2. Political consequences
Since the last war, we have heard much of the distresses of the country, and whatever may be the opinion whether they have been brought upon us by the peace, none will question whether they have been brought upon us by war:
The peace may be the occasion of them, but war has been the cause.
I have no wish to declaim upon the amount of our national debt – that it is a great evil and that it has been brought upon us by successive contests, no one disputes.
Such considerations ought, undoubtedly, to influence the conduct of public men in their disagreements with other states, even if higher considerations do not influence it:
They ought to form part of the calculations of the evil of hostility.
I believe that a greater mass of human suffering and loss of human enjoyment are occasioned by the pecuniary distresses of a war, than any ordinary advantages of a war compensate. But this consideration seems too remote to obtain our notice.
Anger at offence, or hope of triumph, overpowers the sober calculations of reason and outbalances the weight of calamities that continue long afterward.
If the happiness of the people was what it ought to be, the primary and the ultimate object of national measures,
I think that the policy which pursued this object would often find that even the pecuniary distresses resulting from a war reduce the sum total of felicity more than those evils which the war may have been designed to avoid:
At least the distress is certain, and the advantage is doubtful.
It is known that during the past 8 years of the present peace, a considerable portion of the community has been in suffering in consequence of war. 8 years of suffering to a million of human creatures is a serious thing!
“It is no answer to say that this universal suffering, and even the desolation that attends it, are the inevitable consequences and events of war, howsoever warrantably entered into, but rather an argument that no war can be warrantably entered into, if it produces such intolerable mischiefs.”
There is much of truth, as there is of eloquence, in these observations of one of the most acute intellects that our country has produced.
It is an object of wonder with what coolness and indifference the greater part of mankind sees war commenced:
Those who hear of it at a distance, or read of it in books, but have never presented its evils to their minds, consider it as little more than a splendid game, a proclamation, an army, a battle, and a triumph.
Some, indeed, must perish in the most successful field of battle; but they die upon the bed of honour, resign their lives amidst the joys of conquest, and fitted with England’s glory, smile in death.
The life of a modern soldier is ill represented by heroic fiction. War has means of destruction more formidable than the cannon and the sword:
Of the thousands and ten thousands that perished in our late contests with France and Spain, a very small part ever felt the stroke of an enemy.
The rest languished in tents and ships, amidst damps and putrefaction, gasping and groaning, unpitied among men made obdurate by long continuance of hopeless misery;
and were at last buried in pits, or heaved into the ocean, without notice and without remembrance.
By incommodious encampments and unwholesome stations, where courage is useless and enterprise impracticable, fleets are silently depopulated and armies sluggishly melted away.
“Thus are a people gradually exhausted, for the most part with little effect. The wars of civilized nations make very slow changes in the system of empire.
The public perceives scarcely any alteration but an increase of debt, and the few individuals who are benefited are not supposed to have the clearest right to their advantages.
If he who shared the danger enjoyed the profit, and after bleeding in the battle grew rich by the victory, he might show his gains without envy.
But at the conclusion of a ten-year war, how are we recompensed for the death of multitudes, and the expense of millions?
By contemplating the sudden glories of paymasters, agents, contractors and commissaries, whose equipages shine like meteors, and whose palaces rise like exhalations.”