To thump is as costly, and in other ways as painful, as to
_be_ thumped. The evil to both sides arises in an undeveloped
state of law. If rights were defined by a well considered code growing
out of long experience, each party sees that this scourge of war would
continually tend to limit itself. Consequently the very necessity of
war becomes the strongest invitation to that system of judicial logic
which forms its sole limitation. But all war whatsoever stands in these
circumstances. It follows that all war whatever, unless on the brutal
principle of a Spartan warfare, that made war its own sufficient object
and self-justification, operates as a perpetual bounty offered to men
upon the investigation and final adjudication of those disputed cases
through which war prospers. Hence it is, viz., because the true
boundaries of reciprocal rights are for ever ascertaining themselves
more clearly, that war is growing less frequent. The fields open to
injustice (which originally from pure ignorance are so vast)
continually (through deeper and more expansive surveys by man's
intellect--searching--reflecting--comparing) are narrowing themselves;
narrowing themselves in this sense, that all nations under a common
centre of religious civilization, as Christendom suppose, or Islamism,
would not fight--no, and would not (by the national sense of wrong and
right) be permitted to fight--in a cause _confessedly_ condemned
by equity as now developed.
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