Balance of power
The “balance of power” is a phrase with which we are made sufficiently familiar, as one of the great objects of national policy, which must be attained at whatever cost of treasure or of blood. The support of this balance, therefore, is one of the great purposes of war, and one of the great occasions of its frequency.
It is, perhaps, not idle to remark that a balance of power among nations is inherently subject to continual interruption:
If all the countries of Europe were placed on an equal standing today, they would of necessity become unequal tomorrow: This is the inevitable tendency of human affairs.
Thousands of circumstances which sagacity cannot foresee will continually operate to destroy equilibrium.
Of men, who enter the world with the same possessions and the same prospects, one becomes rich and the other poor; one harangues in the senate, and another labours in a mine; one sacrifices his life to intemperance, and another starves in a garret.
Howsoever accurately we may adjust the strength and consequence of nations to each other, the failure of one harvest, the ravages of one tempest, the ambition of one man, may make them unequal in a moment.
It is, therefore, not a trifling argument against this anxious endeavour to attain an equipoise of power, to find that no equipoise can be maintained.
When negotiation has followed negotiation, treaty has been piled upon treaty, and war has succeeded to war, the genius of a Napoleon, or the fate of an armada, nullifies our labours without the possibility of prevention.
I do not know how much nations have gained by a balance of power, but it is worth remembrance that some of those countries that have been most solicitous to preserve it have been most frequently fighting with each other.
How many wars has a balance of power prevented, in comparison with the number that has been waged to maintain it?
It is, indeed, deplorable enough that such a balance is to be desired, and that the wickedness and violence of mankind are so great that nothing can prevent them from destroying one another but an equality of the means of destruction.
In such a state of malignity and outrage, it need not be disputed that, if it could be maintained, an equality of strength is sufficiently desirable; as tigers may be restrained from tearing one another by mutual fear without any want of savageness.
It should be remembered, then, that whatever can be said in favour of a balance of power, can be said only because we are wicked;
that it derives all its value from our crimes; and that it is wanted only to restrain the outrage of our violence, and to make us contented to growl when we should otherwise fight.