Christianity it
is, but Christianity when _triumphant_, and no longer in conflict
with adverse, or thwarting, or limiting influences, which only can be
equal to a revolution so mighty. But all this, for the sake of pursuing
the assumption, let us agree to waive. In reality, there are two
separate stations taken up by the war denouncers. One class hold, that
an influence derived from political economy is quite equal to the
flying leap by which man is to clear this unfathomable gulph of war,
and to land his race for ever on the opposite shore of a self-
sustaining peace. Simply, the contemplation of national debts, (as a
burthen which never would have existed without war,) and a computation
of the waste, havoc, unproductive labor, &c., attached to any single
campaign--these, they imagine, might suffice, _per se_, for the
extinction of war. But the other class cannot go along with a
speculation so infirm. Reasons there are, in the opposite scale,
tempting man into war,--which are far mightier than any motives
addressed to his self-interest. Even straining her energies to the
utmost, they regard all policy of the _purse_ as adequate: anything
short of religion, they are satisfied, must be incommensurate to a
result so vast.
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