The expression is an unmeaning barbarism, and wholly
unphilosophical, when applied to beings of the same species, let their
station in the creation be what it may. We have a perfect idea of a
natural enemy when we think of the devil, because the enmity is
perpetual, unalterable and unabateable. It admits, neither of peace,
truce, or treaty; consequently the warfare is eternal, and therefore
it is natural. But man with man cannot arrange in the same opposition.
Their quarrels are accidental and equivocally created. They become
friends or enemies as the change of temper, or the cast of interest
inclines them. The Creator of man did not constitute them the
natural enemy of each other. He has not made any one order of beings
so. Even wolves may quarrel, still they herd together. If any two
nations are so, then must all nations be so, otherwise it is not
nature but custom, and the offence frequently originates with the
accuser. England is as truly the natural enemy of France, as France is
of England, and perhaps more so. Separated from the rest of Europe,
she has contracted an unsocial habit of manners, and imagines in
others the jealousy she creates in herself. Never long satisfied
with peace, she supposes the discontent universal, and buoyed up
with her own importance, conceives herself the only object pointed at.
The expression has been often used, and always with a fraudulent
design; for when the idea of a natural enemy is conceived, it prevents
all other inquiries, and the real cause of the quarrel is hidden in
the universality of the conceit.
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