" But never can a vehement and
sustained spirit of fortitude be kindled in a people by a war of
calculation. It has nothing that can keep the mind erect under the gusts
of adversity. Even where men are willing, as sometimes they are, to
barter their blood for lucre, to hazard their safety for the
gratification of their avarice, the passion which animates them to that
sort of conflict, like all the shortsighted passions, must see its
objects distinct and near at hand. The passions of the lower order are
hungry and impatient. Speculative plunder,--contingent spoil,--future,
long adjourned, uncertain booty,--pillage which must enrich a late
posterity, and which possibly may not reach to posterity at all,--these,
for any length of time, will never support a mercenary war. The people
are in the right. The calculation of profit in all such wars is false.
On balancing the account of such wars, ten thousand hogsheads of sugar
are purchased at ten thousand times their price. The blood of man should
never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our
family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The
rest is vanity; the rest is crime.
In the war of the Grand Alliance most of these considerations
voluntarily and naturally had their part. Some were pressed into the
service. The political interest easily went in the track of the natural
sentiment. In the reverse course the carriage does not follow freely.
Pages:
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317