We are mistaken. We have an enemy to deal with who never
regarded our contest as a measuring and weighing of purses. He is the
Gaul that puts his _sword_ into the scale. He is more tempted with our
wealth as booty than terrified with it as power. But let us be rich or
poor, let us be either in what proportion we may, Nature is false or
this is true, that, where the essential public force (of which money is
but a part) is in any degree upon a par in a conflict between nations,
that state which is resolved to hazard its existence rather than to
abandon its objects must have an infinite advantage over that which is
resolved to yield rather than to carry its resistance beyond a certain
point. Humanly speaking, that people which bounds its efforts only with
its being must give the law to that nation which will not push its
opposition beyond its convenience.
If we look to nothing but our domestic condition, the state of the
nation is full even to plethora; but if we imagine that this country can
long maintain its blood and its food as disjoined from the community of
mankind, such an opinion does not deserve refutation as absurd, but pity
as insane.
I do not know that such an improvident and stupid selfishness deserves
the discussion which perhaps I may bestow upon it hereafter. We cannot
arrange with our enemy, in the present conjuncture, without abandoning
the interest of mankind. If we look only to our own petty _peculium_ in
the war, we have had some advantages,--advantages ambiguous in their
nature, and dearly bought.
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