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In our own days wars in their ebbs and flows are but another name for the resources of the national exchequer, or expressions of its artificial facilities for turning those resources to account. The great artifice of anticipation applied to national income–an artifice sure to follow where civilization has expanded, and which would have arisen to Rome had her civilization been either (A) completely developed, or (B) expanded originally from a true radix–has introduced a new era into national history. The man who, having had property, invests in the Funds, and divides between his grandchildren and the five subsequent generations what will yield them subsistence, is the author of an expansive improvement which has been enjoyed by all in turn, and with more fixed assurance in the last case than in the first. He is a public benefactor in more ways than appears on the surface: he takes the most efficient guarantees against needless wars.

Captain Jenkins’s ears[6] might have been redeemed at a less price; but still the war taught a lesson, which, if avoidable at that instant, was certainly blamable; but it had its use in enforcing on other nations the conviction that England washed out insult with retribution, and for every drop of blood wantonly spilt demanded an ocean in return. Perhaps you will say this was no great improvement on the old. No; not in appearance, it may be; but that was because war had to open a field which mere diplomacy, unsupported by the sword, could not open, and secured what we may well call a moral result in the eye of the whole world, which diplomacy could not secure in our guilty Europe. But was that, you ask, a condition to be contemplated with complete satisfaction? No; nor is it right that it should. But the dawn of a new era is approaching, for which that may have done its installment of preparation. Not that war will cease for many generations, but that it will continually move more in greater subjection to national laws and Christian opinion. Nevermore will it be excited by mere court intrigue, or even by ministerial necessities. No more will a quarrel between two ladies about a pair of gloves, or a fit of ill-temper in a prince toward his minister, call forth the dread scourge by way of letting off personal irritation or redressing the balance of parties.

Funding, therefore, was a great step in advance; and even already we have only to look into the Exchequer in order to read the possibilities, the ebbs and flows of war beforehand. This consideration of money, it is true–even as the sinews of war–was not so great in ancient history. And the reason is evident. Kings did not then go to war by money, but for money. They did not look into the Exchequer for the means of a campaign, but they looked into a campaign for the means of an Exchequer. Yet even in these nations, more of their history, of their doings and sufferings, lay in their economy than anywhere else. The great Oriental phantoms, such as the Pharaohs and the Sargons, did, it is true, bring nations to war without much more care for the commissariat department than is given in the battles of the Kites and Daws. Yet even there the political economy made itself felt, obscurely and indirectly it may be, but really and effectively, acting by laws that varied their force rather to the eye than to the understanding, and presented indeed a final restraining force to these kings also. For examine these wars, fabulous as they are; look into the when, the whence, the how; into the duration of the campaigns, into their objects, and into the quality of the troops, into the circumstances under which they were trained and fought, and this will abundantly appear.

Certainly, the commissariat which we do by foresight, they did by brute efforts of power; but the leading economical laws which are now clear to us, and which, with full perception of their inevitable operation, we take into account, made themselves felt in the last result if only then blindly realized; and in the fact that these laws are now clearly apprehended lies the prevailing reason that modern wars must, on the side alike of the commissariat and of social effects in various directions, be widely different from war in ancient times.