13. Mercenaries – Loan of armies
We often hear, during a war, of subsidies from one nation to another for the loan of an army; and we hear of this without any emotion, except perhaps of joy at the greater probability of triumph, or of anger that our money is expended.
Yet, surely, if we contemplate such a bargain for a moment, we shall perceive that our first and greatest emotion ought to be abhorrence:
To borrow ten thousand men who know nothing of our quarrel, and care nothing for it, to help us to slaughter their fellows! To pay for their help in guineas to their sovereign!
Well has it been exclaimed…
War is a game,
That were their subjects wise,
Kings would not play at.
A king sells his subjects as a farmer sells his cattle and sends them to destroy a people whom, if they had been higher bidders, he would perhaps have sent them to defend. That kings should do this may grieve us, but it cannot surprise us.
Avarice has been as unprincipled in humbler life; the possible malignity of individual wickedness is perhaps without any limit.
But that a large number of persons, with the feelings and reason of men, should coolly listen to the bargain of their sale,
should compute the guineas that will pay for their blood, and should then quietly be led to a place where they are to kill people towards whom they have no animosity,
- is simply and object of wonder.
To what has inveteracy of habit reconciled mankind! I have no capacity of supposing a case of slavery, if slavery is to be denied in this. Men have been sold in another continent and England has been shocked and aroused to interference.
Yet these men were sold, not to be slaughtered, but to work; but of the purchases and sales of the world’s political butchers, England cares nothing and thinks nothing. No, she is a participator in the bargains.
There is no reason to doubt that upon other subjects of horror, similar familiarity of habit would produce similar effects;
or that he who heedlessly contemplates the purchase of an army, wants nothing but this familiarity to make him heedlessly look on at the commission of parricide.
If we could for one moment emancipate ourselves from this power of habit, how would it change the scene that is before us! Little would remain to war of splendour or glory, but we should be left with one wide waste of iniquity and wretchedness.