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Among five or six thoutand such declamations, there may be, and that is the most, three or four written by a Gaul, named Massillon, which a gentleman may bear to read, but in not one of all these discourses has the author the spirit to animadvert on war, that scourge and crime which includes all others. These groveling speakers are continually prating against love, mankind's only solace, and the only way of repairing it's losses; not a word do they say of the detestable endeavours of the mighty for its destruction.

BOURDALOUE! a very bad sermon hast thou made against impurity, but not one, either bad or good, on those various kinds of murders, those robberies, those violences, that universal rage, by which the world is laid waste.

Ye bungling soul physicians! to bellow for an hour and more against a few flea bites, and not say a word about that horrid distemper which tears us to pieces. Burn your books, ye moralizing philosophers! While the humour of a few shall make it an act of loyalty to butcher thousands of our fellow creatures, the part of mankind dedicated to heroism will be the most execrable and destructive monsters in all nature. Of what avail is humanity, benevolence, modesty, temperance, mildness, discretion, and piety, when half a pound of lead, discharged at the distance of six hundred paces, shatters my body? When I expire at the age of twenty, under pains unspeakable, and amidst thou-. sands in the same miserable condition; when my

eyes

eyes at their last opening see my native town all in a blaze; and the last sounds I hear are the shrieks and groans of women expiring among the ruins, and all for the pretended interest of a man who is a stranger to us?

VOLTAIRE. Philosoph. Dict. art. War.

I WISH those who have sufficient knowledge for the purpose, were willing or bold enough to oblige us with a detail of the villanies committed in armies by the contractors for subsistence and hospitals. We should then see that their monstrous frauds, already too well known, are the occasion of greater destruction among the soldiers, than the sword of the enemy, and that to such a degree as to make whole armies vanish as it were instantaneously from the face of the earth.

ROUSSEAU.

Inegalité des Hommes, Note (6)

As war is the last of remedies, cuncta prius tentanda, all lawful expedients must be used to avoid it. As war is the extremity of evil, it is surely the duty of those whose station entrusts them with the care of nations, to avert it from their charge. There are diseases of animal nature which nothing but amputation can remove; so there may, by the depravation of human passions, be sometimes a gangrene in collective life for which fire and the sword are the necessary remedies; but in what can skill or caution be better shown than preventing such

dreadful

dreadful operations, while there is yet room for gentler methods?

It is wonderful with what coolness and indifference the greater part of mankind see war commenced. Those that 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, but they die upon the bed of honour, resign their lives amidst the joys of conquest, and, filled 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; pale, torpid, spiritless, and helpless; gasping and groaning, unpitied among men, made obdurate by long continuance of hopeless misery; and were at last whelmed in pits, or heaved into the ocean, without notice and without remembrance. By incommodious encampmenrs and unwholesome stations, where courage is useless, and enterprize impracticable, fleets are silently dispeopled, and armies sluggishly melted away.

Thus is a people gradually exhausted, for the most part with little effect. The wars of civilized nations

nations make very slow changes in the system of empire. The public perceive scarcely any alteration but an increase of debt; and the few individuals who are benefitted, are not supposed to have the clearest right to their advantages. If he that shared the danger enjoyed the profit, and after bleeding in the battle grew rich by the victory, he might shew his gains without envy. But at the conclusion of a ten years war, how are we recom pensed for the death of multitudes and the expence of millions, but by contemplating the sudden glories of paymasters and agents,, contractors and commissaries, whose equipages shine like meteors, and whose palaces rise like exhalations.

These are the men who, without virtue, labour, or hazard, are growing rich as their country is impoverished; they rejoice when obstinacy or ambition adds another year to slaughter and devastation; and laugh from their desks at bravery and science, while they are adding figure to figure, and cypher to cypher, hoping for a new contract from a new armament, and computing the profits of a siege or tempest.

JOHNSON. Faulkland Islands.

GOOD news! great news! glorious news! cried young Oswald, as he entered his father's house. We have got a complete victory and killed I don't know how many of the enemy; and we are to have bonfires and illuminations!

And

And so, said his father, you think that killing a great many thousands of human creatures is a thing to be very glad about?

Oswald. No-I do not quite think so, neither but surely it is right to be glad that our country has gained a great advantage.

Father. No doubt, it is right to wish well to our own country, as far as its prosperity can be promoted without injuring the rest of mankind. But wars are very seldom to the real advantage of any nation; and when they are ever so useful or necessary, so many dreadful evils attend them, that a humane man will scarce rejoice in them, if he considers at all on the subject.

Oswald. But if our enemies would do us a great deal of mischief, and we prevent it by beating them, have not we a right to be glad of it?

Father. Alas! we are in general very little judges which of the parties has the most mischievous intentions. Commonly they are both in the wrong, and success will make both of them unjust and unreasonable. But putting that out of the question, he who rejoices in the event of a battle, rejoices in the misery of many thousands of his species, and the thought of that should make him pause a little. Suppose a surgeon were to come with a smiling countenance, and tell us triumphantly that he had cut off half a dozen legs today--what would you think of him?

Oswald. I should think him very hard hearted.

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