There is a yet more dreadful consideration:—The privateer is not only a robber, but a murderer. If he cannot otherwise plunder his victim, human life is no obstacle to his rapine. Robbery is his object, and his object he will attain. Nor has he the ordinary excuses of slaughter in his defence. His government does not require it of him: he makes no pretext of patriotism, but robs and murders of his own choice, and simply for gain. The soldier makes a bad apology when he pleads the command of his superior, but the privateer has no command to plead; and with no object but plunder, he deliberately seeks a set of ruffians who are unprincipled enough for robbery and ferocious enough for murder, and sallies with them upon the ocean, like tigers upon a desert, and like tigers prowling for prey. To talk of Christianity, as permitting these monstrous proceedings, implies deplorable fatuity or more deplorable profaneness. I would, however, hope that he who sends out a privateer has not so little shame as to pretend to conscience or honesty.—If he will be a robber and a murderer, let him at least not be a hypocrite; for it is hypocrisy for such men to pretend to religion or morality. He that thus robs the subjects of another country, wants nothing but impunity to make him rob his neighbor: he has no restraint from principle.
I know not how it happens that men make pretensions to Christianity whilst they sanction or promote such prodigious wickedness. It is sufficiently certain, that whatever be their pretensions to it, it is not operative upon their conduct. Such men may talk of religion, but they neither possess nor regard it: and although I would not embrace in such censure those who, without immediate or remote participation in the crime, look upon it with secret approbation because it injures their “enemies,” I would nevertheless suggest to their consideration whether their moral principles are at that point in the scale of purity and benevolence which religion enjoins.
We often hear, during a war, of subsidies from one nation to another for the loan of an army; and we hear of this without any emotion, except perhaps of joy at the greater probability of triumph, or of anger that our money is expended, yet, surely, if we contemplate such a bargain for a moment, we shall perceive that our first and greatest emotion ought to be abhorrence.—To borrow ten thousand men who know nothing of our quarrel, and care nothing for it, to help us to slaughter their fellows! To pay for their help in guineas to their sovereign! Well has it been exclaimed,
War is a game, that were their subjects wise,
Kings would not play at.
A king sells his subjects as a farmer sells his cattle; and sends them to destroy a people, whom, if they had been higher bidders, he would perhaps have sent them to defend. That kings should do this may grieve, but it cannot surprise us: avarice has been as unprincipled in humbler life; the possible malignity of individual wickedness is perhaps without any limit. But that a large number of persons, with the feelings and reason of men, should coolly listen to the bargain of their sale, should compute the guineas that will pay for their blood, and should then quietly be led to a place where they are to kill people towards whom they have no animosity, is simply wonderful. To what has inveteracy of habit reconciled mankind! I have no capacity of supposing a case of slavery, if slavery be denied in this. Men have been sold in another continent, and England has been shocked and aroused to interference; yet these men were sold, not to be slaughtered, but to work: but of the purchases and sales of the world’s political butchers, England cares nothing and thinks nothing; nay, she is a participator in the bargains. There is no reason to doubt that upon other subjects of horror, similar familiarity of habit would produce similar effects; or that he who heedlessly contemplates the purchase of an army, wants nothing but this familiarity to make him heedlessly look on at the commission of parricide. If we could for one moment emancipate ourselves from this power of habit, how would it change the scene that is before us! Little would remain to war of splendor or glory, but we should be left with one wide waste of iniquity and wretchedness.
It is the custom, during the continuance of a war, to offer public prayers for the success of our arms; and our enemies pray also for the success of theirs. I will acknowledge that this practice appears to me to be eminently shocking and profane. The idea of two communities of Christians, separated perhaps by a creek, at the same moment begging their common Father to assist them in reciprocal destruction, is an idea of horror to which I know no parallel. Lord, assist us to slaughter our enemies: This is our petition.—“Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” This is the petition of Christ.
It is certain that of two contending communities, both cannot be in the right. Yet both appeal to Heaven to avouch the justice of their cause, and both mingle with their petitions for the increase, perhaps, of Christian dispositions, importunities to the God of mercy to assist them in the destruction of one another. Taking into account the ferocity of the request—the solemnity of its circumstances—the falsehood of its representations—the fact that both parties are Christians, and that their importunities are simultaneous to their common Lord, I do not think that the world exhibits another example of such irreverent and shocking iniquity. Surely it were enough
