tendom, if not from the earth, this foulest and bloodiest relic of barbarism. Why may not such a change in public opinion on this subject be hastened to a crisis, just as it has been in the case of intemperance, the slave-trade, and other crying evils now brought under its withering ban? The same means would erelong produce a result equally decisive. Let us bring the hoary and giant offender to trial; let us collect from all ages the testimony of the good, the wise and the great against it as fraught with immeasurable evils for time and eternity; let the community see how such men have really regarded the practice of war, and hear in their opinions the voice of nature and of God against this system of national robbery and murder; would not mankind thus be brought sooner to renounce a custom so strongly condemned by the greatest and best men that ever lived? No matter, so far as the argument is concerned, if the conduct of these witnesses was in some cases at variance with their testimony in favor of peace. We could expect nothing better. It is human nature to see the right, yet pursue the wrong; but it is worse than the common perverseness of our nature to plead the guilty impulses of passion against the soberest dictates of reason and conscience. Even the man after God's own heart was left to commit the double crime of adultery and murder; but shall we take for our guide this part of David's example rather than his full, bitter, broken-hearted confession recorded as his testimony to all ages against that crime? Many an infidel has been forced, in the honest hour of death, to acknowledge the claims of Christianity; and shall such admissions, extorted as a dying homage to truth, be set aside as nothing worth, because belied by an antecedent life of impiety? Such testimony, indeed, is generally regarded as the most satisfactory. It is like the confession of a criminal, or the concessions of an enemy. Had Alexander and Cæsar, Tamerlane and Napoleon, the very demigods of war, condemned the practice as a compound of folly, guilt and wretchedness, should we not have placed much confidence in their testimony as sincere and deliberate? I design to give, in a series of brief articles, THE TESTIMONIES OF EMINENT MEN AGAINST WAR. The opinions 1 shall quote, we may justly regard as the settled convictions of their authors, as the final result of all their experience and observation, inquiries and reflections. I shall cull them from every department of life, from every class of eminent men, to give a fair specimen of the manner in which the custom of war has been viewed in their soberest moments by the greatest and best of mankind. I am well aware, that some of my readers would prefer a direct, exclusive appeal to the word of God as the only tribunal that can decide the case at issue; but the mass of society have reflected too little on the subject to make for themselves such an appeal at present, and would be affected less by a quotation from the Bible, than by the denunciations of a Cæsar or a Washington, a Franklin or a Burke. ARTICLE II. CONCESSIONS OF WARRIORS. We cannot expect from warriors a condemnation of their own business. It would be passing sentence against themselves; for war is their trade, their livelihood, and the source of their power and glory. Their associations, their habits, their interests are all in its favor, and sooner might you expect a dealer in ardent spirits, who lives by the profits of his liquid poison, to denounce the traffic, than the soldier to condemn the practice of war. Such soldiers, however, there have been; and even those who were devoted through life to the work of human butchery as their highest glory, have occasionally betrayed their real opinion of war as a business fit only for savages and fiends. A general of our own once called a battle a hell; and Napoleon himself was heard, in moments of chagrin and serious reflection, to reprobate war in the severest terms. Sir Walter Raleigh, himself a scholar, a statesman, and a soldier, says, "there is no profession more unprosperous than that of men of war. Besides the envy and jealousy of men, the spoils, rapes, famine, slaughter of the innocent, devastation and burnings, with a world of miseries laid on the laboring man, they are so hateful to God, as with good reason did Monluc, the marshal of France, confess, that were not the mercies of God infinite and without restriction, it were in vain for those of his profession to hope for any portion of them, seeing the cruelties by them permitted and committed, are also infinite.'"* * Raleigh's History of the World, as quoted in Herald of Peace, vol. viii, 513. Even the conqueror of Napoleon, though indebted to war for his fame, his peerage, and his power, still cannot refrain in such an age as this, from deploring the practice itself. "I am bound more than others," says Lord Wellington, in a speech before the London Orphan Asylum, "to assist this institution, because the engagements of my life have been such as to occasion many of those misfortunes which can be alleviated only by providing succor for the helpless orphan who has lost the protection of a father's arm." When at the head of the British government, he once remarked, "I have probably passed a longer period of my life in the occupation of war than most men, principally in civil war; and I must say, that if I could by any sacrifice, even that of my life, avoid one month of civil war in a country to which I was attached, I would cheerfully make the sacrifice. There is nothing which destroys property, and the resources of prosperity, in the same degree as civil war. The hand of man is raised against his neighbor, of brother against brother, of son against father, of the servant against his master; and the whole scene ends in confusion and devastation."* war. The Buonaparte family was a nursery of warriors; but from Louis Buonaparte we have, after many years of experience and reflection, this very explicit and indignant testimony against "I have been as enthusiastic and joyful as any one else after victory; but I confess that even then the sight of a field of battle not only struck me with horror, but even turned me sick. And now that I am advanced in life, I cannot understand, any more than I could at fifteen years of age, how beings who call themselves reasonable, and who have so much foresight, can employ this short existence, not in loving and aiding each other, and passing through it as gently as possible, but in striving, on the contrary, to destroy each other, as though time did not itself do this with sufficient rapidity. What I thought at fifteen years of age, I still think, that war, and the pain of death which society draws upon itself, are but organized barbarisms, an inheritance of the savage state, disguised or ornamented by ingenious institutions, and false eloquence."+ Washington, though a soldier during most of his life, yet gave his decided opinion against the folly and guilt of war. He exerted his whole influence, after the close of our revolutionary struggle, to stamp upon the permanent policy of our republic a * Herald of Peace, Vol. VII, p. 61, 82. † Reply to W. Scott's History of Napoleon, as quoted in Herald of Peace, Vol. VII, p. 185. deep impress of peace, and left in his writings a variety of incidental, yet explicit testimonies against this cruel and barbarous custom. "The more I am acquainted with agricultural affairs," he says in a letter to a friend in England, "the better I am pleased with them; insomuch that I can no where find so much satisfaction as in those innocent and useful pursuits. While indulging these feelings, I am led to reflect, how much more delightful, to an undebauched mind, is the task of making improvements on the earth, than all the vain glory which can be acquired from ravaging it by the most uninterrupted career of conquests. How pitiful in the eye of reason and religion, is that false ambition which desolates the world with fire and sword for the purposes of conquest and fame, compared to the milder virtues of making our neighbors and our fellow-men as happy as their frail conditions and perishable natures will permit them to be." Addressing a distinguished friend in Europe, just after his marriage, he says, "while you have been making love under the banner of Hymen, the great personages of the north have been making war under the inspiration, or rather infatuation of Mars. Now, for my part, I conceive you had much the best and wisest of the bargain; for it is certainly more consonant with all the principles of reason and religion to replenish the earth with inhabitants, rather than depopulate it by killing those already in existence. Besides, it is time for knight-errantry and mad heroism to be at an end." "Your young military men, who want to reap a harvest of laurels, don't care, I suppose, how many seeds of war are sown; but, for the sake of humanity, it is devoutly to be wished, that the manly employments of agriculture, and the harmonizing effects of commerce, should supersede the waste of war and the ravages of conquest; that swords may be turned into ploughshares, and spears into pruning-hooks, as the Scriptures express it, and the nations learn war no more." The battle of Germantown was fought on the day of the yearly meeting of the Quakers in Philadelphia; and during the battle they were praying for divine protection to the people, and in preparing to renew their testimony against war. While James Thornton was writing this testimony, the cannon shook the house in which they were assembled, and the air was darkened by the smoke of guns. Warner Mifflin undertook the service of carrying the testimony to the opposing generals, Washington and Howe; and, in discharging this duty, he was obliged to walk in blood, and among the dead bodies of those who had fallen in battle. He performed it, however, with great freedom, and in conversation with Washington, said expressly, "I am opposed to the Revolution, and to all changes of government which occasion war and bloodshed." After Washington was chosen President of the United States, Mifflin went to visit him at New York, and was received with marked respect and kindness. Recollecting what Mifflin had said to him at Germantown, the President asked, "will you please, Mr. Mifflin, to inform me on what principles you were opposed to the Revolution?" "Yes, friend Washington; upon the same principle that I should now be opposed to a change in this government; all that ever was gained by revolutions, is not an adequate compensation to the poor mangled soldier for the loss of life or limb." Washington, after some pause and reflection, replied, "Mr. Mifflin, I honor your sentiments; there is more in them than mankind have generally considered."* Hear the warnings of another American warrior against this custom as fatal to the happiness of families, and the permanent prosperity of our nation."Let those parents," says General Wilkinson, "who are now training their children for the military profession; let those misguided patriots who are inculcating principles of education subversive of the foundation of our republic, look at the picture of distress taken from the life of a youth in a strange land, far removed from friends and relations, commingled with the dying and the dead, himself wounded and helpless, and expiring with agony; and then, should political considerations fail of effect, I hope the feelings of affection, and the obligations of humanity, may induce them to discountenance the pursuits of war, and save their offspring from the seductions of the plume and the sword, for the more solid and useful avocations of civil life. By such avocations alone can peace, and virtue, and the republic be preserved and perpetuated.' "I speak from experience. The dupe during my whole life to the prejudices I now reprobate, I discharge a conscientious duty, when I warn my country against military enthusiasm, and the pride of arms; against the arts and intrigues by which the yeomanry, the palladium of our republic, are depreciated, and standing armies and navies are encouraged. For what would it avail the citizens of this country, if in a political frenzy they should barter their rights and liberties for national renown? And who would exchange the blessings of freedom for the re * Friend of Peace, Vol. II, No. 7, p. 8. |