Aggression and retaliation are forbidden by God's laws; -therefore,

All wars are immoral and unjustifiable.

VI. "Let any man reflect upon the amount of pecuniary expenditure, and the awful waste of human life, which the wars of the last hundred years have occasioned, and then we will ask him whether it be not evident, that the onehundredth part of this expense and suffering, if employed in the honest effort to render mankind wiser and better, would, long before this time, have banished wars from the earth, and rendered the civilized world like the garden of Eden? If this be true, it will follow that the cultivation of a military spirit is injurious to a community, inasmuch as it aggravates the source of the evil, the corrupt passions of the human breast, by the very manner in which it attempts to correct the evil itself.”

Much has been said to show that war begets immorality, and that the cultivation of the military spirit has a corrupting influence on community. And members of the clergy and of the bar have not unfrequently so far forgotten, if not truth and fact, at least the common courtesies and charities of life, as to attribute to the military profession an unequal share of immorality and crime. We are declared not only parasites on the body politic, but professed, violaters of God's laws-men so degraded, though unconsciously, that "in the pursuit of justice we renounce the human character and assume that of the beasts;" it is said that "murder, robbery, rape, arson, theft, if only plaited with the soldier's garb, go unwhipped of justice."* It has never been the habit of the military to retort these charges upon the other professions. We prefer to leave them unanswered. If demagogues on the "stump," or in the legislative halls, or in their Fourth-of

* Sumner's Oration.

July addresses, can find no fitter subjects "to point a moral or adorn a tale," we must be content to bear their misrepresentations and abuse.

Unjust wars, as well as unjust litigation, are immoral in their effects and also in their cause. But just wars and just litigation are not demoralizing. Suppose all wars and all courts of justice to be abolished, and the wicked nations as well as individuals to be suffered to commit injuries without opposition and without punishment; would not immorality and unrighteousness increase rather than diminish? Few events rouse and elevate the patriotism and public spirit of a nation so much as a just and patriotic war. It raises the tone of public morality, and destroys the sordid selfishness and degrading submissiveness which so often result from a long-protracted peace. Such was the Dutch war of independence against the Spaniards; such the German war against the aggressions of Louis XIV., and the French war against the coalition of 1792. But without looking abroad for illustration, we find ample proof in our own history. Can it be said that the wars of the American Revolution and of 1812, were demoralizing in their effects? "Whence do Americans," says Dr. Lieber, “habitually take their best and purest examples of all that is connected with patriotism, public spirit, devotedness to common good, purity of motive and action, if not from the daring band of their patriots of the Revolution?"

The principal actors in the military events of the Revolution and of 1812, held, while living, high political offices in the state, and the moral tone which they derived from these wars may be judged of by the character stamped on their administration of the government. These men have passed away, and their places have, for some time, been filled by men who take their moral tone from the relations of peace To the true believer in the efficacy

of non-resistance, and in the demoralizing influence of all wars, how striking the contrast between these different periods in our political history! How infinitely inferior to the rulers in later times were those, who, in the blindness of their infatuation, appealed to physical force, rather than surrender their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness! Let us trace out this contrast:

In the earlier ages of our republic, and under the rule of those whose moral character had been corrupted by war, party spirit ran higher and was less pure than at later periods in our history. The object of the principal leaders of the great political parties was then to render the opinions of the opposite party odious: now, their only object is to sustain their own opinions by argument. Then, each party claimed to itself an exclusive love of country, and stigmatized the other as aliens and the natural enemies of the state: now, they both practise great forbearance, love, and charity, towards political opponents. Then, men obtained place through intrigue and corruption, and a universal scramble for the loaves and fishes of office on the one side, and a universal political proscription on the other, were regarded as the natural results of an election: now, this disgusting strife for office has ceased; men no longer seek place, but wait, like Cincinnatus, to be called from their ploughs; and none are proscribed for opinion's sake. Then, in electing men to office the most important social and constitutional principles were forgotten or violated: now, we have the august spectacle of a nation choosing its rulers under the guidance of strict moral principle. Then, the halls of congress were frequently filled with demagogues, and tiplers, and the small men of community: now, the ablest and best of the country are always sought for as representatives. Then, the magnates of party were the mere timid, temporizing slaves of expediency, looking, not to the justice and wisdom of

their measures, but to their probable popularity with their sneaking train of followers: now, they rely for respect and support upon the judgment of the honest and enlightened. Then, the rank and file of party were mere political hirelings, who sold their manhood for place, who reviled and glorified, and shouted huzzas and whispered. calumnies, just as they were bidden; they could fawn upon those who dispensed political patronage with a cringing servility that would shame the courtiers of Louis XIV., or the parasites and hirelings of Walpole: now, all political partisans, deriving their moral tone from the piping times of peace, are pure, disinterested patriots, who, like the Roman farmer, take office with great reluctance, and resign it again as soon as the state can spare their services. Then, prize-fighters, and blacklegs, and gamblers, having formed themselves into political clubs, were courted by men high in authority, and rewarded for their dirty and corrupting partisan services by offices of trust and responsibility: now, no man clothed with authority would dare to insult the moral sense of community by receiving such characters in the national councils, or by bestowing public offices upon these corrupt and loathsome dregs of society.

Such, the advocates of non-resistance would persuade us, are the legitimate results in this country of war on the one hand and of a long-protracted peace on the other. But there are men of less vivid imaginations, and, perhaps, of visions less distorted by fanatical zeal, who fail to perceive these results, and who even think they see the reverse of all this. These men cannot perceive any thing in the lives of Washington, Hamilton, and Knox, to show that they were the less virtuous because they had borne arms in their country's service: they even fail to perceive the injurious effects of the cultivation of a military spirit on the military students of West Point, whose

graduates, they think, will compare favorably in moral character with the graduates of Yale and Cambridge. Nay, more, some even go so far as to say that our army, as a body, is no less moral than the corresponding classes in civil life; that our common soldiers are as seldom guilty of riots, thefts, robberies, and murders, as similarly educated men engaged in other pursuits; that our military officers are not inferior in moral character to our civil officers, and that, as a class, they will compare favorably with any other class of professional men-with lawyers, for example. In justification of these opinions-which may, perhaps, be deemed singularly erroneous-they say, that in the many millions of public money expended during the last forty years, by military officers, for the army, for military defences, and for internal improvements, but a single graduate of West Point has proved a defaulter, even to the smallest sum, and that it is exceedingly rare to see an officer of the army brought into court for violating the laws.

But even suppose it true that armies necessarily diffuse immorality through community, is it not equally true that habitual submission to the injustice, plunder, and insult of foreign conquerors would tend still more to degrade and demoralize any people?

With regard to "pecuniary expenditures" required in military defence, many absurd as well as false statements have been put forth. With respect to our own country, the entire amounts expended, under the head of war department, whether for Indian pensions, for the purchase of Indian lands, the construction of government roads, the improvement of rivers and harbors, the building of breakwaters and sea-walls, for the preservation of property, the surveying of public lands, &c., &c.; in fine, every expenditure made by officers of the army, under the war department, is put down as expenses for military de

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