An Inquiry Into the Accordancy of War with the Principles of Christianity

to society, at a period of life when the mind is busy and restless and the passions are strong, must, of inevitable necessity, be bad.⁠—The officer who leaves the army with the income only which the country allows him, often finds sufficient difficulty in maintaining the character of a gentleman. A gentleman, however, he will be; and he who resolves to appear rich whilst he is poor, who will not increase his fortune by industry, and who has learnt to have few restraints from principle, sometimes easily persuades himself to pursue schemes of but very exceptionable probity. Indeed, by his peculiar law, the “law of honor,” honesty is not required.

I do not know whether it be politic that he who has held a commission should not be expected to use a ledger or a yard; but since, by thus becoming a “military gentleman,” the number is increased of those who regulate their conduct by the law of honor, the rule is necessarily pernicious in its effects. When it is considered that this law allows of “profaneness, neglect of public worship and private devotion, cruelty to servants, rigorous treatment of tenants or other dependants, want of charity to the poor, injuries to tradesmen by insolvency or delay of payment, with numberless examples of the same kind;” that it is, “in most instances, favorable to the licentious indulgence of the natural passions;” that it allows of “adultery, drunkenness, prodigality, duelling, and of revenge in the extreme”80⁠—when all this is considered, it is manifestly inevitable, that those who regulate their conduct by the maxims of such a law, must become, as a body, reduced to a low station in the scale of morality.81

We insist upon these things because they are the consequences of war. We have no concern with “half-pay,” or with the “law of honor;” but with war, which extends the evil of the one, and creates the evil of the other. Soldiers may be depraved⁠—and part of their depravity is, undoubtedly, their crime, but part also is their misfortune. The whole evil is imputable to war; and we say that this evil forms a powerful evidence against it, whether we direct that evidence to the abstract question of its lawfulness or to the practical question of its expediency. That can scarcely be lawful which necessarily occasions such enormous depravity. That can scarcely be expedient which is so pernicious to virtue, and therefore to the state.

The economy of war requires of every soldier an implicit submission to his superior; and this submission is required of every gradation of rank to that above it. This system may be necessary to hostile operations, but I think it is unquestionably adverse to intellectual and moral excellence.

The very nature of unconditional obedience implies the relinquishment of the use of the reasoning powers. Little more is required of the soldier than that he be obedient and brave. His obedience is that of an animal, which is moved by a goad or a bit, without judgment or volition of his own; and his bravery is that of a mastiff, which fights whatever mastiff others put before him.⁠—It is obvious that in such agency, the intellect and the understanding have little part. Now I think that this is important. He who, with whatever motive, resigns the direction of his conduct implicitly to another, surely cannot retain that erectness and independence of mind, that manly consciousness of mental freedom, which is one of the highest privileges of our nature. The rational being becomes reduced in the intellectual scale: an encroachment is made upon the integrity of its independence. God has given us, individually, capacities for the regulation of our individual conduct. To resign its direction, therefore, to the despotism of another, appears to be an unmanly and unjustifiable relinquishment of the privileges which He has granted to us. Referring simply to the conclusions of reason, I think those conclusions would be, that military obedience must be pernicious to the mind. And if we proceed from reasoning to facts, I believe that our conclusions will be confirmed. Is the military character distinguished by intellectual eminence? Is it not distinguished by intellectual inferiority? I speak of course of the exercise of intellect, and I believe that if we look around us, we shall find that no class of men, in a parallel rank in society, exercise it less, or less honorably to human nature, than the military profession.82 I do not, however, attribute the want of intellectual excellence solely to the implicit submissions of a military life. Nor do I say that this want is so much the fault of the soldier, and of the circumstances to which he is subjected. We attribute this evil, also, to its rightful parent. The resignation of our actions to the direction of a foreign will, is made so familiar to us by war, and is mingled with so many associations which reconcile it, that I am afraid lest the reader should not contemplate it with sufficient abstraction.⁠—Let him remember that in nothing but in war do we submit to it.

It becomes a subject yet more serious, if military obedience requires the relinquishment of our moral agency⁠—if it requires us to do, not only what may be opposed to our will, but what is opposed to our consciences. And it does require this; a soldier must obey, how criminal soever the command, and how criminal soever he knows it to be. It is certain that of those who compose armies many commit actions which they believe to be wicked, and which they would not commit but for the obligations of a military life. Although a soldier determinately believes that the war is unjust, although he is convinced that his particular part of the service is atrociously criminal, still he must proceed⁠—he must prosecute the purposes of injustice or robbery; he must participate in the guilt, and be himself a robber. When we have sacrificed thus much of