War is Unwise | 4
4. War Is Unwise,
as it is Dangerous to the Liberties of Men
Liberty is the gift of God, and ought to be dear to every man – but not, however, that licentious liberty which is not in subordination to his commands:
Men are not independent of God. He is their creator, preserver, and benefactor. Their breath is in his hand, and he has a right to do what he will with his own; and the Judge of all the earth will do right.
As man is not the creator and proprietor of man, he has no right to infringe on his liberty or life without God’s express divine command; and then he acts only as the executor of God.
Man, therefore, bears a very different relation to God from what he does to his fellow man.
The whole system of war is tyrannical and subversive of the fundamental principles of liberty:
It often brings the great mass of community under the severe bondage of military despotism, so that their lives and fortunes are at the sport of a tyrant.
Where martial law is proclaimed, liberty is cast down, and despotism raises her horrid ensign in its place and fills the dungeons and scaffolds with her victims.
Soldiers in actual service are reduced to the most abject slavery, not able to command their time for a moment, and are constantly driven about like beasts by petty tyrants.
In them is exhibited the ridiculous absurdity of men rushing into bondage and destruction to preserve or acquire their liberty and save their lives.
When the inhabitants of a country are cruelly oppressed by a despotic government, and they rise in mass to throw off the yoke,
they are as often as otherwise crushed beneath the weight of the power under which they groaned, and then their sufferings are greatly increased;
and if they gain their object after a long and sanguinary struggle, they actually suffer more on the whole than they would have suffered had they remained in peace.
It is generally the providence of God, too, to make a people who have thrown off the yoke of their oppressor smart more severely under the government of their own choice than they did under the government that they destroyed. This fact ought well to be considered by everyone of a revolutionary spirit.
War actually generates a spirit of anarchy and rebellion that is destructive to liberty:
When the inhabitants of a country are engaged in the peaceable employments of agriculture, manufacture, and commerce, anarchy and rebellion seldom happen.
When these useful employments flourish, abundance flows in on every side, gentleness and humanity cast a smile over the land, and pleasure beams in almost every countenance.
To turn the attention of a nation from these honest employments to that of war is an evil of unspeakable magnitude.
The great object in times of war is to rouse up what is styled the spirit of the country – which, in fact, is nothing but inflaming the most destructive passions against its own peace and safety.
If you infuse into a nation the spirit of war for the sake of fighting a foreign enemy, you do that which is often most dangerous to its own liberties; for if you make peace with the common enemy, you do not destroy the spirit of war among your own inhabitants.
Pride, discontent, and revenge will generally agitate the whole body, so that anarchy and confusion will fill the land, and nothing but a despotic power can restrain it.
Absolute despotism is often too feeble to withstand it, and the only remedy is again to seek a common enemy.
Nations have sometimes waged war against other nations because there was such a spirit of war among their own inhabitants that they could not be restrained from fighting, and if they had not a common foe they would fight one another.
So when a nation once unsheathes the sword, it cannot easily return the sword again to the scabbard, but must keep it crimsoned with the blood of man until “they who take the sword shall perish with the sword,” agreeably to the denunciation of Heaven.
To inflame a mild republic with the spirit of war is putting all its liberties to the utmost hazard, and is an evil that few appear to understand or appreciate.
No person can calculate the greatness of the evil of transforming the citizens of a peaceful, industrious republic into a band of furious soldiers;
and yet the unhappy policy of nations is to cultivate a martial spirit so that they may appear grand, powerful, and terrific, when in fact they are kindling flames that will eventually burn them up root and branch.
In confirmation of what has been said, if we examine the history of nations we shall find that they have generally lost their liberties in consequence of the spirit and practice of war.
Thus have republics who have boasted of their freedom, lost their liberty one after another, and that this has resulted from the very nature of war
and its inseparable evils is evident from the fact that so violent and deadly is this current of ruin, republics have generally sunk down to the lowest abyss of tyranny and despotism, or have been annihilated and their inhabitants scattered to the four winds of heaven.
Indeed, what nation that has become extinct did not first lose its liberty by war, and then hasten to its end under the dominion of those passions which war inflames?
Do nations ever enjoy so much liberty as when most free from the spirit of war?
Are their liberties ever so little endangered as when this spirit is allayed and all its foreign excitements removed?
Do not nations that have partially lost their civil liberties gradually regain them in proportion as they continue long without war?
Is it not a common sentiment that the liberties of a people are in danger when war engrosses their attention?
On the whole, is it not undeniable that peace is favourable to liberty, and that war is its enemy and its ruin?
If so, what can be more unwise, what more opposite to every dictate of sound wisdom and policy, than the spirit and practice of war?