26. Argument in favour of war from the excess of male births
The advocate of war, in the abundance of his topics of defence (or in the penury of them) has had recourse to this:
“That, as a greater number of male children are brought into the world than of female, wars are the ordination of Providence to rectify the inequality;
and one or two moralists have proceeded a step farther, and have told us, not that war is designed to carry off the excess, but that an excess is born in order to supply its slaughters.
Dreadful! Are we to be told that God sends too many of his rational creatures into the world, and therefore that he stands in need of wars to destroy them?
Has he no other means of adjusting the proportions of the species than by a system that violates the revelation that he has made, and the duties that he has imposed?
Or, yet more dreadful, are we to be told that He creates an excess of one of the sexes on purpose that their destruction of each other may be with impunity to the species?
This reasoning surely is sufficiently confident; I fear it is more than sufficiently profane.
But alas for the argument! It happens most unfortunately for it, that although more males are born than females, yet from the greater mortality of the former, it is found that long before the race arrives at maturity, the number of females predominates.
What a pity, that just as the young men had grown old enough to kill one another, it should be discovered that there are not too many to remain peaceably alive!
Let then, the principle be retained and acted upon; and since we have now an excess of females, let us send forth an army of ladies that their redundancy may be lopped by the appointed means.
But really, it is time for the defender of war to abandon reasoning like this. It argues little in favour of any cause that its advocates have recourse to such deplorable subterfuges.