peace. He began to shed blood almost as soon as he began to go alone in
company with his nearest relatives; and when Abel asked of Cain, 'Am I
not a man and a brother?' the latter, instead of giving him the hug
fraternal, did beat him to death. Cain's only object, it should seem,
was a quiet life, and Abel had disturbed his repose by setting up a
higher standard of excellence than the elder brother could afford to
maintain. It was only to 'conquer a peace' that Cain thus acted. He
desired 'indemnity for the past and security for the future,' and so he
took up arms against his brother and ended him. He loved peace, but he
did not fear war, because he was the stronger party of the two, his
weapons being as ready for action as the British navy is ready for it
to-day; and Abel was as defenceless as we were a twelvemonth ago. Cain
is the type of all mankind, who know that peace is better than war, but
who rush into war under the pressure of envy and pride. Ancient as
violence is, it is not so old as peace; and it is for peace that all
wars are made, at least by organized communities. All peoples have in
their minds the idea of a golden age, not unlike to that time so vividly
described by Hesiod, when men were absolutely good, and therefore happy;
living in perfect accord on what the earth abundantly gave them,
suffering neither illness nor old age, and dying as calmly as they had
lived. Historical inquiry has so far shaken belief in the existence of
any such time as that painted by the poet, that men have agreed to place
it in the future. It has never been, but it is to be. It will come with
that 'coming man,' who travels so slowly, and will be by him
inaugurated, a boundless millennial time. In the mean time contention
prevails; 'war's unequal game' is played with transcendent vigor, and at
a cost that would frighten the whole human race into madness were it
incurred for any other purpose. But, while fighting, men have kept their
eyes steadily fixed upon peace, which is to be the reward of their valor
and their pecuniary sacrifices. Every warlike time has been followed by
a period in which strenuous exertions have been made to make peace
perpetual. Never was there a more profound desire felt for peace than
that which prevailed among the Romans of the Augustan age, after a
series of civil and foreign wars yet unparalleled in the history of
human struggles. One poet could denounce the first forger of the iron
sword as being truly brutal and iron-hearted; and another could declare
it to be the 'mission' of the Romans only to impose terms of peace upon
barbarians, who should be compelled to accept quiet as a boon, or endure
it as a burden. Strange sentiments were these to proceed from the land
of the legions, but they expressed the current Roman opinion, which
preferred even dishonor to war. So was it after the settlement of Europe
in 1815. A generation that had grown up in the course of the greatest of
modern contests produced the most determined and persistent advocates of
the 'peace-at-any-price' policy; and for forty years peace was preserved
between the principal Christian nations, through the exertions of
statesmen, kings, philanthropists, and economists, who, if they could
agree in nothing else, were almost unanimous in the opinion that war was
an expensive folly, and that the first duty of a government was to
prevent its subjects from becoming military-mad. Perhaps there never was
a happier time in Christendom than it knew between the autumn of 1815
and the spring of 1854, after Napoleon had gone down and before Nicholas
had set himself up to dictate law to the world. It was the modern age of
the Antonines, into which was crowded more true enjoyment than mankind
had known for centuries; and they are beginning to learn its excellence
from its loss,--war raging now in the New World, while Europe lives in
hourly expectation of its occurrence. There were wars, and cruel wars,
too, in those years, but they faintly affected Europe and the United
States, and probably added something to men's happiness, for the same
reason that a storm to which we are not exposed increases our sense of
comfort. Their thunders were remote, and they furnished materials for
the journals. So we saw a Providence in them, and thanked Heaven, some
of us, that we no longer furnished examples of the folly of contention.
The friends of peace were actuated by various motives. With statesmen
and politicians peace was preferred because it was cheaper than war, and
all countries were burdened with debt. England has sometimes been
praised because she so uniformly threw her influence on the side of
peace, after she had accomplished her purpose in the war against
imperial France. Time and again, she might have waged popular wars, and
in which she would have probably been successful; but she would help
neither the Spaniards against France and the Holy Alliance, nor the
Turks against the Russians, nor the Poles against the Czar, nor the
Hungarians against the Austrians, nor the Italians against the Kaiser,
nor the Greeks against the Turks. She settled all her disputes with the
United States by negotiation, and showed no disposition to fight with
France, except when she had all the rest of Europe on her side. But this
praise has not been deserved. England did not quarrel with powerful
countries, because she could not afford to enter upon costly warfare.
She had gone to the extent of her means when her debt had reached to
four thousand million dollars, and she could not increase that debt
largely until she should also have increased her wealth. Time was
required to add to her means, and to lessen her debt; and to such a
state had her finances been reduced, that it is now twenty years since
she began to derive a portion of her revenue from an income tax, which,
imposed in the time of peace, was increased when war became inevitable.
The bonds she had given to keep the peace were too great to admit of her
breaking it. She did not fight, because she doubted her ability to fight
successfully. She had no wish to behold another suspension of cash
payments by her national bank; and a general war would be sure to bring
suspension. But she was as ready as she had ever been to contend with
the weak. The Chinese and the Afghans did not find her very forbearing,
though with neither of those peoples had she any just cause for war.
With the disunited States she has been as prompt to quarrel as she was
slow to contend with the United States; and now she is one of the high
contracting parties to the crusade against Mexico. We say nothing of the
Sepoy war, for that was a contest for 'empire,' as Earl Russell would
say. She could not, in the days of Clyde, give up what she had acquired
in the days of Clive; and no one ought to blame her for what she did in
India, though it can not be denied that the mutiny was the consequence
of her own bad conduct in the East. With Russia, Austria, and Prussia to
back her, in 1840, she went to the verge of a war with France; but, in
so doing, the government did that which the English nation by no means
warmly approved; and the fall of the whig ministry, in 1841, was in no
small part due to Lord Palmerston's policy in the preceding year. The
Russian war was brought about by the action of the English people, who
were angry with the Czar because his empire had the first place in
Europe. The government would have prevented that war from breaking out
if it could, but popular pressure was too strong for it, and it had to
give way. The event has proved that the English government was wiser
than were the English people, France alone having gained anything from
the departure from what had become the policy of Europe; and for France
to gain is not altogether for the benefit of England.
Of the motives of the philanthropists, we have little to say. They are
always respectable, and it is a pity that the world should be too wicked
to appreciate them. But those of the economists are open to remark, and
the more so because there has been so much claimed for them. They
reduced everything to a matter of interest. Peace, they reasoned, is for
the welfare of all men; and, if an enlightened self-interest could be
made to prevail the world over, war would be rendered an impossibility.
Wars between civilized countries have mostly grown out of mistaken views
of interest on the part of governments and peoples. Once enlighten both
rulers and ruled, and make them understand that war can not pay, and
selfishness will accomplish what religion, and morality, and
benevolence, and common sense have failed to accomplish. Cutting throats
may be a very agreeable pastime; but no man ever yet paid for anything
more than it was worth, with his eyes wide open to the fact that he was
not buying a bargain, but selling himself. Nations would be as wise as
individuals, unless it be true that the sum of intelligence is not so
great as the items that compose it; and when it should have been made
indisputably clear that to make war was to make losses, while peace
should be as indisputably profitable, there would be no further occasion
to expend, annually, immense sums upon the support of great armaments,
such as were not kept up, even in times of war, by the potentates of
earlier days. The reason of mankind was to be appealed to, and they were
to be made saints through the use of practical logic. Neighborhood,
instead of being regarded as cause for enmity, was to be held as ground
for good feeling and liberal intercourse. Under the old system it had
been the custom to call France and England 'natural enemies,' words that
attributed to the Creator the origin of discord. Under the new system,
those great countries were to become the best of friends, as well as the
closest of neighbors; and one generation of free commerce was to do away
with the effects of five centuries of disputes and warfare. England was
to forget the part which France took in the first American war, and
France was to cease to recollect that there had been such days as Crecy
and Agincourt, Vittoria and Waterloo; and also that England had
overthrown her rule in North America, and driven her people from India.
But it was not France and England only that were to enter within the
charmed circle; all nations were to be admitted into it, and the whole
world was to fraternize. It was to be Arcadia in a ring-fence, an
Arcadia solidly based upon heavy profits, with consols, _rentes_, and
other public securities--which in other times had a bad fashion of
becoming very insecure--always at a good premium. Quarter-day was to be
the day for which all other days were made, and it would never be
darkened by the imposition of new taxes, by repudiation, or by any other
of those things that so often have lessened the felicity of the
fund-holder.
That the new Temple of Peace might be enabled to rise in proper
proportions, it became necessary to destroy some old edifices, and to
remove what was considered to be very rubbishy rubbish. Protection,
tariffs, and so forth, once worshiped as evidences of ancestral wisdom,
were to be got rid of with all possible speed, and free trade was to be
substituted, that is, trade as free as was compatible with the raising
of enormous revenues, made necessary by the foolish wars of the past. In
due time, perfect freedom of trade would be had; but a blessing of that
magnitude could not be expected to come at once to the relief of a
suffering world. England, which had taken the lead in supporting
protection, and whose commercial system had been of the most illiberal
and sordid character, became the leader in the grand reform, pushing the
work vigorously forward, and, with her usual consideration for the
feelings and rights of others, ordering the nations of Europe and
America to follow her example. She had discovered that she had been all
in the wrong since the day when Oliver St. John's wounded pride led him
to the conclusion that it was the duty of every patriotic Englishman to
do his best to destroy the commerce of Holland. She was very impatient
of those peoples who were shy of imitating her, forgetting that her
conduct through six generations had made a strong impression on the
world's mind, and that her sudden conversion could not immediately avail
against her long persistence in sinning against political economy, if
indeed she had so sinned; and the question was one that admitted of some
dispute, free trade being but an experiment. Gradually, however, men
came round to the British view, in theory at least; and among the
intelligent classes it was admitted that commerce without restriction
was the true policy of nations, which must be gradually adopted as the
basis of all future action, due regard to be paid to those potent
disturbing forces, vested interests. France was slow to yield in
practice, though she had produced some of the cleverest of economical
writers; for she is as little given to change in matters of business as
she is ready to rush into political revolutions. But even France at last
gave signs of her intention to abandon her ancient practice in deference
to modern theories; and Napoleon III. and Mr. Cobden laid their wise
heads together to form plans for the completion of the 'cordial
understanding,' on the basis of free trade. Less than forty years had
sufficed to effect a gradual change of human opinion, and protection
seemed about to be sent to that limbo in which witchcraft, alchemy, and
judicial astrology have been so long undisturbedly reposing.
Death, we are told, found his way into Arcadia; and disappointment was
not long in coming to disturb the modern Arcadians, who had as much to
do with cotton as their predecessors with wool. The dream of universal
peace, a peace that was to endure because based on enlightened
selfishness,--that is to say on buying in cheap markets and selling in
dear ones,--was as rudely dispelled as had been all earlier dreams of
the kind. Interest, it was found, could no more make men live lovingly
together than principle could cause them to do so in by-gone times. If
there were two nations that might have been insured not to fight each
other, because interest was sufficient to prevent men from having resort
to war, those nations were Russia and England. They were in no sense
rivals, according to the definition of rivalry in the circles of
commerce. Between them there was much buying and selling, to the great
profit of both. England is an old nation, with the arts of industry
developed among her people to an extent that is elsewhere unknown. The
division of labor that prevails among her working people is so extensive
and so minute, that in that respect she defies comparison. Other
countries may have as skillful laborers as she possesses, but their
industry is of a far less various character. Russia is a new country,
and she requires what England has to dispose of; and England finds her
account in purchasing the raw materials that are so abundantly produced
in Russia. Commercially speaking, therefore, these two nations could not
fall out, could not quarrel, could not fight, if they would. In all
other respects, too, they could be counted upon to set a good example to
all other communities. They had more than once been allies, each had
done the other good services at critical tunes, and they had had the
foremost places in that grand alliance which had twice dethroned
Napoleon I. The exceptions to their general good understanding belong to
those exceptions which are supposed to be useful in proving a given
rule. When the tory rulers of England became alarmed because of the
success of Catharine II. in her second Turkish war, and proposed doing
what was done more than sixty years later,--to assist the Osmanlis,--the
opposition to their policy became so powerful that even the strong
ministry of William Pitt had to listen to its voice; which shows that
the tendency of English opinion was then favorable to Russia. The
hostility of Czar Paul to England, in his last days, is attributed to
the failure of his mind; and the immediate resumption of good relations
between the two countries after his death, establishes the fact that the
English and the Russians were not sharers in the Czar's feelings. During
the five years that followed Tilsit, Russia appeared to be the enemy of
England, and war existed for some time between the two empires; but this
was owing to the ascendency of the French, Alexander having to choose
between England and France. The nominal enemies did each other as little
injury as possible; and, in 1812, they became greater friends than ever.
Most Englishmen were probably of Lord Holland's opinion, that England's
interest dictated a Russian connection; and in the eighteenth century
England was, in some sense, the nursing mother of the new empire, though
once or twice she was inclined to do as other nurses have
done,--administer some punishment to the rude and healthy child she was
fostering, and not without reason. So harmonious had been the relations
of these two magnificent states, that an eminent Russian author, Dr.
Hamel, writing in 1846, could say: 'Nearly three hundred years have now
elapsed since England greeted Muscovy at the mouth of the Dwina. So
great have been the benefits to trade, the arts, and industry in
general, arising from the friendly relations between England and Russia,
which, in 1853, will have completed the third century of their
continuance, that one might expect to see this period closed, in both
countries, with a jubilee to commemorate so remarkable an example of
uninterrupted amicable intercourse between nations.' The year 1853 came;
but, instead of being a jubilee to the old friends of three centuries'
standing, it brought the beginning of that contest which is known as the
Russian war. That was a proper way, indeed, to notice the happy return
of the three-hundredth anniversary of the establishment of
'uninterrupted amicable intercourse' between the nations, whose soldiers
were soon slaughtering each other with as much energy as if they had
been 'natural enemies' from immemorial time. Interest had no power to
turn aside the storm of war. The English people were angry with Russia
because the iron-willed Czar had carried matters in Europe with a very
high hand, and was, in fact, virtually master of the Old World, and
suspected of being on uncommonly good terms with the masters of the New
World. Nicholas had succeeded to the place of Napoleon in their ill
graces. They liked the Cossackry of the one as little as they had liked
the cannonarchy of the other. It was a case of pure jealousy. Russia was
too powerful to suit the English idea of the fitness of things, and
therefore it was necessary that she should be chastised and humbled.
Fear of Russia there could have been none in the English mind. It has
been thought that England contended for the safety of her Eastern
dominions; but then the Czar offered her Egypt and Candia, possession of
which would not only have much strengthened her Indian empire, but have
been the means of making her more powerful at home. Nothing better could
have been offered for her acceptance, if valuable territories would have
satisfied her feelings; and much praise has been bestowed upon her
because she did not close with the Czar's proposition 'to share and
share alike' the lands of the House of Othman; but that praise is not
quite deserved, the desire not to see Russia aggrandized being a
stronger sentiment with her than was the desire to aggrandize herself.
Had the question been left for British statesmen alone to settle,--had
the British premier been as free to act for England as the Czar was for
Russia,--poor, sick Turkey would have been cut and carved most
expeditiously and artistically; she would have been partitioned as
perfectly as Poland, and Abdul Medjid would have experienced the fate of
Stanislaus Poniatowski. But English ministers hold power only on
condition of doing the will of the English nation, and that nation had
contracted an aversion to Russia that was uncontrollable, and before its
hostility its ministers had to give way, slowly and reluctantly; and the
half-measures they adopted, like the half-measures of our own government
toward the secessionists, explain the disasters of the war. The English
people were determined that there should be an end, for the time at
least, to the Russian hegemony, and threw themselves into the arms of
France with a vivacity that would have astonished any other French ruler
but Napoleon III., who had lived among them, and who knew them well. The
war was waged, and, when over, what had England gained? Nothing solid,
it must be admitted. The territory of Russia remained unimpaired, and
there is not the slightest evidence that her influence in the East was
lessened by the partial destruction of Sebastopol. The Russian navy of
the Euxine had ceased to exist; but as it consisted principally of
vessels that were not adapted to the purposes of modern warfare, the
loss of the Russians in that respect was not of a very serious
character. Russia's European leadership was suspended; but her power and
her resources, which, if properly employed, must soon reinstate her,
were not damaged. England _had_ fought for an idea, and had fought in
vain.
France had as little interest in the Russian war as England, and the
French people had no wish to fight the Czar. They would have preferred
fighting the English, in connection with the Czar,--an arrangement that
would have been more profitable to their country. But the emperor had a
quarrel with his arrogant brother at St. Petersburgh, and he availed
himself of the opportunity afforded by that brother's obstinacy to teach
him a lesson from which he did not live to profit. Nicholas had cut the
new emperor, and had caused him to be taboo'd by most of the sovereigns
of Europe; and the Frenchman determined to cut his way to consideration.
This he was enabled to do, with the aid of the English; and ever since
the war's close he has held the place which became vacant on the death
of Nicholas--that of Europe's arbiter. The French fought well, as they
always do, but their heart was not in the war. The emperor had the war
party pretty much to himself. Exactly the opposite state of things
existed in France to that which existed in England. In the former
country, the government was for war, and the people were for peace; in
the latter, the government was for peace, and the people were for war.
In each country power was in the hands of the war party, and so war was
made, in spite of the wishes of the French people and of English
statesmen. When Napoleon III. had accomplished _his_ purpose, he ordered
the English to make peace, and peace was made. In this way he satisfied
his subjects, showing them that he had no intention of making England
more powerful than she had been, or Russia weaker. He had prevented
Russia from extending her dominion, but he had also prevented England
from lessening that dominion.
The Italian war was waged in opposition to the sentiments of the French
people, which was one of the leading causes of its sudden termination,
with its object, only half accomplished, and much to the damage of the
emperor's reputation for statesmanship and courage. Whether, in a
comprehensive sense, that war was entered upon for purposes adverse to
the interests of France, may well be doubted; but it is certain that it
was an unpopular measure in that country. The French had no objection to
the humiliation of Austria; but it would be a grave error to suppose
that they have any wish to behold Italy united and powerful. The kingdom
of Italy, should it become all that is desired for it by its friends in
this country, would be to France a source of annoyance, and probably of
danger. The emperor's power was shaken by his Italian policy, and hence
it was that he played the confederature game so long, to the
astonishment of foreigners, and got possession of Savoy and Nice, to
the astonishment and anger of England; and hence it is that he is
seeking Sardinia and other portions of Italy. Thus, the Italian war was
begun against the interests of the French people, or what that people
believe to be their interests, though this is the age in which there is
to be peace, because that is not to be broken except when popular
interests require that it shall no longer be preserved.