Ambition
Of the wars of statesmen’s ambition, it is not necessary to speak, because no one, to whom the world will listen, is willing to defend them.
But statesmen have, besides ambition, many purposes of nice policy that make wars convenient; and when they have such purposes, they are cool speculators in blood.
They who have many dependants have much patronage, and they who have much patronage have much power.
By a war, thousands become dependent on a minister; and if he is disposed, he can often pursue schemes of guilt and entrench himself in unpunished wickedness,
because the war enables him to silence the clamour of opposition by an office, and to secure the suffrages of venality by a bribe.
He has therefore many motives to war:
in ambition that does not refer to conquest or in fear that extends only to his office or his pocket, and fear or ambition are sometimes more interesting considerations than the happiness and the lives of men.
Or perhaps he wants to immortalize his name by a splendid administration, and he thinks no splendour so great as that of conquest and plunder.
Cabinets have, in truth, many secret motives for wars of which the people know little:
They talk in public of invasions of right, of breaches of treaty, of the support of honour, and of the necessity of retaliation, when these motives have no influence on their determination.
Some untold purpose of expediency or the private quarrel of a prince, or the pique or anger of a minister are often the real motives to a contest, while its promoters are loudly talking of the honour or the safety of the country.
The motives for war are indeed without end to their number, or their iniquity, or their insignificance.
When the profligacy of a minister, or the unpopularity of his measures, has excited public discontent, he can perhaps find no other way of escaping the resentment of the people than by thus making them forget it.
He therefore discovers a pretext for announcing war on some convenient country in order to divert the indignation of the public from himself to their newly made enemies.
Such wickedness has existed, and may exist again.
Surely, it is nearly the climax of possible iniquity. I know not whether the records of human infamy present another crime of such enormous or such abandoned wickedness:
A monstrous profligacy or ferocity that must be, which for the sole purpose of individual interest, enters its closet, and coolly fabricates pretences for slaughter;
that quietly contrives the exasperation of the public hatred, and then flings the lighted brands of war among the devoted and startled people.
The public, therefore, whenever a war is designed, should diligently inquire into the motives of engaging in it:
It should be an inquiry that will not be satisfied with idle declamations on indeterminate dangers, and that is not willing to take anything upon trust.
The public should see the danger for themselves; and if they do not see it, should refuse to be led to blindly murder their neighbours. This, we think, is the public duty, as it is certainly the public interest.
It implies a forgetfulness of the ends and purposes of government, and of the just degrees and limitations of obedience, to be hurried into in so dreadful a measure as a war, without knowing the reason or asking it.
The people have the power of prevention, and they ought to exercise it. Let me not, however, be charged with recommending violence or armed resistance:
The power of preventing war consists in the power of refusing to take part in it. This is the mode of opposing political evil that Christianity permits and, in truth, requires.
And as it is the most Christian method, so, as it respects war, it is certainly the most efficacious; for it is obvious that war cannot be carried on without the cooperation of the people.