War never leaves where it found a
nation. It is never to be entered into without a mature
deliberation,--not a deliberation lengthened out into a perplexing
indecision, but a deliberation leading to a sure and fixed judgment.
When so taken up, it is not to be abandoned without reason as valid, as
fully and as extensively considered. Peace may be made as unadvisedly as
war. Nothing is so rash as fear; and the counsels of pusillanimity very
rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate, the evils
from which they would fly.
In that great war carried on against Louis the Fourteenth for near
eighteen years, government spared no pains to satisfy the nation, that,
though they were to be animated by a desire of glory, glory was not
their ultimate object; but that everything dear to them, in religion, in
law, in liberty, everything which as freemen, as Englishmen, and as
citizens of the great commonwealth of Christendom, they had at heart,
was then at stake. This was to know the true art of gaining the
affections and confidence of an high-minded people; this was to
understand human nature. A danger to avert a danger, a present
inconvenience and suffering to prevent a foreseen future and a worse
calamity,--these are the motives that belong to an animal who in his
constitution is at once adventurous and provident, circumspect and
daring,--whom his Creator has made, as the poet says, "of large
discourse, looking before and after.
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