fe
6 Conservative *
Innd of course this of ten happened iu the
older times of the warrior kings ; as fnr
as William Third ; that whole order of
things within the past two centuries dis
appearing. Marlborough is perhaps the
last practical example ; Wellington com
ing pretty near to it for a moment.
The triumph of statesmanship is to
avert a war ; a double triumph instead
of a single one. With every age , a rel
atively larger complex of interests must
be infringed by war , and fewer promot
ed. Hence the inevitable tendency in
later times has been for the strongest
nations to war , if at all , on the weakest
or such as were presumed so while
the rest look on ; a sad detraction , one
would think , from any glory appertain
ing. Witness the desperate energy in
manufacture of such glory , and the
high protection this manufacture needs ;
the eager appropriation of "honor" as a
watchword , whether the actual proceed
ings bo in their nature honorable , or
dishonor to the national character and
record.
Such are the reflections prompted by
a single sweep of eye along the crest-
lines of history , merely with enough at
tention to the real formation of them
for a rational understanding. But it is
not these high ranges only which have
led us to our good , though we are apt to
look and talk as if all the vale and plain
were filled in from their slopes. The
silent , Buffering , toiling race of men ;
who have labored the soil and product
of the earth all ages through , a little for
themselves and much for others ; who
have kept all the rest in being , and by
slow steps improved a little in their
means ; injuring none and benefiting
many : what is the visitation of war to
these , and to their part in the general
welfare ?
If we should
Suggestions as to Wnr.
pause a little more
especially upon Eorne of the separate
peaks along those ridges , some of the
wars that have seemed most vital to the
progress of mankind , embodying princi
ples that have struggled their way out
to hard-won victory we may find inter
esting suggestion. A war that has once
taken place , appears in the register for
ever , fatal and inevitable. But it need
be no more inevitable than 9ther events ,
often hanging long in a tremulous bal
ance. When we examine closely how
that balance turned , we may be often
struck with the evidence , how distinct
ly it has appeared to be , by acts of palp
able wrong , on the side we more esteem.
We need not stop on any conflicts of
mere enmity or ambition , let us take
only those we call noble , in which wo
can sympathize with ardor , for the
cause at stake. Outside our own coun
try , few contests are more calculated to
rouse this fervor , than those of the Eng
lish Commonwealth , or Great Rebellion
as it used to bo called. The fact that
sympathy also with the defeated cause
may still be found , seems only to in-
teusify the vitality of the struggle , its
elements proving to bo of such enduring
strength. But it seems almost incon
ceivable that an American , competently
read , can fail to go with the Long Parli
ament , at least , in the years of its prime.
Now the measures which swept away
inveterate abuses , limited tyrannic pow
er , safeguarded public liberties , brought
high offenders down all these may bo
approved indeed ; but not one or all of
these would have led to war. What did
lead to it , wore clear abuses of legisla
tive power , and infringements of right ;
the Parliament began to persecute and to
overpass its constitutional bounds , as
plainly as the king had done though it
may be not so flagrantly , nor so memor
ably , the wrongs being more diffused in
their application , and forgotten iu the
revolutions following. These were the
provocations that stung the Royalists
up to the fighting temper , and the sense
of Parliament now being really in the
wrong , sustained them to the end. The
Protectorate was a majestic phase of
English history , Cromwell one of the
noblest of rulers and of men ; but
these are no more involved in that
question of right and wrong , than the
Napoleonic wars.
And how of our
own Revolution ,
which links itself so fitly to that strug
gle of the century before ? Sacred
things are to be touched with care ; but
this trwe may be free to remark : while
our Continental Congress and our other
chosen leaders may have been in all the
right of the Long Parliament with none
of its wrong , yet that session of 1774
made no war , and spent its whole effort
to avoid any. As in the other case , it
was rankling and needless exasperations
which would seem to have goaded on
the actual strife. In those on England's
part we are pretty well instructed ; our
own we do not always bear in mind ,
nor their serious consequence. Infuri
ate and reckless mobs , who outraged
officers in the mere discharge of duty ,
burned the libraries and destroyed what
rudiments of art collection might be
found in the homes of the adverse-mind
ed , cruelly persecuted and exiled thous
ands of worthy neighbors , much of the
land's best blood , for the crime of keep
ing the loyalty in which their whole
lives had passed ; unmeasured anarchies ,
license , uttering itself in the terms of
the horse-jockey who said to John
Adams on the threat of prosecution for
some villainy , "Why , Mr. Adams , I
thought there were to be no more courts
and laws after this" ; it was in riots like
these , much rather than in deliberate
contests over legal rights among Anglo-
Saxons , that wo may find the material
out of which war could bo made. Again
there came high blessings in the sequel ;
the career of Washington , the Constitu
tion ; but those could not recommend
the evils that had gone before. Like
other good things that have come out of
evil , they attest the wisdom of God
who rules , not that of man who wrecks.
So have houses and cities risen again in
nobler form from the ashes of conflagra
tion , so men and states have lived in
bettor guarded health after sickness and
destroying scourges ; that does not re
commend pestilence , or arson.
, , We sympathize
SevencarH. . . . , ,
with the great
Frederic , in his seven years' wrestle
against the fearful overmatch of half
Europe armed for his destruction ; yet
we have to recognize the overbearing
aggression of his earlier years , which
leagued such powers against him.
Thirty Years. If there ever
was a war in the
world , which according to the "Strenu
ous" theory , should have blessed the
people who waged it , such a one was
that of the Thirty Years in Germany.
There indeed was grim earnest , sacrifice
of all things , mightiest interests involv
ed , indomitable persistence a generation
long , heroes growing wild , and the holi
est of causes , faith itself , at stake.
And except the very exhaustion of po
wers concerned , which brought an end
to all such murderous orgies ever after
in the name of religion the result was
ruin only. Germany down to that
strife had been giving us its art of print
ing , Hanseatic League , its Luther and
the rise of modern thought ; for a cen
tury from that time it gave us almost
nothing. Then a great new life began
to open , far away from all such causes
and effects. But never was there such
a waste , of a great people not yet ready
for decline.
I" the record of
, . , ,
Exalted by Pence. , , TT . , , „ . .
the United States ,
we have a singular example of a nation
reaching a foremost place among the
powers of the world , whose glory has
arisen from all other sources rather than
international war. Our only two great
armed struggles were not properly such ;
but rather family settlements , adjusted
in a noisy kind of way , very interesting
to ourselves. In so far as we came out
with any credit from the war of 1812 ,
the success was much more in the treaty
than the field ; the one decisive military
victory coming after the covenant
of peace. Our one case of pure ortho
dox "glory" , an unbroken series of
splendid victories , ending iu conquest of
the hostile capital , was a fight with a
people helplessly weaker ; and the cause ,
was it such as to fix the flush of exulta
tion , or of shame upon the American
cheek ? In our other struggle with alien
peoples , we have discreetly kept the like
odds in our hands. If we have an hon
ored name among the nations , it is on far
other grounds than these. That we
may bo mindful of our true renown and
character , established in the course of
fact as well as the laws of right , is the
inward prayer and the outward suggest
ion of the thinking patriot.
The result of our examination rests ,