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of learning, with which he proves from Homer and Shakespeare that a man in battle degrades himself into a wild beast. course he does. Though it is a great misfortune, he must so do, if he is to fight at all: and that this is sometimes a duty, Mr. Sumner does not deny. That a policemen must fight against robbers, a sloop of war against pirates, he allows without reserve. But to return. As honour may force a man to fight in defence of his wife or of his child, so may honour force a powerful State to go to war for the protection of its dependencies or subjects. The weaker the object defended, the stronger is the appeal to honour. Mr. Sumner therefore by no means gains from the argument, "Of what use has the war been?" as if rescue from attack and security for the future, were not sufficient use.-To take his own illustration. Some five-and-thirty years ago, France, being at war with England, excrcised her belligerent right (as the phrase is) of hindering neutral powers from trading with England. The English retaliated, with far greater power to enforce their determination by sea; and the neutrals, one and all, suffered severe losses in their trade. The weaker States at once withdrew from the effort, but the spirit of America did not so easily submit to what she regarded as the dictation of England, and when her merchant ships fell into the hands of our cruisers, a new mortification awaited her in our claiming our own seamen, as many as we found on board of her vessels. This was not an intentional aggression upon her, but a natural and consistent proceeding on our part, when, through want of seamen, we were violently impressing our own people at home. But the Americans have made a law, without consulting us, that any persons (British subjects or others) who reside a certain time among them, are their citizens and consequently it was impossible for us to reclaim our men without offending their national pretensions. Besides this, no skill on the part of our officers could save them from seizing native members of the republic, children of those whose independence we had acknowledged, by mistake for British subjects; and considering the despotic power which our captains possessed, and our strong demand for sailors, there can be little doubt that we really impressed many genuine American citizens. We have recounted the case thus at large, to show how complicated and difficult it was. Mr. Sumner informs us, that "the greatest number of American seamen ever officially alleged to be compulsively serving in the British navy was about eight hundred," and infers, that his country ought not to have made

:

war upon us for anything so small.

We do not understand this arithmetic. To us it seems to be a question of principle, depending on its liability to repetition, as well as on the moral features of the case. If we had landed on the coast of Rhode Island, and carried off five hundred seamen to serve as sailors, Mr. Sumner surely holds that a war to recover them or to forbid repetition of the outrage would be defensive; yet he might still urge that it was better to allow five hundred men to be made slaves, and say no more about it, than "doom the whole country for three years to the blight of war." "Our commerce," says

he, "was driven from the seas; the resources of the land were drained by taxation; villages on the Canadian frontier were laid in ashes; the metropolis of the Republic was captured, while gaunt distress raged everywhere within our borders." Finally, America was glad to make peace with us, when our contest against France was terminated, without obtaining on our part any guarantee or promise that we would not renew our impressments, if like circumstances should recur. From this Mr. Sumner proves by the confession of his own government, whose words he quotes, that "The United States had appealed to arms in vain:" but this does not convince us that the war was really in vain. America ought not to have attacked us: this we most assuredly believe; but not because eight hundred men were too small a consideration. If neutrality was impossible, a far more reasonable and just conduct would have been to declare war against France,-whose decrees had been the first offence,after stipulating with us, that we should abandon our claims of impressment in case of her so doing. But she remembered with gratitude the aid given her by France against us, and she despised us as a beaten foe,* and little did she imagine that while our main efforts were engaged against our neighbouring antagonist, we could by a left-hand stroke, and without any loss sensible to ourselves, inflict on a trans-Atlantic power sufferings so severe; sufferings, the effect of which were felt for many years by an infantine republic. Her passions impelled her into that war, and this was the fault. She did not make allowance for our difficulties, and for the sincere intentions of our government to claim none but

We could not conquer our colonists at first, because we were too merciful to proceed to extremities; like the Dutch against Brussels: at last, because the great Whig party, in jealousy of the increasing powers of the Crown, would not allow of a conquest which it would need a powerful standing army to hold.

our own seamen. But we say, if we had knowingly and manifestly carried off eight hundred native Americans; if we had refused redress, and shown a disposition to repeat the offence, the smallness of the number is not to the purpose. The national honour is involved in protecting individuals and weak dependencies; and if this is a mere name, then Virtue and Justice are

mere names.

Nor is it true that America gained nothing; although what she gained would probably have been purchased more cheaply by greater wisdom and moderation: but she has prominently brought forward the rights of neutrals, so as either to hinder future European war, or, at least to make it less mischievous to neutral countries. Powerful States, when involved in war, treat "belligerent rights" as the only ones which deserve consideration. This might be correct, if a war were decreed against an offending power by the judicial sentence of a tribunal which represented the interests of all the great nations of the world. In such case, the neutrals would be really or virtually represented in the Congress; or at any rate, they would be situated as individuals in a community, whose neighbour falls under the sentence of the law to their great inconvenience. My lawyer may be arrested for a crime, when his aid is of the utmost importance to me; or my banker may be suspected of holding forged notes, and a seal may be put on his whole establishment; and meanwhile, I cannot get money to pay my creditors. Now in fact, the war against Napoleon, though not decreed by a Congress, was more decidedly than any war in all European history, waged by the will and sentence of all the other nations of Europe,-(except unhappy Poland, who hoped restitution from him!) and this was a new ground why America ought to have borne her wrongs and losses from us more meekly. Not but that we were probably overbearing enough, when we could appeal to Grotius, Puffendorf, &c., on belligerent rights; for these great writers (we understand) treat every independent State as having an undoubted right, of its own judgment, to decree war on any other State, and then to expect from neutrals tame submission to any amount of loss, which may be requisite for an efficient prosecution of the war. The most common form of it is in the stoppage of maritime commerce. A more horrible illustration is in the blockade of Genoa, of which Arnold, and now Mr. Sumner, have given so affecting details. We say that something has been gained by the American Union, inasmuch as England in any future war will remember how dangerous it is to confiscate all neutral rights.

A like view, we think, must be taken in retrospect of the other calamitous wars which have been waged, especially in the last two or three centuries. They were shocking and hateful: most of them were caused by guilt or ignorance on both sides, and they are not for a moment to be defended: yet they have not been fruitless. Mr. Sumner says:

"The fruitlessness and vanity of war appear in the results of the great wars by which the world has been lacerated. After long struggles, in which each nation has inflicted and received incalculable injury, peace has been gladly obtained on the basis of the condition of things before the war; status ante bellum."— p. 13.

In other words, the resistance has effected all that it aimed at. When this happens, the war has fulfilled a great service, though perhaps at a dreadful price. It has manifested the impossibility of foreign conquest, and has, under severe penalties, taught each nation to tolerate the existence of its neighbour. This is a fundamental condition, without which there can be no permanent stability of anything good or great. The dreadful contests for empire which have desolated Europe in past ages, are the price paid by past generations for the brighter hopes of the present: and however horrible the details of battle, (such as Mr. Sumner has amassed in hope of appalling men who have little realized what war means), yet history declares that the permanent evils produced by war, when conquest does not follow, are slight in comparison to those inflicted by unjust laws and foreign govern

ment.

The incessant wars of the Greek republics did not hinder their increasing in numbers, wealth and strength; so that in Demosthenes' day Greece was stronger in men and money and in all physical supplies than she had ever been: but from the moment she lost her liberty under Alexander the Great, she began to decline, being so drained of her young men for Asiatic armies, that the Romans found her greatly emaciated: and the fall which domestic tyrannies had begun, a purely foreign despotism rapidly precipitated. Precisely the same remarks apply to Italy, which has twice over had the same experience. Abounding in population in its early times of turbulence, it became comparatively a desert after Roman conquest. Again in the middle ages it became flourishing, warlike and famous; but under despotism it sunk into a weakness which war habitually at the doors had not been able to inflict. So too, the wars of the French revolu

tion during seven years of unparalleled exertion left France more prosperous than they found her and after the gigantic efforts of fourteen years more under a despotism which with all its severity was popular, France though exhausted was immeasurably better off than under Louis XVI. Before her great revolution, disastrous as were her wars, these were not her worst curse, but the laws which forbade industry and pampered idle licentiousness.

Viewed as an argument on the general question of War, we deprecate as irrelevant the hideous pictures of human misery consequent on a battle, as tending to impress the passions and bias the judgment. Those miseries are short, and affect but a small fraction of a population. They are seldom to be set in the balance of reason against the evils of losing national independence; yet they affect the imagination more, because so many sharp sufferings are brought into a heap and placed in open day. With the inconsistency which pervades his whole address, Mr. Sumner, who approves of defence against pirates, quotes with high approbation the following sentimental tale from Mrs. Child's Letters from New York [Note F., p. 98], on which we intend to ground various remarks:

"I have somewhere read of a regiment ordered to march into a small town and take it. I think it was in the Tyrol: but wherever it was, it chanced that the place was settled by a colony who believed the Gospel of Christ, and proved their faith by works. A courier from a neighbouring village informed them that troops were advancing to take the town. They quietly answered, If they will take it, they must.' Soldiers soon came riding in, with colours flying, and fifes piping their shrill defiance. They looked round for an enemy, and saw the farmer at his plough, the blacksmith at his anvil, and the women at their churns and spinning wheels, babies crowed to hear the music, and the boys ran out to see the pretty trainers, with feathers and bright buttons, the harlequins of the nineteenth century: of course none of these were in a proper position to be shot at. 'Where are your soldiers?' they asked. We have none,' was the brief reply. But we have come to take the town.'- Well, friends; it is before you.' 'But is there nobody to fight?'No, we are all Christians.' Here was an emergency altogether unprovided for; a sort of resistance which no bullet could hit; a fortress perfectly bomb-proof. The commander was perplexed. If there is nobody to fight with, of course we cannot fight,' said he, it is impossible to take such a town as this.' So he ordered