These ladies, and the French coxcomb, could at the utmost have
claimed a distinction--such as that which belonged to a particular
Turkish gunner, the captain of a gun at Navarino, viz., that he, by
firing the first shot without orders, did (as a matter of fact) let
loose and unmuzzle the whole of that dreadful iron hurricane from four
nations which instantly followed, but which (be it known to the gunner)
could not have been delayed for fifty minutes longer, whether he had
fired the unauthorized gun or not.
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.
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