much cheaper to
purchase such advantage with ready money than to pay the expense of
acquiring it by war. An army is a devouring monster; and when you have
raised it, you have, in order to subsist it, not only the fair charges
of pay, clothing, provisions, arms, and ammunition, with numberless
other contingent and just charges to answer and satisfy, but you have
all the additional knavish charges of the numerous tribe of
contractors to defray, with those of every other dealer who furnishes
the articles wanted for your army, and takes advantage of that want to
demand exorbitant prices. It seems to me that if statesmen had a
little more arithmetic, or were more accustomed to calculation, wars
would be much less frequent. I am confident that Canada might have
been purchased from France for a tenth part of the money England spent
in the conquest of it. And if instead of fighting with us for the
power of taxing us, she had kept us in good humor by allowing us to
dispose of our own money, and now and then giving us a little of hers,
by way of donation to colleges, or hospitals, or for cutting canals,
or fortifying ports, she might have easily drawn from us much more by
our occasional voluntary grants and contributions than ever she could
by taxes. Sensible people will give a bucket or two of water to a dry
pump, that they may afterwards get from it all they have occasion for.
Her ministry were deficient in that little point of common-sense; and
so they spent one hundred millions of her money and after all lost
what they contended for.