The effect of the system in preventing the perception, the love, and the operation of Christian principles, in the minds of men who know the nature and obligations of them, needs little illustration. We often see that Christianity cannot accord with the system, but the conviction does not often operate on our minds. In one of the speeches of Bishop Watson in the House of Lords, there occur these words:—“Would to God, my lords, that the spirit of the Christian religion would exert its influence over the hearts of individuals in their public capacity; then would revenge, avarice and ambition, which have fattened the earth with the blood of her children, be banished from the counsels of princes, and there would be no more war. The time will come—the prophet hath said it and I believe it—the time will assuredly come when nation, literally speaking, shall no longer lift up hand against nation. No man will rejoice, my lords, more than I shall, to see the time when peace shall depend on an obedience to the benevolent principles of the Gospel.”84 This is language becoming a Christian. Would it have been believed that this same man voluntarily and studiously added almost one-half to the power of gunpowder, in order that the ball which before would kill but six men, might now kill ten; and that he did this, knowing that this purpose was to spread wider destruction and bloodier slaughter? Above all, would it be believed that he recorded this achievement as an evidence of his sagacity, and that he recorded it in the book which contains the declaration I have quoted?
The same consequences attach to the influences of the soldier’s personal character. Whatever that character be, if it arise out of his profession, we seldom regard it with repulsion. We look upon him as a man whose honor and spirit compensate for “venial errors.” If he be spirited and gallant, we ask not for his virtue and care not for his profligacy. We look upon the sailor as a brave and noble fellow, who may reasonably be allowed in droll profaneness, and sailor-like debaucheries—debaucheries, which, in the paid-off crew of a man-of-war, seem sometimes to be animated by
—the dissolutest Spirit that fell,
The fleshliest Incubus.
We are, however, much diverted by them. The sailor’s cool and clumsy vices are very amusing to us; and so that he amuses us we are indifferent to his crimes. That some men should be wicked, is bad—that the many should feel complacency in wickedness is, perhaps, worse. We may flatter ourselves with dreams of our own virtue, but that virtue is very questionable—those principles are very unoperative, which permit us to receive pleasure from the contemplation of human depravity, with whatever “honor or spirit” that depravity is connected. Such principles and virtue will oppose, at any rate, little resistance to temptation. An abhorrence of wickedness is more than an outwork of the moral citadel. He that does not hate vice has opened a passage for its entrance.85
I do not think that those who feel an interest in the virtue and the happiness of the world will regard the animosity of party and the restlessness of resentment which are produced by a war, as trifling evils. If anything be opposite to Christianity, it is retaliation and revenge. In the obligation to restrain these dispositions, much of the characteristic placability of Christianity consists. The very essence and spirit of our religion are abhorrent from resentment.—The very essence and spirit of war are promotive of resentment; and what then must be their mutual adverseness? That war excites these passions, needs not be proved. When a war is in contemplation, or when it has been begun, what are the endeavors of its promoters? They animate us by every artifice of excitement to hatred and animosity. Pamphlets, placards, newspapers, caricatures—every agent is in requisition to irritate us into malignity. Nay, dreadful as it is, the pulpit resounds with declamations to stimulate our too sluggish resentment, and to invite us to blood.—And thus the most unchristianlike of all our passions, the passion which it is most the object of our religion to repress, is excited and fostered. Christianity cannot be flourishing under circumstances like these. The more effectually we are animated to war, the more nearly we extinguish the dispositions of our religion. War and Christianity are like the opposite ends of a balance, of which one is depressed by the elevation of the other.
These are the consequences which make war dreadful to a state. Slaughter and devastation are sufficiently terrible, but their collateral evils are their greatest. It is the immoral feeling that war diffuses—it is the deprivation of principle, which forms the mass of its mischief.
There is one mode of hostility that is allowed and encouraged by war, which appears to be distinguished by peculiar atrocity: I mean privateering. If war could be shown to be necessary or right, I think this, at least, were indefensible. It were surely enough that army slaughtered army, and that fleet destroyed fleet, without arming individual avarice for private plunder, and legalizing robbery because it is not of our countrymen. Who are the victims of this plunder, and what are its effects? Does it produce any mischief to our enemies but the ruin of those who perhaps would gladly have been friends?—of those who are made enemies only by the will of their rulers, and who now conduct their commerce with no other solicitude about the war than how they may escape the rapine which it sanctions? Privateering can scarcely plead even the merit of public mischief in its favor. An empire is little injured by the wretchedness and starvation of a few of its citizens. The robbery may, indeed, be carried to such extent, and
