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But now, let me speak to the second proposition of my two-headed thesis, viz., that war ought not to be abolished, if such an abolition were even possible. Prima facie, it seems a dreadful doctrine to claim a place for war as amongst the evils that are salutary to man; but conscientiously I hold it to be such. I hold with Wordsworth, but for reasons which may or may not be the same, since he has not stated his—

‘That God’s most dreaded instrument,
In working out a pure intent,
Is man–array’d for mutual slaughter:
Yea, Carnage is his daughter.’

I am obliged to hold, that supposing so romantic a condition realized as the cessation of war, this change, unless other evils were previously abolished, or neutralized in a way still more romantic to suppose, would not be for the welfare of human nature, but would tend to its rapid degradation.

One, in fact, of the earliest aspects under which this moral necessity for war forces itself upon our notice, is its physical necessity. I mean to say that one of the earliest reasons why war ought to exist, is because under any mode of suppressing war, virtually it will exist. Banish war as now administered, and it will revolve upon us in a worse shape, that is, in a shape of predatory and ruffian war, more and more licentious, as it enjoys no privilege or sufferance, by the supposition, under the national laws. Will the causes of war die away because war is forbidden? Certainly not; and the only result of the prohibition would be to throw back the exercise of war from national into private and mercenary hands; and that is precisely the retrograde or inverse course of civilization; for, in the natural order of civilization, war passes from the hands of knights, barons, insulated cities, into those of the universal community. If, again, it is attempted to put down this lawless guerilla state by national forces, then the result will be to have established an interminable warfare of a mixed character, private and public, civil and foreign, infesting the frontiers of all states like a fever, and in substitution for the occasional and intermitting wars of high national police, administered with the dignified responsibility that belongs to supreme rank, with the humanity that belongs to conscious power, and with the diminishing havoc that belongs to increasing skill in the arts of destruction. Even as to this last feature in warfare, which in the war of brigands and condottieri would for many reasons instantly decay, no reader can fail to be aware of the marvels effected by the forces of inventive science that run along side by side with the advances of civilization; look back even to the grandest period of the humane Roman warfare, listen to the noblest and most merciful of all Roman captains, saying on the day of Pharsalia, (and saying of necessity,) ‘Strike at their faces, cavalry,’–yes, absolutely directing his own troopers to plough up with their sabres the blooming faces of the young Roman nobility; and then pass to a modern field of battle, where all is finished by musquetry and artillery amidst clouds of smoke, no soldier recognizing his own desolations, or the ghastly ruin of his own right arm, so that war, by losing all its brutality, is losing half of its demoralization.

War, so far from ending, because war was forbidden and nationally renounced, on the contrary would transmigrate into a more fearful shape. As things are at present, (and, observe, they are always growing better,) what numbers of noble-minded men, in the persons of our officers (yes, and often of non-commissioned officers,) do we British, for example, disperse over battle-fields, that could not dishonor their glorious uniform by any countenance to an act of cruelty! They are eyes delegated from the charities of our domestic life, to overlook and curb the license of war. I remember, in Xenophon, some passage where he describes a class of Persian gentlemen, who were called the ophthalmoi, or eyes of the king; but for a very different purpose. These British officers may be called the opthalmoi, or eyes of our Sovereign Lady, that into every corner of the battle carry their scrutiny, lest any cruelty should be committed on the helpless, or any advantage taken of a dying enemy. But mark, such officers would be rare in the irregular troops succeeding to the official armies. And through this channel, amongst others, war, when cried down by act of Parliament, and precisely because it was cried down, would become more perilously effective for the degradation of human nature. Being itself dishonored, war would become the more effective as an instrument for the dishonoring of its agents. However, at length, we will suppose the impossible problem solved–war, we will assume, is at last put down.