National irritability
Among the immediate causes of the frequency of war, there is one that is, indisputably, irreconcilable in its nature with the principles of our religion:
I speak of the critical sense of national pride, and the consequent aptitude of offence and violence of resentment. National irritability is at once a cause of war, and an effect.
It disposes us to resent injuries with bloodshed and destruction; and a war, when it is begun, inflames and perpetuates the passions that produced it.
Those who wish a war, endeavour to rouse the spirit of a people by stimulating their passions:
They talk of the insults, or the encroachments, or the contempt of the destined enemy,
with every artifice of aggravation they tell us of foreigners who want to trample upon our rights, of rivals who ridicule our power, of foes who will crush, and of tyrants who will enslave us.
These men pursue their object, certainly, by efficacious means:
they desire a war, and therefore irritate our passions, knowing that when men are angry they are easily persuaded to fight.
In, this state of irritability, a nation is continually alive to occasions of offence; and when we seek for offences, we readily find them.
A jealous sensibility sees insults and injuries where sober eyes see nothing,
and nations thus surround themselves with a sort of artificial tentacle, which they throw wide in quest of irritation, and by which they are stimulated to revenge by every touch of accident or inadvertency.
He who is easily offended will also easily offend:
The man who is always on the alert to discover trespasses on his honour or his rights never fails to quarrel with his neighbours:
Such a person may be dreaded as a torpedo. We may fear, but we shall not love him; and fear without love easily lapses into enmity.
There are, therefore, many feuds and litigations in the life of such a man that would never have disturbed his quiet, if he had not captiously snarled at the trespasses of accident, and savagely retaliated insignificant injuries.
The viper that we chance to molest, we suffer to live if he continues to be quiet; but if he raises himself in menaces of destruction, we knock him on the head.
It is with nations as with men.
If, on every offence we fly to arms, and raise the cry of blood, we shall of necessity provoke exasperation;
and if we exasperate a people as petulant and bloody as ourselves,
we may probably continue to butcher one another, until we cease only from emptiness of treasuries or weariness of slaughter.
To threaten war is therefore often equivalent to beginning it:
In the present state of men’s principles, it is not probable that one nation will observe another levying men, and building ships, and founding cannon, without providing men and ships and cannon themselves;
and when both are thus threatening and defying, what is the hope that there will not be a war?
It will scarcely be disputed that we should not kill one another unless we cannot help it:
Since war is an enormous evil, some sacrifices are expedient for the sake of peace;
and if we consulted our understandings more and our passions less, we should soberly balance the probabilities of mischief
and inquire whether it would not be better to endure some evils that we can estimate than to engage in a conflict
of which we can neither calculate the mischief nor foresee the event, which may probably conduct us from slaughter to disgrace, and which is at last determined, not by justice, but by power.
Pride may declaim against these sentiments; but my business is not with pride, but with reason; and I think reason determines that it would be wiser, and religion that it would be less wicked, to diminish our punctiliousness and irritability.
If nations fought only when they could not be at peace, there would be very little fighting in the world:
The wars that are waged for “insults to flags,” and an endless train of similar motives, are perhaps generally attributable to the irritability of our pride.
We are at no pains to appear pacific towards the offender; our remonstrance is a threat; and the nation, which would give satisfaction to an inquiry, will give no other answer to a menace than a menace in return.
At length we begin to fight, not because we are aggrieved, but because we are angry.
The object of the haughtiness and petulance which one nation uses towards another is, of course, to produce some benefit: to awe into compliance with its demands, or into forbearance from aggression.
Now it ought to be distinctly shown that petulance and haughtiness are more efficacious than calmness and moderation;
that an address to the passions of a probable enemy is more likely to avert mischief from ourselves than an address to their reason and their virtue.
Nations are composed of men, and of men with human feelings. Whether with individuals or with communities, “a soft answer turneth away wrath.”
There is, indeed, something in the calmness of reason – in an endeavour to convince rather than to intimidate – in an honest solicitude for friendliness and peace, which obtains, which commands, which exhorts forbearance and esteem.
This is the privilege of rectitude and truth. It is an inherent quality of their nature, an evidence of their identity with perfect wisdom. I believe, therefore, that even as it concerns our interests, moderation and forbearance would be the most politic.
And let not our duties be forgotten, for forbearance and moderation are duties, absolutely and indispensably imposed upon us by Jesus Christ.