LIBRARY OF THE University of California. GIFT OF Accession No. VjZ (J * Seneca, f Soame Jenyns : Internal Evid. of Christianity. Prop. 3. 242 INFLtmNCK OF INDIVIDUALS UPON [KSSAY II. as such, there is not a man in Britain or in Europe whose bravery entitles him to praise which he must not share with the combatants of a cockpit. Of the moral qualities that are components of bravery, the reader may form some conception from this lan- guage of a man who is said to be a large landed pro- prietor, a magistrate, and a member of parliament. ' ' I am one of those who think that evil alone does not result from poaching. The risk poachers run from the dangers that beset them, added to their occupation being carried on in cold dark nights, begets a hardi- hood of frame and contempt of danger that is not with- out its value. I never heard or knew of a poacher being a coward. They all make good soldiers ; and military men are well aware that two or three men in each troop or company, of bold and enterprising spirits, are not without their effect on their comrades. ' ' The same may of course be said of smugglers and highway- men. If these are the characters in whom we are peculiarly to seek for bravery, what are the moral qual- ities of bravery itself ! All just, all rational, and I will venture to affirm all permanent reputation refers to the mind or to virtue ; and what connection has animal power or animal hardihood with intellect or goodness? I do not decry courage : he who was better acquainted than we are with the nature and worth of human actions, attached much value to courage, but he at- tached none to bravery.* Courage he recommended by his precepts and enforced by his example : bravery he never recommended at all. The wisdom of this dis- tinction and its accordancy with the principles of his religion are plain. Bravery requires the existence of many of those dispositions which he disallowed. * ' ' Whatever merit valor may have assumed among pagans, with Christians it can pretend to none." Soame Jenyns : In- ternal Evid. of Christianity, Prop. 3. CHAP. IX.] PUBLIC NOTIONS OF MORALITY. 243 Animosity, the desire of retaliation, the disposition to injure and destroy — all this is necessary to the existence of bravery, but all this is incompatible with Christian- ity. The courage which Christianity requires is to bravery what fortitude is to daring — an effort of the mental principles rather than of the spirits. It is a calm steady determinateness of purpose, that will not be diverted by solicitation or awed by fear. " Behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there ; save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear u?ito myself. * What re- semblance has bravery to courage like this? This courage is a virtue, and a virtue which it is difficult to acquire or to practise; and we have heedlessly or ingen- iously transferred its praise to another quality which is inferior in its nature and easier to acquire, in order that we may obtain the reputation of virtue at a cheap rate. Of those who thus extol the lower qualities of our nature, few perhaps are conscious to what a degree they are deluded. In exhibiting this delusion let us not forget the purpose for which it is done. The popu- lar notion respecting bravery does not terminate in an innoxious mistake. The consequences are practically and greatly evil. He that has placed his hopes upon the praises of valor, desires of course an opportunity of acquiring them, and this opportunity he cannot find but in the destruction of men. That such powerful motives will lead to this destruction when even am- bition can scarcely find a pretext, we need not the tes- timony of experience to assure us. It is enough that we consider the principles which actuate mankind. And if we turn from actions to motives, from bravery to patriotism, we are presented with similar delusions, * Acts xx. 22. 244 INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUALS UPON [ESSAY II. and with similar mischiefs as their consequence. To " fight nobly for our country," to <( fall covered with glory in our country's cause," to " sacrifice our lives for the liberties and laws and religion of our country, ' ' are phrases in the mouth of multitudes. What do they mean, and to whom do they apply? We contend, that to say generally of those who perish in war that ' ' they have died for their country," is simply untrue : and for this simple reason, that they did not fight for it. It is not true that patriotism is their motive. Why is a boy destined from school for the army ? Is it that his father is more patriotic than his neighbor, who des- tines his son for the bar ? Or if the boy himself begs his father to buy an ensigncy, is it because he loves his country, or is it because he dreams of glory, and admires scarlet and plumes and swords ? The officer enters the service in order that he may obtain an' in- come, not in order to benefit his fellow citizens. The private enters it because he prefers a soldier's life to another, or because he has no wish but the wish for change. And having entered the army, what is the motive that induces the private or his superiors to fight ? It is that fighting is part of their business ; that is one of the conditions upon which they were hired. Patriotism is not the motive. Of those who fall in battle, is there one in a hundred who even thinks of his country's good ? He thinks perhaps of glory and of the fame of his regiment — he hopes perhaps that " Sal- amanca " or ' ' Austerlitz ' ' will henceforth be in- scribed on its colors ; but rational views of his country's welfare are foreign to his mind. He has scarcely a thought about the matter. He fights in battle as a horse draws in a carriage, because he is compelled to do it, or because he has done it before ; but he proba- bly thinks no more of his country's good than the same horse, if he were carrying corn to a granary, would CHAP. IX.] PUBLIC NOTIONS OF MORALITY. 245 think he was providing for the comforts of his master. The truth therefore is, that we give to the soldier that of which we are wont to be sufficiently sparing — a gratuitous concession of merit. If he but "fights bravely," he is a patriot and secure of his praise. To sacrifice our lives for the liberties and laws and re- ligion of our native land, are undoubtedly high-sound- ing words ; but who are they that will do it ? Who is it that will sacrifice his life for his country ? Will the senator who supports a war ? Will the writer who de- claims upon patriotism ? Will the minister of religion who recommends the sacrifice ? Take away war and its fictions, and there is not a man of them who will do it. Will he sacrifice his life at home ? If the loss of his life in London or at York would procure just so much bene- fit to his country as the loss of one soldier's in the field, would he be willing to lay his head upon the block? Is he willing, for such a coritribution to his country's good, to resign himself without notice and without remembrance to the executioner ? Alas for the fictions of war ! where is such a man ? Men will not sacrifice their lives at all unless it be in war ; and they do not sacrifice them in war from motives of patriotism. In no rational use of language, therefore, can it be said that the soldier " dies for his country." Not that there may not be or that there have not been persons who fight from motives of patriotism. But the occurrence is comparatively rare. There may be physicians who qualify themselves for practice from motives of benevolence to the sick ; or lawyers who assume the gown in order to plead for the injured and oppressed ; but ' it is an unusual motive, and so is patriotism to the soldier. And after all, even if all soldiers fought out of zeal for their country, what is the merit of patriotism itself ? I do not say that it possesses no virtue, but I affirm 246 INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUATES UPON [ESSAY II. and hope hereafter to show, that its virtue is extrava- gantly overrated,* and that if every one who fought did fight for his country, he would often be actuated only by a mode of selfishness — of selfishness which sacrifices the general interests of the species to the in- terests of a part. Such and so low are the qualities which have ob- tained from deluded and deluding millions, fame, honors, glories. A prodigious structure, and almost without a base : — a structure so vast, so brilliant, so attractive, that the greater portion of mankind are con- tent to gaze in admiration, without any enquiry into its basis or any solicitude for its durability. If, how- ever, it should be that the gorgeous temple will be able to stand only till Christian truth and light become predominant, it surely will be wise of those who seek a niche in its apartments as their paramount and final good, to pause ere they proceed. If they desire a rep- utation that shall outlive guilt and fiction, let them look to the basis of military fame. If this fame should one day sink into oblivion and contempt, it will not be the first instance in which wide-spread glory has been found to be a glittering bubble that has burst and been forgotten. Look at the days of chivalry. Of the ten thousand Quixotes of the middle ages, where is now the honor or the name ? Yet poets once sang their praises, and the chronicler of their achievements be- lieved he was recording an everlasting fame. Where are now the glories of the tournament ? Glories " Of which all Europe rang from side to side." Where is the champion whom princesses caressed and nobles envied ? Where are the triumphs of Scotus and Aquinas, and where are the folios that perpetuated their fame ? The glories of war have indeed outlived these ; * Essay III, c. 9. CHAP. IX.] PUBLIC NOTIONS OF MORALITY. 247 human passions are less mutable than human follies ; but I am willing to avow the conviction, that these glories are alike destined to sink into forgetfulness, and that the time is approaching when the applauses of heroism and the splendors of conquest will be remem- bered only as follies and iniquities that are past. Let him who seeks for fame other than that which an era of Christian purity will allow, make haste ; for every hour that he delays its acquisition will shorten its duration. This is certain if there be certainty in the promises of Heaven. But we must not forget the purpose for which these illustrations of the military virtues are offered to the reader ; — to remind him not merely that they are fictions, but fictions which are the occasion of excess of misery to mankind — to remind him that it is his business, from considerations of humanity and of religion, to refuse to give currency to the popular de- lusions — and to remind him that if he does promote them, he promotes, by the act, misery in all its forms and guilt in all its excesses. Upon such subjects, men are not left to exercise their own inclinations. Morality interposes its commands ; and they are commands which, if we would be moral, we must obey. Unchastity.— No portion of these pages is devoted to the enforcement of moral obligations upon this sub- ject, partly because these obligations are commonly acknowledged how little soever they may be regarded, and partly because, as the reader will have seen, the object of these essays is to recommend those applica- tions of the moral law which are frequently neglected in the practice even of respectable men. — But in refer- ence to the influence of public opinion on offences con- nected with the sexual constitution, it will readily be perceived that something should be said, when it is considered that some of the popular notions respecting 248 INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUALS UPON [ESSAY II. them are extravagantly inconsistent with the moral law. The want of chastity in a woman is visited by public opinion with the severest reprobation — in men, with very little or with none. Now, morality makes no such distinction. The offence is frequently adverted to in the Christian scriptures ; but I believe there is no one precept which intimates that, in the estimation of its writer, there was any difference in the turpitude of the offence respectively in men and women. If it be in this volume that we are to seek for the principles of the moral law, how shall we defend the state of popu- lar opinion? "If unchastity in a woman, whom St. Paul terms the glory of man, be such a scandal and dis- honor, then certainly in a man, who is both the image and glory of God, it must, though commonly not so thought, be much more deflowering and dishonor- able. "* But this departure from the moral law, like all other departures, produces its legitimate, that is, pernicious effects. The sex in whom popular opinion reprobates the offences, comparatively seldom commits them : the sex in whom it tolerates the offences, com- mits them to an enormous extent. It is obvious, there- fore, that to promote the present state of popular opinion, is to promote and to encourage the want of chastity in men. That some very beneficial consequences result from the strong direction of its current against the offence in a woman, is certain. The consciousness that upon the retention of her reputation depends so tremendous a stake, is probably a more efficacious motive to its preservation than any other. The abandonment to which the loss of personal integrity generally consigns a woman, is a perpetual and fearful warning to the sex. Almost every human being deprecates and dreads the general disfavor of mankind; and thus, notwithstanding * Milton : Christian Doctrine, p. 624. CHAP. IX.] PUBLIC NOTIONS OF MORAUTY. 249 temptations of all kinds, the number of women who do incur it is comparatively small. But the fact that public opinion is thus powerful in restraining one sex, is a sufficient evidence that it would also be powerful in restraining the other. Waiv- ing for the present the question whether the popular disapprobation of the crime in a woman is not too severe — if the man who was guilty was forthwith and immediately consigned to infamy : if he was expelled from virtuous society, and condemned for the remainder of life to the lowest degradation, how quickly would the frequency of the crime be diminished ! The reforma- tion amongst men would effect a reformation amongst women too ; and the reciprocal temptations which each addresses to the other, would in a great degree be withdrawn. If there were few seducers few would be seduced ; and few therefore would in turn become the seducers of men. But instead of this direction of public opinion, what is the ordinary language respecting the man who thus violates the moral law ? We are told that "he is rather unsteady ; " that " there is a little of the young man about him ; " that " he is not free from indiscre- tions. ' ' And what is he likely to think of all this ? Why, that for a young man to have a little of the young man about him is perfectly natural ; that to be rather unsteady and a little indiscreet is not, to be sure, what one would wish, but that it is no great harm and will soon wear off. To employ such lan- guage is, we say, to encourage and promote the crime — a crime which brings more wretchedness and vice into the world than almost any other ; and for which, if Christianity is to be believed, the Universal Judge will call to a severe account. If the immediate agent be obnoxious to punishment, can he who encouraged him expect to escape? I am persuaded that the 250 INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUALS UPON [ESSAY II. frequency of this gross offence is attributable much more to the levity of public notions as founded upon levity of language, than to passion ; and perhaps, therefore, some of those who promote this levity may be in every respect as criminal as if they committed the crime itself. Women themselves contribute greatly to the com- mon levity and to its attendant mischiefs. Many a female who talks in the language of abhorrence of an offending sister, and averts her eye in contumely if she meets her in the street, is perfectly willing to be the friend and intimate of the equally offending man. That such women are themselves duped by the vulgar dis- tinction is not to be doubted — but then we are not to imagine that she who practises this inconsistency ab- hors the crime so much as the criminal. Her abhor- rence is directed, not so much to the violation of the moral law as to the party by whom it is violated. ' ' To little respect has that woman a claim on the score of modesty, though her reputation may be white as the driven snow, who smiles on the libertine whilst she spurns the victims of his lawless appetites." No, no. — If such women would convince us that it is the impurity which they reprobate, let them reprobate it wherever it is found : if they would convince us that morals or philanthropy is their motive when they spurn the sinning sister, let them give proof by spurn- ing him who has occasioned her to sin. The common style of narrating occurrences and trials of seduction &c, in the public prints, is very mis- chievous. These flagitious actions are, it seems, a legitimate subject of merriment ; one of the many droll things which a newspaper contains. It is humiliating to see respectable men sacrifice the interests of society to such small temptation. They pander to the ap- petite of the gross and idle of the public : — they want CHAP. IX.] PUBLIC NOTIONS OF MORAUTY. 25 1 to sell their newspapers. — Much of this ill-timed merri- ment is found in the addresses of counsel, and this is one mode amongst the many in which the legal profes- sion appears to think itself licensed to sacrifice virtue to the usages which it has, for its own advantage, adopted. There is cruelty as well as other vices in these things. When we take into account the intense suffering which prostitution produces upon its victims and upon their friends, he who contributes, even thus indirectly, to its extension, does not exhibit even a tolerable sensibility to human misery. Even infidelity acknowledges the claims of humanity ; and therefore, if religion and religious morals were rejected, this heartless levity of language would still be indefensible. We call the man benevolent who relieves or diminishes wretchedness : what should we call him who extends and increases it? In connection with this subject, an observation sug- gests itself respecting the power of character in affect- ing the whole moral principles of the mind. If loss of character does not follow a breach of morality, that breach may be single and alone. The agent's virtue is so far deteriorated, but the breach does not open wide the door to other modes of crime. If loss of character does follow one offence, one of the great barriers which exclude the flood of evil is thrown down ; and though the offence which produced loss of char- acter be really no greater than the offence with which it is retained, yet its consequences upon the moral con- dition are incomparably greater. The reason is, that if you take away a person's reputation you take away one of the principal motives to propriety of conduct. The laborer who, being tempted to steal a piece of bacon from the farmer, finds that no one will take him into his house or give him employment, and that wherever he goes he is pointed at as a thief, is almost 252 INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUALS UPON [ESSAY II. as much driven as tempted to repeat the crime. His fellow laborer, who has much more heinously violated the moral law by a flagitious intrigue with a servant girl, receives from the farmer a few reproaches and a few jests, retains his place, never perhaps repeats the offence, and subsequently maintains a decent morality. It has been said, "Asa woman collects all her virtue into this point, the loss of her chastity is generally the destruction of her moral principle." What is to be understood by collecting virtue into one point, it is not easy to discover. The truth is, that as popular notions have agreed that she who loses her chastity shall re- tain no reputation, a principal motive to the practice of other virtues is taken away : — she therefore disre- gards them ; and thus by degrees her moral principle is utterly depraved. If public opinion was so modi- fied that the world did not abandon a woman who has been robbed of chastity, it is probable that a much larger number of these unhappy persons would return to virtue. The case of men offers illustration and proof. The unchaste man retains his character, or at any rate he retains so much that it is of great import- ance to him to preserve the remainder. Public opin- ion accordingly holds its strong rein upon other parts of his conduct, and by this rein he is restrained from deviating into other walks of vice. If the direction of public opinion were exchanged, if the woman's offence was held venial and the man's infamous, the world might stand in wonder at the altered scene. We should have worthy and respectable prostitutes, while the men whom we now invite to our tables and marry to our daughters, would be repulsed as the most aban- doned of mankind. Of this I have met with a curious illustration. — Amongst the North American Indians " seduction is regarded as a despicable crime, and more blame is attached to the man than to the woman : CHAP. IX. J PUBtIC NOTIONS OF MORALITY. 253 hence the offence on the part of the female is more readily forgotten and forgiven, and she finds little or no difficulty in forming a subsequent matrimonial alliance when deserted by her betrayer, who is gen- erally regarded with distrust , and avoided in social inter- course."* It becomes a serious question how we shall fix upon the degree in which diminution of character ought to be consequent upon offences against morality. It is not I think too much to say, that no single crime, once committed, under the influence perhaps of strong temp- tation, ought to occasion such a loss of character as to make the individual regard himself as abandoned. I make no exceptions — not even for murder. I am per- suaded that some murders are committed with less of personal guilt than is sometimes involved in much smaller crimes ; but however that may be, there is no reason why, even to, the murderer, the motives and the avenues to amendment should be closed. Still less ought they to be closed against the female who is per- haps the victim — strictly the victim of seduction. Yet if the public do not express, and strongly express, their disapprobation, we have seen that they practically en courage offences. In this difficulty I know of no better and no other guide than that system which the tenor of Christianity prescribes — abhorrence of the evil and commiseration of him who commits it. The union of these dispositions will be likely to produce, with re- spect to offenses of all kinds, that conduct which most effectually tends to discountenance them, while it as effectually tends to reform the offenders. These, how- ever, are not the dispositions which actuate the public in measuring their reprobation of unchastity in women. Something probably might rightly be deducted from the severity with which their offence is visited : much * Hunter's Memoirs. 254 INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUALS UPON [ES9AY II. may be rightly altered in the motives which induce this severity. And as to men, much should be added to the quantum of reprobation, and much correction should be applied to the principles by which it is regu- lated. Fame. — The observations which were offered respect- ing contributing to the passion for glory, involve kindred doctrines respecting contributions generally to individual fame. If the pretensions of those with whose applauses the popular voice is filled, were ex- amined by the only proper test, the test which Chris- tianity allows, it would be found that multitudes whom the world thus honors must be shorn of their beams. Before Bacon's daylight of truth, poets and statesmen and philosophers without number would hide their di- minished heads. The mighty indeed would be fallen. Yet it is for the acquisition of this fame that multi- tudes toil. It is their motive to ac.tion ; and they pur- sue that conduct which will procure fame whether it ought to procure it or not. The inference as to the duties of individuals in contributing to fame, is ob- vious. ' ' The profligacy of a man of fashion is looked upon with much less contempt and aversion than that of a man of meaner condition*"* It ought to be looked upon with much more. But men of fashion are not our concern. Our business is with men of talent and genius, with the eminent and the great. The profli- gacy of these, too, is regarded with much less of aver- sion than that of less gifted men. To be great, whether intellectually or otherwise, is often like a pass- port to impunity ; and men talk as if we ought to speak leniently of the faults of a man who delights us by his genius or his talent. This precisely is the man whose faults we should be most prompt to mark, because he * Ad. Smith : Theo. Mor. Sent. CHAP. IX.] FUBUC NOTIONS OF 1 MORALITY. 255 is the man whose faults are most seducing to the world. Intellectual superiority brings, no doubt, its congenial temptations. L,et these affect our judgments of the man, but let them not diminish our reprobation of his offences. So to extenuate the individual as to apologize for his faults, is to inj ure the cause of virtue in one of its most vulnerable parts. ' ' Oh ! that I could see in men who oppose tyranny in the state, a disdain of the tyranny of low passions in themselves. I cannot rec- oncile myself to the idea of an immoral patriot, or to that separation of private from public virtue which some men think to be possible. ' ** Probably it is possi- ble : probably there may be such a thing as an im- moral patriot : for public opinion applauds the patriot- ism without condemning the immorality. If men constantly made a fit deduction from their praises of public virtue on account of its association with private vice, the union would frequently be severed ; and he who hoped for celebrity from the public would find it needful to be good as well as great. He who applauds human excellence and really admires it, should en- deavor to make its examples as pure and perfect as he can. He should hold out a motive to consistency of excellence, by evincing that nothing else can obtain praise unmingled with censure. This endeavor should be constant and uniform. The hearer should never be allowed to suppose that in appreciating a person's merits, we are indifferent to his faults. It has been complained of one of our principal works of periodical literature, that amongst its many and ardent praises of Shakespeare, it has almost never alluded to his inde- cencies. The silence is reprehensible : for what is a reader to conclude but that indecency is a very venial offence ? Under such circumstances, not to be with morality is to be against it. Silence is positive mischief. *Dr. Price : Revolution Serm. 256 INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUALS UPON [KSSAY II. People talk to us of liberality, and of allowances for the aberrations of genius, and for the temptations of greatness. It is well. Let the allowances be made. — But this is frequently only affectation of candor. It is not that we are lenient to failings, but that we are indifferent to vice. It is not even enlightened benevo- lence to genius or greatness itself. The faults and vices with which talented men are chargeable deduct greatly from their own happiness ; and it cannot be doubted that their misdeeds have been the more wil- lingly committed from the consciousness that apolo- gists would be found amongst the admiring world. It is sufficient to make that world knit its brows in anger, to insist upon the moral demerits of a Robert Burns. Pathetic and voluble extenuations are instantly urged. There are extenuations of such a man's vices, and they ought to be regarded : but no extenuations can remove the charge of voluntary and intentional violations of morality. Let us not hear of the enthusiasm of poetry. Men do not write poetry as they chatter with their neighbors : they sit down to a deliberate act ; and he who in his verses offends against morals, intentionally and deliberately offends. After all, posterity exercises some justice in its award. When the first glitter and the first applauses are past — when death and a few years of sobriety have given opportunity to the public mind to attend to truth, it makes a deduction, though not a due deduc- tion, for the shaded portions of the great man's char- acter. It is not forgotten that Marlborough was avaricious, that Bacon was mean ; and there are great names of the present day of whom it will not be forgot- ten that they had deep and dark shades in their repu- tation. It is perhaps wonderful that those who seek for fame are so indifferent to these deductions from its amount. Supposing the intellectual pretensions of CHAP. IX.] PUBLIC NOTIONS OF MORALITY. 257 Newton and Voltaire were equal, how different is their fame ! How many and how great qualifications are employed in praising the one ! How few and how small in praising the other ! Editions of the works of some of our first writers are advertised, " in which the exceptionable passages are expunged." How foolish, how uncalculating even as to celebrity, to have in- serted these passages ! To write in the hope of fame, works which posterity will mutilate before they place them in their libraries ! — Charles James Fox said, that if, during his administration, they could effect the abolition of the slave trade, it ' ' would entail more true glory upon them, and more honor upon their country, than any other transaction in which they could be en- gaged."* If this be true, (and who will dispute it ?) ministers usually provide very ill for their reputation with posterity. How anxiously devoted to measures comparatively insignificant ! How phlegmatic respect- ing those calls of humanity and public principle, a re- gard of which will alone secure the permanent honors of the world ! It may safely be relied upon, that ' ' much more unperishable is the greatness of goodness than the greatness of power, " f or the greatness of talent. And the difference will progressively increase. If, as there is reason to believe, the moral condition of mankind will improve, their estimate of the good por- tion of a great man's character will be enhanced, and their reprobation of the bad will become more intense — until at length it will perhaps be found, respecting some of those who now receive the applauses of the world, that the balance of public opinion is against them, and that, in the universal estimate of merit and demerit, they will be ranked on the side of the latter. These motives to virtue in great men are not addressed to the Christian : he has higher motives and better : but * Fell's Memoirs. t Sir R. K. Porter. 258 INFLUENCE OE INDIVIDUALS UPON [ESSAY II. since it is more desirable that a man should act well from imperfect motives than that he should act ill, we urge him to regard the integrity of his fame. The Press. — It is manifest that if the obligations which have been urged apply to those who speak, they apply with tenfold responsibility to those who write. The man who, in talking to half a dozen of his acquain- tance, contributes to confuse or pervert their moral notions, is accountable for the mischief which he may do six persons. He who writes a book containing similar language, is answerable for a so much greater amount of mischief as the number of his readers may exceed six, and as the influence of books exceeds that of conversation, by the evidence of greater deliberation in their contents and by the greater attention which is paid by the reader. It is not a light matter, even in this view, to write a book for the public. We very insufficiently consider the amount of the obligations and the extent of the responsibility which we entail upon ourselves." Every one knows the power of the press in influencing the public mind. He that pub- lishes five hundred copies of a jpook, of which any part is likely to derange the moral judgment of a reader, contributes materially to the propagation of evil. If each of his books is read by four persons, he endangers the infliction of this evil, whatever be its amount, upon two thousand minds. Who shall tell the sum of the mischief ? In this country the periodical press is a powerful engine for evil or for good. The influence of the contents of one number of a newspaper may be small, but it is perpetually recurring. The editor of a journal, of which no more than a thousand copies are circulated in a week, and each of which is read by half a dozen persons, undertakes in a year a part of the moral guidance of thirty thousand individuals. Of some daily papers the number of readers is so great, CHAP. IX.] PUBLIC NOTIONS OF MORALITY. 259 that in the course of twelve months they may influence the opinions and the conduct of six or eight millions of men. To say nothing therefore of editors who inten- tionally mislead and vitiate the public, and remember- ing with what carelessness respecting the moral ten- dency of articles a newspaper is filled, it may safely be concluded that some creditable editors do harm in the world to an extent, in comparison with which robberies and treasons are as nothing. It is not easy to imagine the sum of advantages which would result if the periodical press not only ex- cluded that which does harm, but preferred that which does good. Not that grave moralities, not, especially, that religious disquisitions, are to be desired ; but that every reader should see and feel that the editor main- tained an allegiance to virtue and to truth. There is hardly any class of topics in which this allegiance may not be manifested, and manifested without any incon- gruous associations. You may relate the common occurrences of the day in such a manner as to do either good or evil. The trial of a thief, the particulars of a conflagration, the death of a statesman, the criticism of a debate, and a hundred other matters, may be re- corded so as to exercise a moral influence over the reader for the better or the worse. That the influence is frequently for the worse needs no proof ; and it is so much the less defensible because it may be changed to the contrary without a word, directly, respecting morals or religion. However, newspapers do much more good than harm, especially in politics. They are in this country one of the most vigorous and beneficial instruments of political advantage. They effect incalculable benefit both in checking the statesman who would abuse power, and in so influencing the public opinion as to prepare it for, and therefore to render necessary, an 26o INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUALS UPON [ESSAY II. amelioration of political and civil institutions. The great desideratum is enlargement of views and purity of principle. We want in editorial labors less of parti- zanship, less of petty squabbles about the worthless dis- cussions of the day : we want more of the philosophy of politics, more of that grasping intelligence which can send a reader's reflections from facts to principles. Our journals are, to what they ought to be, what a chronicle of the middle ages is to a philosophical his- tory. The disjointed fragments of political intelligence ought to be connected by a sort of enlightened run- ning commentary. There is talent enough embarked in some of these ; but the talent too commonly expends itself upon subjects and in speculations which are of little interest beyond the present week. And here we are reminded of that miserable direction to public opinion which is given in historical works.* I do not speak of party bias, though that is sufficiently mischievous ; but of the irrational selection by histor- ians of comparatively unimportant things to fill the greater portion of their pages. People exclaim that the history of Europe is little more than a history of human violence and wickedness. But they confound history with that portion of history which historians record. That portion is doubtless written almost in blood — but it is a very small, and in truth a very sub- ordinate portion. The intrigues of cabinets ; the rise and fall of ministers ; wars and battles, and victories and defeats ; the plunder of provinces ; the dismem- berment of empires ; these are the things which fill the pages of the historian, but these are not the things which compose the history of man. He that would acquaint himself with the history of his species, must * ' ' Next to the guilt of those who commit wicked actions, is that of the historian who glosses them over and excuses them. ' ' Southey: Book of the Church, c. 8. CHAP. IX.j PUBLIC NOTIONS OF MORALITY. 26l apply to other and to calmer scenes. ' ' It is a cruel mortification, in searching for what is instructive in the history of past times, to find that the exploits of conquerors who have desolated the earth and the freaks of tyrants who have rendered nations unhappy, are re- corded with minute and often disgusting accuracy, while the discovery of useful arts and the progress of the most beneficial branches of commerce, are passed over in silence, and suffered to sink into oblivion."* Even a more cruel mortification than this is to find re- corded almost nothing respecting the intellectual and moral history of man. You are presented with five or six weighty volumes which profess to be a history of England ; and after reading them to the end you have hardly found any thing to satisfy that interesting ques- tion — how has my country been enabled to advance from barbarism to civilization ; to come forth from darkness into light ? Yes, by applying philosophy to facts yourself, you may attain some, though it be but an imperfect, reply. But the historian himself should have done this. The facts of history, simply as such, are of comparatively little concern. He is the true his- torian of man who regards mere facts rather as the illiistratio7is of history than as its subject matter. As to the history of cabinets and courts, of intrigue and oppression, of campaigns and generals, we can almost spare it all. It is of wonderfully little consequence whether they are remembered or not, except as lessons of instruction — except as proofs of the evils of bad principles and bad institutions. For any other pur- pose, Blenheim ! we can spare thee. And Eouis, even Louis " le grande!" we can spare thee. And thy suc- cessor and his Pompadour ! we can spare ye all. Much power is in the hands of the historian if he will exert it : if he will make the occurrences of the * Robertson : Disq. on Anct. Comm. of India. 262 MORAE EDUCATION. [ESSAY II. past subservient to the elucidations of the principles of human nature — of the principles of political truth — of the rules of political rectitude ; if he will refuse to make men ambitious of power by filling his pages with the feats or freaks of men in power ; if he will give no currency to the vulgar delusions about glory : — if he will do these things, and such as these, he will deserve well of his country and of man ; for he will contribute to that rectification of public opinion which, when it is complete and determinate, will be the most powerful of all earthly agents in ameliorating the social condi- tion of the world. CHAPTER X. MORAL EDUCATION. Union of moral principle with the affections — Society — Morality of the Ancient Classics — The supply of motives to virtue — Conscience — Subjugation of the will — Knowledge of our own minds — Offices of public worship. To a good moral education, two things are neces- sary : That the young should receive information re- specting what is right and what is wrong ; and, That they should be furnished with motives to adhere to what is right. We should communicate moral knowl- edge and moral dispositions. I. In the endeavor to attain these ends, there is one great pervading difficulty, consisting in the imperfec- tion and impurity of the actual moral condition of mankind. Without referring at present to that moral guidance with which all men, however circumstanced, are furnished,* it is evident that much of the practical * See Essay I., c. vi. CHAP. X.] MORAL EDUCATION. 263 moral education which an individual receives, is ac-. quired by habit, and from the actions, opinions, and general example of those around him. It is thus that, to a great extent, he acquires his moral education. He adopts the notions of others, acquires insensibly a similar set of principles, and forms to himself a similar scale of right and wrong. It is manifest that the learner in such a school will often be taught amiss. Yet how can we prevent him from being so taught ? or what system of moral education is likely to avail in opposition to the contagion of example and the in- fluence of notions insensibly, yet constantly instilled ? It is to little purpose to take a boy every morning into a closet, and there teach him moral and religious truths for an hour, if so soon as the hour is expired, he is left for the remainder of the day in circumstances in which these truths are not recommended by any liv- ing examples. One of the first and greatest requisites, therefore, in moral education, is a situation in which the knowledge and the practice of morality is inculcated by the habitually virtuous conduct of others. The boy who is placed in such a situation is in an efficient moral school, though he may never hear delivered formal rules of conduct : so that, if parents should ask how they may best give their child a moral education, I answer, Be virtuous yourselves. The young, however, are unavoidably subjected to bad example as to good : many who may see consis- tent practical lessons of virtue in their parents' parlors, must see much that is contrary elsewhere ; and we must, if we can, so rectify the moral perceptions and invigorate the moral dispositions, that the mind shall effectually resist the insinuation of evil. Religion is the basis of morality. He that would impart moral knowledge must begin by imparting a 264 MORAE EDUCATION. [ESSAY II. knowledge of God. We are not advocates of formal instruction — of lesson learning — in moral any more than in intellectual education. Not that we affirm it is undesirable to make a young person commit to memory maxims of religious truth and moral duty. These things may be right but they are not the really effi- cient means of forming the moral character of the young. These maxims should recommend themselves to the judgment and affections, and this can hardly be hoped whilst they are presented only in a didactic and insulated form to the mind. It is one of the character- istics of the times, that there is a prodigious increase of books that are calculated to benefit whilst they delight the young. These are effective instruments in teaching morality. A simple narrative, {of facts, if it be pos- sible,) in which integrity of principle and purity of conduct are recommended to the affections as well as to the judgment — without affectation, or improbabil- ities, or factitious sentiment, is likely to effect substan- tial good. And if these associations are judiciously renewed, the good is likely to be permanent as well as substantial. It is not a light task to write such books, nor to select them. Authors color their pictures too highly. They must indeed interest the young, or they will not be read with pleasure : but the anxiety to give interest is too great, and the effects may be expected to diminish as the narrative recedes from congeniality to the actual condition of mankind. A judicious parent will often find that the moral cul- ture of his child may be promoted without seeming to have the object in view. There are many opportunities which present themselves for associating virtue with his affections — for throwing in amongst the accumulat- ing mass of mental habits, principles of rectitude which shall pervade and meliorate the whole. As the mind acquires an increased capacity of CHAP. X.] MORAI, EDUCATION. 265 judging, I would offer to the young person a sound exhi- bition, if such can be found, of the principles of morality. He should know, with as great distinctness as possible, not only his duty, but the reasons of it. It has very unfortunately happened that those who have professed to deliver the principles of morality, have commonly intermingled error with truth, or have set out with propositions fundamentally unsound. These books effect, it is probable, more injury than benefit. Their truths, for they contain truths, are frequently deduced from fallacious premises — from premises from which it is equally easy to deduce errors. The falla- cies of the moral philosophy of Paley are now in part detected by the public : there was a time when his opinions were regarded as more nearly oracular than now ; and at that time and up to the present time, the book has effectually confused the moral notions of multitudes of readers. If the reader thinks that the principles which have been proposed in the present essays are just, he might derive some assistance from them in conducting the moral education of his elder children. There is negative as well as positive education — some things to avoid as well as some to do. Of the things which are to be avoided, the most obvious is unfit society for the young. If a boy mixes without re- straint in whatever society he pleases, his education will in general be practically bad ; because the world in general in bad : its moral condition is below the medium between perfect purity and utter depravation. Nevertheless, he must at some period mix in society with almost all sorts of men, and therefore he must be prepared for it. Very young children should be ex- cluded if possible from all unfit association, because they acquire habits before they possess a sufficiency of counteracting principle. But if a parent has, within 266 MORAI, EDUCATION. [ESSAY II. his own house, sufficiently endeavored to confirm and invigorate the moral character of his child, it were worse than fruitless to endeavor to retaim him in the seclusion of a monk. He should feel the necessity and acquire the power of resisting temptation, by being sub- jected, gradually subjected, to that temptation which miist one day be presented to him. In the endlessly diversified circumstances of families, no suggestion of prudence will be applicable to all ; but if a parent is conscious that the moral tendency of his domestic as- sociations is good, it will probably be wise to send bis children to day-schools rather than to send them wholly from his family. Schools, as moral instru- ments, contain much both of good and evil : perhaps no means will be more effectual in securing much of the good and avoiding much of the evil, than that of allowing his children to spend their evenings and early mornings at home. In ruminating upon moral education, we cannot, at least in this age of reading, disregard the influence of books. That a young person should not read every book is plain. No discrimination can be attempted here ; but it may be observed that the best species of discrimination is that which is supplied by a rectified con- dition of the mind itself. The best species of prohibition is not that which a parent pronounces, but that which is pronounced by purified tastes and inclinations in the mind of the young. Not that the parent or tutor can expect that all or many of his children will adequately make this judicious discrimination ; but if he cannot do every thing he can do much. There are many persons whom a contemptible or vicious book disgusts, not- withstanding the fascinations which it may contain. This disgust is the result of education in a large sense ; and some portion of this disgust and of the discrimina- tion which results from it, may be induced into the CHAP. X.] MORAI, EDUCATION. 267 mind of a boy by having made him familiar with superior productions. He who is accustomed to good society, feels little temptation to join in the vocifera- ations of an alehouse. And here it appears necessary to advert to the moral tendency of studying, without selection, the ancient classics. The mode in which the writings of the Greek and L,atin authors operate, is not an ordinary mode. We do not approach them as we approach ordinary books, but with a sort of habitual admiration, which makes their influence, whatever be its nature, pecu- liarly strong. That admiration would be powerful alike for good or for evil. Whether the tendency be good or evil, the admiration will make it great. Now, previous to enquiring what the positive ill tendency of these writings is — what is not their tend- ency? They are pagan books for Christian children. They neither inculcate Christianity, nor Christian dis- positions, nor the love of Christianity. But their tend- ency is not negative merely. They do inculcate that which is adverse to Christianity and to Christian dispositions. They set up, as exalted virtues, that which our own religion never countenanced, if it has not specifically condemned. They censure as faults dispositions which our own religion enjoins, or dispo- sitions so similar that the young will not discriminate between them. If we enthusiastically admire these works, who will pretend that we shall not admire the moral qualities which they applaud ? Who will pretend that the mind of a young person accurately adjusts his admiration to those subjects only which Christianity ap- proves? No : we admire them as a whole ; not perhaps every sentence or every sentiment, but we admire their general spirit and character. In a word, we admire that which our own religion teaches us not to imitate. And what makes the effect the more intense is, that we 268 M0RAI, EDUCATION. [ESSAY II. do this at the period of life when we are every day acquiring our moral notions. We mingle them up with our early associations respecting right and wrong — with associations which commonly extend their influ- ence over the remainder of life.* A very able essay, which obtained the Norrisian Medal at Cambridge for 1825, forcibly illustrates these propositions ; and the illustration is so much the more valuable, because it appears to have been undesigned. The title is, ' ' No valid argument can be drawn from the incredulity of the heathen philosophers against the truth of the Christian religion. "f The object of the work is to show, by a reference to their writings, that the general system of their opinions, feelings, preju- dices, principles, and conduct, was utterly incongruous with Christianity ; and that, in consequence of these principles, &c, they actually did reject the religion. This is shown with great clearness of evidence ; it is shown that a class of men, who thought and wrote as these philosophers thought and wrote, would be ex- tremely indisposed to adopt the religion and morality which Christ had introduced. Now, this appears to me to be conclusive of the question as to the present tendency of their writings. If the principles and preju- dices of these persons indisposed them to the accept- ance of Christianity, those prejudices and principles will indispose the man who admires and imbibes them in the present day. Not that they will now produce the effect in the same degree. We are now surrounded with many other media by which opinions and princi- ples are induced, and these are frequently "influenced by the spirit of Christianity. The study and the admi- ration of these writings may not therefore be expected *"All education which inculcates Christian opinions with pagan tastes, awakens conscience but to tamper with it." Schimmelpenninck : Biblical Fragments. t By James Amiraux Jeremie. CHAP. X.] MORAt EDUCATION. 269 to make men absolutely reject Christianity, but to in- dispose them, in a greater or less degree, for the hearty acceptance of Christian principles as their rules of con- duct. Propositions have been made to supply young persons with selected ancient authors, or perhaps with editions in which exceptionable passages are expunged. I do not think that this will greatly avail. It is not, I think, the broad indecencies of Ovid, nor any other in- sulated class of sentiments or descriptions, that effects the great mischief ; it is the pervading spirit and tenor of the whole — a spirit and tenor from which Christian- ity is not only excluded, but which is actually and greatly adverse to Christianity. There is indeed one considerable benefit that is likely to result from such a selection, and from expunging particular passages. Boys in ordinary schools do not learn enough of the classics to acquire much of their general moral spirit, but they acquire enough to be influenced, and inju- riously influenced, by being familiar with licentious language ; and, at any rate, he essentially subserves the interests of morality, who diminishes the power of opposing influences though he cannot wholly destroy it. Finally, the mode in which intellectual education, generally, is acquired, may be made either an auxiliary of moral education or the contrary. A young person may store his mind with literature and science, and together, w T ith the acquisition, either corrupt his prin- ciples, or amend and invigorate them. The w y orld is so abundantly supplied with the means of knowledge — there are so many paths to the desired temple, that we may choose our own and yet arrive at it. He that thinks he cannot possess sufficient knowledge without plucking fruit of unhallowed trees, surely does not know how boundless is the variety and number of those 27O MORAt EDUCATION. [ESSAY II. which bear wholesome fruit. He cannot indeed know everything without studying the bad ; which, however, is no more to be recommended in literature than in life. A man cannot know all the varieties of human society without taking up his abode with felons and cannibals. II. But, in reality, the second division of moral edu- cation is the more important of the two — the supply of motives to adhere to what is right. Our great deficiency is not in knowledge but in obedience. Of the offences which an individual commits against the moral law, the great majority are committed in the consciousness that he is doing wrong. Moral education therefore should be directed, not so much to informing the young what they ought to do, as to inducing those moral disposi- tions and principles which will make them adhere to what they know to be right. The human mind, of itself, is in a state something like that of men in a state of nature, where separate and conflicting desires and motives are not restrained by any acknowledged head. Government, as it is'neces- sary to society, is necessary in the individual mind. To the internal community of the heart the great question is, Who shall be the legislator ? Who shall regulate and restrain the passions and affections ? Who shall command and direct the conduct ? — To these questions the breast of every man supplies him with an answer. He knows, because he feels that there is a rightful legislator in his own heart : he knows, because he feels, that he ought to obey it. By whatever designation the reader may think it fit to indicate this legislator, whether he calls it the law written in the heart, or moral sense, or moral instinct, or conscience, we arrive at one practical truth at last ; that to the moral legislation which does actually sub- sist in the human mind, it is right that the individual should conform his conduct. CHAP. X.] MORAL EDUCATION. 27 1 The great point then is, to induce him to do this — to induce him, when inclination and this law are at variance, to sacrifice the inclination to the law ; and for this purpose it appears proper, first to impress him with a high, that is, with an accurate estimate of the authority of the law itself. We have seen that this law embraces an actual expression of the will of God ; and we have seen that, even although the conscience may not always be adequately enlightened, it never- theless constitutes to the individual an authoritative law. It is to the conscientious internal apprehension of rectitude that we should conform our conduct. Such appears to be the will of God. It should therefore be especially inculcated, that the dictate of conscience is never to be sacrificed ; that whatever may be the consequences of conforming to it, they are to be ventured. Obedience is to be uncon- ditional — no questions about the utility of the law—- no computations of the consequences of obedience — no presuming upon the lenity of the Divine government. ' ' It is important so to regulate the understanding and imagination of the young, that they may be prepared to obey, even when they do not see the reasons of the commands of God." "We should certainly endeavor where we can, to show them the reasons of the Divine commands, and this more and more as their under- standings gain strength ; but let it be obvious to them that we do ourselves consider it as quite sufficient if God has commanded us to do or to avoid anything."* Obedience to this internal legislator is not, like obedience to civil government, enforced. The law is promulgated, but the passions and inclinations can re- fuse obedience if they will. Penalties and rewards are indeed annexed ; but he who braves the penalty, and disregards the reward, may continue to violate the law. * Carpenter : Principles of Education. 272 MORAL EDUCATION. [ESSAY II. Obedience therefore must be voluntary, and hence the paramount importance, in moral education, of habit- ually subjecting the will. "Parents," says Hartley, ! ' should labor, from the earliest dawnings of under- standing and desire, to check the growing obstinacy of the will, curb all sallies of • passion, impress the deep- est, most amiable, reverential, and awful impressions of God, a future state, and all sacred things." — " Re- ligious persons in all periods, who have possessed the light of revelation, have in a particular manner been sensible that the habit of self-control lies at the founda- tion of moral worth."* There is nothing mean or mean-spirited in this. It is magnanimous in philoso- phy as it is right in morals. It is the subjugation of the lower qualities of our nature to wisdom and to goodness. The subjugation of the will to the dictates of a higher law, must be endeavored, if we would succeed, almost in infancy and in very little things ; from the earliest dawnings, as Hartley says, of understanding and desire. Children must first obey their parents, and those who have the care of them. The habit of sacrificing the will to another judgment being thus acquired, the mind is prepared to sacrifice the will to the judgment pronounced within itself. Show, in every practicable case, why you cross the inclinations of a child. I^et obedience be as little blind as it may be. It is a great failing of some parents that they will not descend from the imperative mood, and that they seem to think it a derogation from their authority to place their orders upon any other foundation than their wills. But if the child sees — and children are wonderfully quick-sighted in such things — if the child sees that the will is that which governs his parent, how shall he efficiently learn that the will should not govern himself ? * Carpenter : Principles of Education. CHAP. X.] MORAL EDUCATION. 273 The internal law carries with it the voucher of its own reasonableness. A person does not need to be told that it is proper and right to obey that law. The per- ception of this rectitude and propriety is coincident with the dictates themselves. Let the parent, then, very frequently refer his son and his daughter to their own minds ; let him teach them to seek for instruction there. There are dangers on every hand, and dangers even here. The parent must refer them, if it be possi- ble, not merely to conscience but to enlightened conscience. He must unite the two branches of moral education, and communicate the knowledge whilst he endeavors to induce the practice of morality. Without this, his children may obey their consciences, and yet be in error, and perhaps in fanaticism. With it, he may hope that their conduct will be both conscientious, and pure, and right. Nevertheless, an habitual reference to the internal law is the great, the primary concern ; for the great major- ity of a man's moral perceptions are accordant with truth. There is one consequence attendant upon this habit- ual reference to the internal law, which is highly bene- ficial to the moral character. It leads us to fulfil the wise instruction of antiquity, Know thyself. It makes us look within ourselves : it brings us acquainted with the little and busy world that is within us, with its many inhabitants and their dispositions and with their tendencies to evil or to good. This is valuable know- ledge ; and knowledge for want of which, it may be feared, the virtue of many has been wrecked in the hour of tempest. A man's enemies are those of his own household ; and if he does not know their insidious- ness and their strength, if he does not know upon what to depend for assistance, nor where is the probable point of attack, it is not likely that he will efficiently 274 MORAL EDUCATION. [ ESSAY II. resist. Such a man is in the situation of the governor of an unprepared and surprised city. He knows not to whom to apply for effectual help, and finds perhaps that those whom he has loved and trusted are the first to desert or betray him. He feebly resists, soon capitu- lates, and at last scarcely knows why he did not make a successful defence. It is to be regretted that, in the moral education which commonly obtains, whether formal or incidental, there is little that is calculated to produce this acquaint- ance with our own minds ; little that refers us to our- selves, and much, very much, that calls and sends us away. Of many it is not too much to say that they receive almost no moral culture. The plant of virtue is suffered to grow as a tree grows in a forest, and takes its chance of storm or sunshine. This, which is good for oaks and pines, is not good for man. The general atmosphere around him is infected, and the juices of the moral plant are often themselves unhealthy. In the nursery, formularies and creeds are taught ; but this does not refer the child to its own mind. In- deed, unless a wakeful solicitude is maintained by those who teach, the tendency is the reverse. The mind is kept from habits of introversion, even in the offices of religion, by practically directing its attention to the tongue. " Many, it is to be feared, imagine that they are giving their children religious principles when they are only teaching them religious truths." You cannot impart moral education as you teach a child to spell. From the nursery a boy is sent to school. He spends six or eight hours of the day in the school-room, and the remainder is employed in the sports of boyhood. Once, or it may be twice, in the day he repeats a form of prayer, and on one day in the week he goes to church. There is very little in all this to make him CHAP. X.] MORAL EDUCATION. 275 acquainted with the internal community ; and habit, if nothing else, calls his reflections away. From school or from college the business of life is begun. It can require no argument to show, that the ordinary pursuits of life have little tendency to direct a man's meditations to the moral condition of his own mind, or that they have much tendency to employ them upon other and very different things. Nay, even the offices of public devotion have al- most a tendency to keep the mind without itself. What if we say that the self-contemplation which even natural religion is likely to produce, is obstructed by the forms of Christian worship ? ' ' The transitions from one office of devotion to another, are contrived, like scenes in the drama, to supply the mind with a succession of diversified engagements."* This supply of diversified engagements, whatever may be its value in other respects, has evidently the tendency of which we speak. It is not designed to supply, and it does not supply, the opportunity for calmness of recollec- tion. A man must abstract himself from the external service if he would investigate the character and dis- positions of the inmates of his own breast. Even the architecture and decorations of "churches" come in aid of the general tendency. They make the eye an auxiliary of the ear, and both keep the mind at a distance from those concerns which are peculiarly its own ; from con- templating its own weaknesses and wants ; and from applying to God for that peculiar help, which perhaps itself only needs, and which God only can impart. So little are the course of education and the subsequent engagements of life calculated to foster this great auxiliary of moral character. It is difficult, in the wide world, to foster it as much as is needful. Noth- ing but wakeful solicitude on the part of the parent * Paley, p. 3. b. 5, c. 5. 276 MORAL EDUCATION. [ESSAY II. can be expected sufficiently to direct the mind within ; whilst the general tendency of our associations and habits is to keep it without. L,et him, however, do what he can. The habitual reference to the dictates of conscience may be promoted in the very young mind. This habit, like others, becomes strong by ex- ercise. He that is faithful in little things is intrusted with more ; and this is true in respect of knowledge as in respect of other departments of the Christian life. Fidelity of obedience is commonly succeeded by in- crease of light ; and every act of obedience and every addition to knowledge furnishes new and still stronger inducements to persevere in the same course. Ac- quaintance with ourselves is the inseparable attendant of this course. We know the character and dispositions of our own inmates by frequent association with them : and if this fidelity to the internal law, and consequent knowledge of the internal world, be acquired in early life, the parent may reasonably hope that it will never wholly lose its efficiency amidst the bustle and anxieties of the world. Undoubtedly, this most efficient security of moral character is not likely fully to operate during the con- tinuance of the present state of society and of its in- stitutions. It is I believe true, that the practice of morality is most complete amongst those persons who peculiarly recommend a reference to the internal law, and whose institutions, religious and social, are con- gruous with the habit of this reference. Their history exhibits a more unshaken adherence to that which they conceived to be right — fewer sacrifices of conscience to interest or the dread of suffering — less of trimming be- tween conflicting motives — more, in a word, of adher- ence to rectitude without regard to consequences. We have seen that such persons are likely to form accurate views of rectitude ; but whether they be accurate or CHAP. XI.] EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 277 not, does not affect the value of their moral edu- cation as securing fidelity to the degree of knowledge which they possess. It is of more consequence to ad- here steadily to conscience though it may not be per- fectly enlightened, than to possess perfect knowledge without consistency of obedience. But in reality they who obey most, know most ; and we say that the general testimony of experience is, that those persons exhibit the most unyielding fidelity to the moral law whose moral education has peculiarly directed them to the law written in the heart. CHAPTER XI. EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. Advantages of extended education — Infant schools — Habits of enquiry. Whether the education of those who are not able to pay for educating themselves ought to be a private or a national charge, it is not our present business to discuss. It is in this country, at least, left to the vol- untary benevolence of individuals, and this considera- tion may apologize for a brief reference to it here. It is not long since it was a question whether the poor should be educated or not. That time is past, and it may be hoped the time will soon be passed when it shall be a question, To what extent ? — that the time will soon arrive when it will be agreed that no limit needs to be assigned to the education of the poor, but that which is assigned by their own necessities, or which ought to be assigned to the education of all men. There appears no more reason for excluding a poor 278 EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. [ESSAY II. man from the fields of knowledge, than for preventing him from using his eyes. The mental and the visual powers were alike given to be employed. A man should, indeed, " shut his eyes from seeing evil" but whatever reason there is for letting him see all that is beautiful, and excellent, and innocent in nature and in art, there is the same for enabling his mind to expati- ate in the fields of knowledge. The objections which are urged against this extended education, are of the same kind as those which were urged against any education. They insist upon the probability of abuse. It was said, They who can write may forge ; they who can read may read what is per- nicious. The answer was, or it might have been — They who can hear, may hear profaneness and learn it ; they who can see, may see bad examples and follow them : — but are we therefore to stop our ears and put out our eyes ? — It is now said, that if you give extended education to the poor, you will elevate them above their stations ; that a critic would not drive a wheelbarrow, and that a philosopher would not shoe horses, or weave cloth. But these consequences are without the limits of possibility ; because the question for a poor man is, whether he shall perform such offices or starve : and surely it will not be pretended that hungry men would rather criticise than eat. Science and literature would not solicit a poor man from his labor more irresistibly than ease and pleasure do now ; yet in spite of these solicitations what is the fact ? That the poor man works for his bread. This is the inevitable result. It is not the positive but the relative amount of knowledge that elevates a man above his station in society. It is not because he knows much, but because he knows more than his fellows. Educate all, and none will fancy that he is superior to his neighbors. Besides, we assign to the possession of knowledge, CHAP. XI.] EDUCATION OE THE PEOPEE. 279 effects which are produced rather by habits of life. Ease and comparative leisure are commonly attendant upon extensive knowledge, and leisure and ease dis- qualify men for the laborious occupations much more than the knowledge itself. There are some collateral advantages of an extended education of the people, which are of much importance. It has been observed that if the French had been an educated people, many of the atrocities of their Revo- lution would never have happened, and I believe it. Furious mobs are composed, not of enlightened but of unenlightened men — of men in whom the passions are dominant over the judgment, because the judgment had not been exercised, and informed, and habituated to direct the conduct. A factious declaimer can much less easily influence a number of men who acquired at school the rudiments of knowledge, and who have sub- sequently devoted their leisure to a Mechanics' Insti- tute, than a multitude who cannot write or read, and who have never practised reasoning and considerate thought. And as the education of a people prevents political evil, it effects political good. Despotic rulers well know that knowledge is inimical to their power. This simple fact is a sufficient reason, to a good and wise man, to approve knowledge and extend it. The attention to public institutions and public measures which is inseparable from an educated population, is a great good. We all know that the human heart is such, that the possession of power is commonly attended with a desire to increase it, even in opposition to the general weal. It is acknowledged that a check is needed, and no check is either so efficient or so safe as that of a watchful and intelligent public mind ; so watchful, that it is prompt to discover and to expose what is amiss ; so intelligent, that it is able to form rational judgments respecting the nature and the means of amendment. 280 EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. [ESSAY II. In all public institutions there exists, and it is happy that there does exist, a sort of vis inertia which habit- ually resists change. This, which is beneficial as a general tendency, is often injurious from its excess : the state of public institutions almost throughout the world, bears sufficient testimony to the truth, that they need .alteration and amendment faster than they receive it — that the internal resistance of change is greater than is good for man. Unhappily, the ordinary way in which a people have endeavored to amend their institutions, has been by some mode of violence. If you ask when a nation acquired a greater degree of freedom, you are referred to some era of revolution and probably of blood. These are not proper, certainly they are not Christian, remedies for the disease. It is becoming an undisputed proposition, that no bad institution can per- manently stand against the distinct opinion of a people. This opinion is likely to be universal, and to be intelli- gent only amongst an enlightened community. Now that reformation of public institutions which results from public opinion, is the very best in kind, and is likely to be the best in its mode : — in its kind, because public opinion is the proper measure of the needed alter- ation ; and in its mode, because alterations which result from such a cause, are likely to be temperately made. It may be feared that some persons object to an ex- tended education of the people on these very grounds which we propose as recommendations ; that they regard the tendency of education to produce examina- tion, and, if need be, alteration of established . institu- tions, as a reason for withholding it from the poor. To these, it is a sufficient answer, that if increase of knowledge and habits of investigation tend to alter any established institution, it is fit that it should be altered. There appears no means of avoiding this conclusion , unless it can be shown that increase of knowledge is CHAP. XI.] EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 281 usually attended with depravation of principle, and that in proportion as the judgment is exercised it de- cides amiss. Generally, that intellectual education is good for a poor man which is good for his richer neighbors : in other words, that is good for the poor which is good for man. There may be exceptions to the general rule ; but he who is disposed to doubt the fitness of a rich man's education for the poor, will do well to con- sider first whether the rich man's education is fit for himself. The children of persons of property can un- doubtedly learn much more than those of a laborer, and the laborer must select from the rich man's system a part only for his own child. But this does not affect the .general conclusion. The parts which he ought to select are precisely those parts which are most neces- sary and beneficial to the rich. Great as have been the improvements in the methods of conveying knowledge to the poor, there is reason to think that they will be yet greater. Some useful sug- gestions for the instruction of older children may I think be obtained from the systems in infant schools. In a well conducted infant school, children acquire much knowledge, and they acquire it with delight. This delight is of extreme importance : perhaps it may safely be concluded, respecting all innocent knowledge, that if a child acquired it with pleasure he is well taught. It is worthy observation, that in the infant system, les- son-learning is nearly or wholly excluded. It is not to be expected that in the time which is devoted profes- sedly to education by the children of the poor, much extent of knowledge can be acquired ; but something may be acquired which is of much more consequence than mere school-learning — the love and the habits of enquiry. If education be so conducted that it is a positive pleasure to a boy to learn, there is little doubt 282 EDUCATION OE THE PEOPLE. [ESSAY II. that this love and habit will be induced. Here is the great advantage of early intellectual culture. The busiest have some leisure, leisure which they may em- ploy ill or well ; and that they will employ it well may reasonably be expected when knowledge is thus attractive for its own sake. That this effect is in a considerable degree actually produced, is indicated by the improved character of the books which poor men read, and in the prodigious increase in the number of those books. The supply and demand are correspon- dent. Almost every year produces books for the laboring classes of a higher intellectual order than the last. A journeyman in our days can understand and relish a work which would have been like Arabic to his grandfather. Of moral education we say nothing here, except that the principles which are applicable to other classes of mankind are obviously applicable to the poor. With respect to the inculcation of peculiar religious opinions on the children who attend schools voluntarily sup- ported, there is manifestly the same reason for incul- cating them in this case as for teaching them at all. This supposes that the supporters of the school are not themselves divided in their religious opinions. If they are, and if the adherents to no one creed are able to support a school of their own, there appears no ground upon which they can rightly refuse to support a school in which no religious peculiarities are taught. It is better that intellectual knowledge, together with im- perfect religious principles should be communicated, than that children should remain in darkness. There is indeed some reason to suspect the genuineness of that man's philanthropy, who refuses to impart any knowledge to his neighbors because he cannot, at the same time, teach them his own creed. CHAP. XII.] AMUSEMENTS. 283 CHAPTER XII. AMUSEMENTS. The Stage — Religious Amusements — Masquerades — Field Sports — The Turf — Boxing — Wrestling — Opinions of Posterity — Popular Amusements needless. It is a remarkable circumstance, that in almost all Christian countries many of the public and popular amusements have been regarded as objectionable by the more sober and conscientious part of the com- munity. This opinion could scarcely have been general unless it had been just : yet why should a people prefer amusements of which good men feel themselves compelled to disapprove ? Is it because no public recreation can be devised of which the evil is not greater than the good ? or because the inclinations of most men are such, that if it were devised, they would not enjoy it ? It may be feared that the desires which are seeking for gratification are not themselves pure ; and pure pleasures are not congenial to impure minds. The real cause of. the objectionable nature of many popular diversions is to be sought in the want of virtue in the people. Amusement is confessedly a subordinate concern in life. It is neither the principal nor amongst the prin- cipal objects of proper solicitude. No reasonable man sacrifices the more important thing to the less, and that a man's religious and moral condition is of incompara- bly greater importance than his diversion, is sufficiently plain. In estimating the propriety or rather the law- fulness of a given amusement, it may safely be laid down, That none is lawful of which the aggregate con- sequences are injurious to morals : — nor, if its effects upon the immediate agents are, in general, morally bad : — nor if it occasions needless pain and misery to 284 AMUSEMENTS. [ESSAY II. men or to animals : — nor, lastly, if it occupies much time or is attended with much expense. — Respecting all amusements, the question is not whether in their simple or theoretical character, they are defensible, but whether they are defensible in their actually existing state. Thk Drama. — So that if a person, by way of show- ing the propriety of theatrical exhibitions, should ask whether there was any harm in a man's repeating a composition before others and accompanying it with appropriate gestures — he would ask a very foolish question : because he would ask a question that possesses little or no relevancy to the subject. — What are the ordinary effects of the stage upon those who act on it ? One and one only answer can be given — that whatever happy exceptions there may be, the effect is bad, — that the moral and religious character of actors is lower than that of persons in other professions. " It is an undeniable fact, for the truth of which we may safely appeal to every age and nation, that the situa- tion of the performers, particularly of those of the female sex, is remarkably unfavorable to the mainten- ance and growth of the religious and moral principle, and of course highly dangerous to their eternal inter- ests."* Therefore, if I take my seat in the theatre, I have paid three or five shillings as an inducement to a number of persons to subject their principles to extreme danger ; — and the defence which I make is, that I am amused by it. Now, we affirm that this defence is invalid ; that it is a defence which reason pronounces to be absurd, and morality to be vicious. Yet I have no other to make ; it is the sum total of my justifica- tion. But this, which is sufficient to decide the morality of * Wilberforce : Practical View, c. 4, s. 5. CHAP. XII.] AMUSEMENTS. 285 the question, is not the only nor the chief part of the evil. The evil which is suffered by performers may be more intense, but upon spectators and others it is more extended. The night of a play is the harvest time of iniquity, where the profligate and the sensual put in their sickles and reap. It is to no purpose to say that a man may go to a theatre or parade a saloon without taking part in the surrounding licentiousness. All who are there promote the licentiousness, for if none were there, there would be no licentiousness ; that is to say, if none purchased tickets there would be neither actors to be depraved nor dramas to vitiate, nor saloons to degrade and corrupt, and shock us. — The whole question of the lawfulness of the dramatic amusements, as they are ordinarily conducted, is resolved into a very simple thing : — After the doors on any given night are closed, have the virtuous or the vicious dispositions of the attenders been in the greater degree promoted ? Every one knows that the balance is on the side, of vice, and this conclusively decides the question — "Is it lawful to attend?" The same question is to be asked, and the same answer I believe will be returned, respecting various other assemblies for purposes of amusement. They do more harm than good. They please but they injure us ; and what makes the case still stronger is, that the pleasure is frequently such as ought not to be enjoyed. A tippler enjoys pleasure in becoming drunk, but he is not to allege the gratification as a set-off against the immorality. And so it is with no small portion of the pleasures of an assembly. Dispositions are gratified which it w T ere wiser to thwart ; and, to speak the truth, if the dispositions of the mind were such as they ought to be, many of these modes of diversion would be neither relished nor resorted to. Some persons try to persuade themselves that charity forms a part of 286 AMUSEMENTS. [ESSAY II. their motive in attending such places ; as when the profits of the night are given to a benevolent institu- tion. They hope, I suppose, that though it would not be quite right to go if benevolence were not a gainer, yet that the end warrants the means. But if these persons are charitable, let them give their guinea without deducting half for purposes of questionable propriety. Religious amusements, such as oratorios and the like, form one of those artifices of chicanery by which people cheat, or try to cheat, themselves. The music, say they, is sacred, is devotional ; and we go to hear it as we go to church : it excites and ani- mates our religious sensibilities. This, in spite of the solemnity of the association, is really ludicrous. These scenes subserve religion no more than they subserve chemistry. They do not increase its power any more than the power of the steam-engine. As it respects Christianity, it is all imposition and fiction ; and it is unfortunate that some of the most solemn topics of our religion are brought into such unworthy and debasing alliance.* Masquerades are of a more decided character. If the pleasure which people derive from meeting in dis- guises consisted merely in the "fun and drollery" of the thing, we might wonder to see so many children of five and six feet high, and leave them perhaps to their childishness : — but the truth is, that to many the zest of the concealment consists in the opportunity which it gives of covert licentiousness ; of doing that in secret, of which, openly, they would profess to be ashamed. Some men and some women who affect propriety when the face is shown, are glad of a few hours of concealed libertinism. It is a time in which principles are left to guard the citadel of virtue with- out the auxiliary of public opinion. And ill do they * See also Essay II., c. I. CHAP. XII.] AMUSEMENTS. 287 guard it ! It is no equivocal indication of the slender power of a person's principles, when they do not restrain him any longer than his misdeeds will produce exposure. She who is immodest at a masquerade, is modest nowhere. She may affect the language of delicacy and maintain external decorum, but she has no purity of mind. Thk Field. — If we proceed with the calculation of the benefits and mischiefs of field-sports, in the mer- chant-like manner of debtor and creditor, the balance is presently found to be greatly against them. The advantages to him who rides after hounds and shoots pheasants, are — that he is amused, and possibly that his health is improved ; some of the disadvantages are — that it is unpropitious to the influence of religion and the dispositions which religion induces ; that it expends money and time which a man ought to be able to employ better ; and that it inflicts gratuitous misery upon the inferior animals. The value of the pleasure cannot easily be computed, and as to health it may pass for nothing ; for if a man is so little con- cerned for his health that he will not take exercise without dogs and guns, he has no reason to expect other men to concern themselves for it in remarking upon his actions. And then for the other side of the calculation. That field-sports have any tendency to make a man better, no one will pretend ; and no one who looks around him will doubt that their tendency is in the opposite direction. It is not necessary to show that every one who rides after the dogs is a worse man in the evening than he was in the morning : the influence of such things is to be sought in those with whom they are habitual. Is the character of the sportsman , then, distinguished by religious sensibility? No. By activity of benevolence ? No. By intel- lectual exertion ? No. By purity of manners ? No. 288 AMUSEMENTS. [ESSAY II. Sportsmen are not the persons who diffuse the light of Christianity, or endeavor to rectify the public morals, or to extend the empire of knowledge. I,ook again at the clerical sportsman. Is he usually as exemplary in the discharge of his functions as those who decline such diversions ? His parishioners know that he is not. So, then, the religious and moral tendency of field- sports is bad. It is not necessary to show how the ill effect is produced. It is sufficient that it actually is produced. As to the expenditure of time and money, I daresay we shall be told that a man has a right to employ both as he chooses. We have heretofore seen that he has no such right. Obligations apply just as truly to the mode of employing leisure and property, as to the use which a man may make of a pound of arsenic. The obligations are not indeed alike enforced in a court of justice : the misuser of arsenic is carried to prison, the misuser of time and money awaits as sure an enquiry at another tribunal. But no folly is more absurd than that of supposing we have a right to do whatever the law does not punish. Such is the state of mankind, so great is the amount of misery and degradation, and so great are the effects of money and active philanthropy in meliorating this condition of our species, that it is no light thing for a man to employ his time and prop- erty upon vain and needless gratifications. It is no light thing to keep a pack of hounds, and to spend days and weeks in riding after them. As to the tor- ture which field-sports inflict upon animals, it is won- derful to observe our inconsistencies. He who has, in the day, inflicted upon half a dozen animals almost as much torture as they are capable of sustaining, and who has wounded perhaps half a dozen more, and left them to die of pain or starvation, gives in the evening a grave reproof to his child, whom he sees amusing CHAP. XII.] AMUSEMENTS. 289 himself with picking off the wings of flies ! The in- fliction of pain is not that which gives pleasure to the sportsman, (this were ferocious depravity,) but he voluntarily inflicts the pain in order to please himself. Yet this man sighs and moralizes over the cruelty of children ! An appropriate device for a sportsman's dress would be a pair of balances, of which one scale was laden with " virtue and humanity," and the other with ■ ' sport ; ' ' the latter should be preponderating and lifting the other into the air. The Turf is still worse, partly because it is a stronghold of gambling, and therefore an efficient cause of misery and wickedness. It is an amusement of almost unmingled evil. But upon whom is the evil chargeable? Upon the fifty or one hundred persons only who bring horses and make bets ? No ; every man participates who attends the course. The great attrac- tion of many public spectacles, and of this amongst others, consists more in the company than the ostensi- ble object of amusement. Many go to a race-ground who cannot tell when they return what horse has been the victor. Every one therefore who is present must take his share of the mischief and the responsibility. It is the same with respect to the gross and vulgar diversions of boxing, wrestling, and feats of running and riding. There is the same almost pure and un- mingled evil — the same popularity resulting from the concourses who attend, and, by consequence, the par- ticipation and responsibility in those who do attend. The drunkenness, and the profaneness, and the debauchery, lie in part at the doors of those who are merely lookers-on ; and if these lookers-on make pre- tensions to purity of character, their example is so much the more influential and their responsibility tenfold increased. The vicissitudes of folly are endless : the vulgar 290 AMUSEMENTS. [ESSAY II. games of the present day may soon be displaced by others, the same in genus, but differing in species. There is a grossness, a vulgarity, a want of mental elevation in these things, which might induce the man of intelligence to reprobate them even if the voice of morality were silent. They are remains of barbarism — evidences that barbarism still maintains itself amongst us — proofs that the higher qualities of our nature are not sufficiently dominant over the lower. These grossnesses will pass away, as the deadly con- flicts of men with beasts are passed already. Our posterity will wonder at the barbarism of us, their fathers, as we wonder at the barbarism of Rome. I^et him, then, who loves intellectual elevation advance beyond the present times, and anticipate, in the recrea- tions which he encourages, that period when these diversions shall be regarded as indicating one of the intermediate stages between the ferociousness of mental darkness and the purity of mental light. These criticisms might be extended to many other species of amusement ; and it is humiliating to discover that the conclusion will very frequently be the same — that the evil outbalances the good, and that there are no grounds upon which a good man can justify a par- ticipation in them. In thus concluding, it is possible that the reader may imagine that we would exclude enjoyment from the world, and substitute a system of irreproachable austerity. He who thinks this is unac- quainted with the nature and sources of our better enjoyments. It is an ordinary mistake to imagine that pleasure is great only when it is vivid or intemperate, as a child fancies it were more delightful to devour a pound of sugar at once, than to eat an ounce daily iu his food. It is happily and kindly provided that the greatest sum of enjoyment is that which is quietly and CHAP. XIII.] SUICIDE. 29I constantly induced. No men understand the nature of pleasure so well, or possess it so much, as those who find it within their own doors. If it were not that moral education is so bad, multitudes would seek enjoy- ment and find it here, who now fancy that they never partake of pleasure except in scenes of diversion. It is unquestionably true that no community enjoys life more than that which excludes all these amusements from its sources of enjoyment. We use therefore the language, not of speculation, but of experience, when we say, that none of them is, in any degree, necessary to the happiness of life. CHAPTER XIII. SUICIDE. Unmanliness of Suicide — Forbidden in the New Testament — Its folly. There are few subjects upon which it is more diffi- cult either to write or to legislate with effect, than that of suicide. It is difficult to a writer, because a man does not resolve upon the act until he has first become steeled to some of the most powerful motives that can be urged upon the human mind ; and to the legislator, because he can inflict no penalty upon the offending party. It is to be feared that there is little probability of diminishing the frequency of this miserable offence by urging the considerations which philosophy suggests. The voice of nature is louder and stronger than the voice of philosophy : and as nature speaks to the suicide in vain, what is the hope that philosophy will be regarded ? — There appears to be but one efficient means 292 SUICIDE. [ESSAY II. by which the mind can be armed against the tempta- tions to suicide, because there is but one that can support it against every evil of life — practical religion — belief in the providence of God — confidence in his wisdom — hope in his goodness. The only anchor that can hold us in safety, is that which is fixed "within the vail. ' ' He upon whom religion possesses its proper influence, finds that it enables him to endure, with resigned patience, every calamity of life. When patience thus fulfils its perfect work, suicide, which is the result of impatience, cannot be committed. He who is surrounded, by whatever means, with pain or misery, should remember that the present existence is strictly pi'obationary — a scene upon which we are to be exer- cised, and tried, and tempted ; and in which we are to manifest whether we are willing firmly to endure. The good or evil of the present life is of importance chiefly as it influences our allotment in futurity : suf- ferings are permitted for our advantage : they are designed to purify and rectify the heart. The universal Father ' ' scourgeth every son whom he receiveth ; ' ' and the suffering, the scourging, is of little account in comparison with the prospects of another world. It is not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall follow —that glory of which an exceeding and eternal weight is the reward of a "patient conti?iua7ice in well doing." To him who thus regards misery, not as an evil but as a good ; not as the unrestrained assault of chance or malice, but as the beneficent discipline of a Father ; to him who remembers that the time is approaching in which he will be able most feelingly to say, "For all I bless Thee — most for the severe;" — every affliction is accompanied with its proper allevia- tion : the present hour may distress but it does not over- whelm him ; he may be perplexed but is not in despair : he sees the darkness and feels the storm, but he knows CHAP. XI II.] SUICIDE. 293 that light will again arise, and that the storm will eventually be hushed with an efficacious, ' ' Peace be still ;" so that there shall be a great calm. Compared with these motives to avoid the first promptings to suicide, others are like to be of little effect ; and yet they are neither inconsiderable nor few. It is more dignified, more worthy an enlightened and manly understanding, to meet and endure an inev- itable evil than to sink beneath it. He who feels prompted to suicide, sacrifices his life to his fears. The suicide balances between opposing objects of dread, (for dreadful self-destruction must be supposed to be,) and chooses the alternative which he fears least. If his courage, his firmness, his manliness, were greater, he who chooses the alternative of suicide, like him who chooses the duel, would endure the evil rather than avoid it in a manner which dignity and religion forbid. The lesson too which the self- destroyer teaches to his connections, of sinking in despair under the evils of life, is one of the most pernicious which a man can bequeath. The power of the example is also great. Every act of suicide tacitly conveys the sanction of one more judgment in its favor : frequency of repetition diminishes the sensation of abhorrence, and makes suc- ceeding sufferers resort to it with less reluctance. ! ' Besides which general reasons, each case will be aggravated by its own proper and particular conse- quences ; by the duties that are deserted ; by the claims that are defrauded ; by the loss, affliction, or disgrace which our death, or the manner of it, causes our family, kindred, or friends ; by the occasion we give to many to suspect the sincerity of our moral religious profes- sions, and, together with ours, those of all others ;"* and lastly, by the scandal which we bring upon religion * Mor. and Pol. Phil. b. 4, c. 3. 294 SUICIDE. [ESSAY II. itself by declaring, 'practically, that it is not able to support man under the calamities of life. Some men say that the New Testament contains no prohibition of suicide. If this were true, it would avail nothing, because there are many things which it does not forbid, but which every one knows to be wicked. But in reality it does forbid it. Every exhortation which it gives to be patient, every encouragement to trust in God, every consideration which it urges as a support under affliction and distress, is a virtual prohi- bition of suicide ; — because, if a man commits suicide, he rejects every such advice and encouragement, and disregards every such motive. To him who believes either in revealed or natural religion, there is a certain folly in the commission of suicide : for from what does he fly ? From his present sufferings ; whilst death, for aught that he has reason to expect, or at any rate for aught that he knows, may only be the portal to sufferings more intense. Natural religion, I think, gives no countenance to the supposi- tion that suicide can be approved by the Deity, because it proceeds upon the belief that, in another state of existence, he will compensate good men for the suffer- ings of the present. At the best, and under either religion, it is a desperate stake. He that commits murder may repent, and we hope, be forgiven ; but he that destroys himself, whilst he incurs a load of guilt, cuts off, by the act, the power of repentance. Not every act of suicide is to be attributed to excess of misery. Some shoot themselves or throw themselves into a river in rage or revenge, in order to inflict pain and remorse upon those who have ill used them. Such, it is to be suspected, is sometimes a motive to self-de- struction in disappointed love. The unhappy person leaves behind some message or letter, in the hope of CHAP. XIV.] RIGHTS OF SKIyF-DKFENCK. 295 exciting that affection and commiseration by the catastrophe, which he could not excite when alive. Perhaps such persons hope, too, that the world will sigh over their early fate, tell of the fidelity of their loves, and throw a romantic melancholy over their story. This needs not to be a subject of wonder : un- numbered multitudes have embraced death in other forms from kindred motives. We hear continually of those who die for the sake of glory. This is but another phantom, and the less amiable phantom of the two. It is just as reasonable to die in order that the world may admire our true love, as in order that it may admire our bravery. And the lover's hope is the better founded. There are too many aspirants for glory for each to get even his ' ' peppercorn of praise. ' ' But the lover may hope for higher honors ; a paragraph may record his fate through the existence of a weekly paper ; he may be talked of through half a county ; and some kindred spirit may inscribe a tributary sonnet in a lady's album. CHAPTER XIV. RIGHTS OF SELF-DEFENCE. These rights not absolute — Their limits — Personal attack- Preservation of property — Much resistance lawful — Effects of forbearance — Sharpe — Barclay — Ellwood. The right of defending ourselves against violence is easily deducible from the law of nature. There is however little need to deduce it, because mankind are at least sufficiently persuaded of its lawfulness. — The great question, which the opinions and principles that now influence the world makes it rieedful to discuss is, whether the right of self-defence is absolute and un- 296 RIGHTS OF SEI,F-DEFENCK. [ESSAY II. conditional — whether every action whatever is lawful, provided it is necessary to the preservation of life ? They who maintain the affirmative, maintain a great deal ; for they maintain that whenever life is en- dangered, all rules of morality are, as it respects the individual, suspended, annihilated : every moral obli- gation is taken away by the single fact that life is threatened. Yet the language that is ordinarily held upon the subject implies the supposition of all this. "If our lives are threatened with assassination or open violence from the hands of robbers or enemies, any means of de- fence would be allowed, and laudable."* Again, " There is one case in which all extremities are justifi- able, namely, when our life is assaulted, and it be- comes necessary for our preservation to kill the assailant." f The reader may the more willingly enquire whether these propositions are true, because most of those who lay them down are at little pains to prove their truth. Men are extremely willing to acquiesce in it without proof, and writers and speakers think it unnecessary to adduce it. Thus perhaps it happens that fallacy is not detected because it is not sought. — If the reader should think that some of the instances which follow are remote from the ordinary affairs of life, he is re- quested to remember that we are discussing the sound- ness of an alleged absolute ride. If it be found that there are or have been cases in which it is not absolute — cases in which all extremities are not lawful in de- fence of life — then the rule is not sound : then there are some limits to the right of self-defence. If ' ' any means of defence are laudable, " if "all ex- tremities are justifiable," then they are not confined to * Grotius : Rights of War and Peace, f Paley : Mor. and Pol. Phil. p. 3, b. iv. c. 1. CHAP. XIV.] RIGHTS OF SFl,F-DFFENCE. 297 acts of resistance to the assailing party. There may be other conditions upon which life may be preserved than that of violence towards him. Some ruffians seize a man in the highway, and will kill him unless he will conduct them to his neighbor's property and assist them in carrying it off. May this man unite with them in the robbery in order to save his life, or may he not ? If he may, what becomes of the law, Thou shalt not steal ? If he may not, then not every means by which a man may preserve his life is "laud- able ' ' or " allowed. ' ' We have found an exception to the rule. There are twenty other wicked things which violent men may make the sole condition of not taking our lives. Do all wicked things become lawful because life is at stake ? If they do, morality is surely at an end : if they do not, such propositions as those of Grotitis and Paley are untrue. A pagan has unalterably resolved to offer me up in sacrifice on the morrow, unless I will acknowledge the deity, of his gods and worship them. I shall presume that the Christian will regard these acts as being, under every possible circumstance, unlawful. The night offers me an opportunity of assassinating him. Now I am placed, so far as the argument is concerned, in precisely the same situation with respect to this man, as a traveller is with respect to a ruffian with a pistol- Life in both cases depends on killing the of- fender. — Both are acts of self-defence. Am I at liberty to assassinate this man? The heart of the Christian surely answers, no. Here then is a case in which I may not take a violent man's life in order to save my own. — We have said that the heart of the Christian answers, no : and this we think is a just species of appeal. But if any one doubts whether the assassination would be unlawful, let him consider whether one of the Christian apostles would have 298 RIGHTS OF SEI,F-DEFENCE. [ESSAY II. committed it in such a case. Here, at any rate, the heart of every man answers, no. And mark the reason — be- cause every man perceives that the act would have been palpably inconsistent with the apostolic character and conduct ; or, which is the same thing, with a Chris- tian character and conduct. Or put such a case in a somewhat different form. A furious Turk holds a scimitar over my head, and de- clares he will instantly dispatch me unless I abjure Christianity and acknowledge the divine legation of " the Prophet." Now there are two supposable ways in which I may save my life ; one by contriving to stab the Turk, and one " by denying Christ before men." You say I am not at liberty to deny Christ,- but I am at liberty to stab the man. Why am I not at liberty to deny him ? Because Christianity forbids it. Then we require you to show that Christianity does not forbid you to take his life. Our religion pronounces both actions to be wrong. You say that, under these circumstances, the killing is right. Where is your proof ? What is the ground of your distinction ? — But, whether it can be adduced or not, our immediate argu- ment is established — That there are some things which it is not lawful to do in order to preserve our lives. — This conclusion has indeed been practically acted upon. A company of inquisitors and their agents are about to conduct a good man to the stake. If he could by any means destroy these men, he might save his life. It is a question therefore of self-defence. Supposing these means to be within his power — supposing he could contrive a mine, and by suddenly firing it, blow his persecutors into the air — would it be lawful and Christian thus to act ? No. The common judgments of mankind respecting the right temper and conduct of the martyr, pronounce it to be wrong. It is pro- nounced to be wrong by the language and example of CHAP. XIV.] RIGHTS OF SEXF-DEFENCE. 299 the first teachers of Christianity. The conclusion therefore again is that all extremities are not allowable in order to preserve life ; — that there is a limit to the right of self-defence. It would be to no purpose to say that in some of the instances which have been proposed, religious duties interfere with and limit the rights of self-defence. This is a common fallacy. Religious duties and moral duties are identical in point of obligation, for they are imposed by one authority. Religious duties are not obligatory for any other reason than that which attaches to moral duties also ; namely the will of God. He who violates the moral law is as truly unfaithful in his allegiance to God, as he who denies Christ before men. So that we come at last to one single and simple question, whether taking the life of a person who threatens ours, is or is not compatible with the moral law. We refer for an answer to the broad principles of Christian piety and Christian benevolence ; that piety which reposes habitual confidence in the Divine Providence, and an habitual preference of futurity to the present time ; and that benevolence which not only loves our neighbors as ourselves, but feels that the Samaritan or the enemy is a neighbor. There is no conjecture in life in which the exercise of this benevo- lence may be suspended ; none in which we are not required to maintain and to practise it. Whether want implores our compassion, or ingratitude returns ill for kindness ; whether a fellow creature is drowning in a river or assailing us on the highway ; everywhere, and under all circumstances, the duty remains. Is killing an assailant, then, within or without the limits of this benevolence? — As to the man, it is evi- dent that no good-will is exercised towards him by shooting him through the head. Who indeed will dis- pute that, before we can thus destroy him, benevolence 300 RIGHTS OP SEXF-DEFENCE. [ESSAY II. towards him must be excluded from our minds ? We not only exercise no benevolence ourselves, but pre- clude him from receiving it from any human heart ; and, which is a serious item in the account, we cut him off from all possibility of reformation. To call sinners to repentance, was one of the great characteristics of the mission of Christ. Does it appear consistent with this characteristic for one of His followers to take away from a sinner the power of repentance ? Is it an act that accords, and is congruous, with Christian love ? But an argument has been attempted here. That we may ' ' kill the assailant is evident in a state of nature, unless it can be shown that we are bound to prefer the aggressor's life to our own ; that is to say, to love our enemy better than ourselves, which can never be a debt of justice, nor any where appears to be a duty of charity."* The answer is this : That although we may not be required to love our enemy better than ourselves, we are required to love him as ourselves ; and therefore, in the supposed case, it would still be a question equally balanced which life ought to be sacrificed ; for it is quite clear that, if we kill the assailant , we love him less than ourselves, which does seem to militate against a duty of charity. But the truth is that he who, from motives of obedience to the will of God, spares the aggressor's life even to the endangering his own, does exercise love both to the aggressor and to himself, perfectly: to the aggressor, because by sparing his life we give him the opportunity of repentance and amendment : to himself, because every act of obedience to God is perfect benevolence towards ourselves ; it is consulting and promoting our most valuable interests ; it is propitiating the favor of Him who is emphatically " a rich rewarder." — So that the question remains as before, not whether we should * Paley : Mor. and Pol. Phil. p. 3, b. 4. c. 1. CHAP. XIV.] RIGHTS OF SELF-DEFENCE. 301 love our enemy better than ourselves, but whether Christian principles are acted upon in destroying him : and if they are not, whether we should prefer Chris- tianity to ourselves ; whether we should be willing to lose our life for Christ's sake and the gospel's. Perhaps it will be said that he should exercise benevolence to the public as well as to the offender, and that we may exercise more benevolence to them by killing than by sparing him. But very few persons, when they kill a man who attacks them, kill him out of benevolence to the public. That is not the motive which influences their conduct, or which they at all take into the account. Besides, it is by no means cer- tain that the public would lose anything by the for- bearance. To be sure, a man can do no more mischief after he is killed ; but then it is to be remembered, that robbers are more desperate and more murderous from the apprehension of swords and pistols than they would be without it. Men are desperate in proportion to their apprehensions of danger. The plunderer who feels a confidence that his own life will not be taken, may conduct his plunder with comparative gentleness ; whilst he who knows that his life is in immediate jeopardy, stuns or murders his victim lest he should be killed himself. The great evil which a family sustains by a robbery is often not the loss, but the terror and the danger ; and these are the evils which, by the ex- ercise of forbearance, would be diminished. So that, if some bad men are prevented from committing rob- beries by the fear of death, the public gains in other ways by the forbearance : nor is it by any means cer- tain that the balance of advantages is in favor of the more violent course. — The argument which we are op- posing proceeds on the supposition that our own lives are endangered. Now it is a fact that this very danger results, in part, from the want of habits of forbearance. 302 RIGHTS OE SELF-DEFENCE. [ESSAY II. We publicly profess that we would kill an assailant ; and the assailant, knowing this, prepares to kill us when otherwise he would forbear. And after all, if it were granted that a person is at liberty to take an assailant's life in order to preserve his own, how is he to know, in the majority of instances, whether his own would be taken ? When a man breaks into a person's house and this person, as soon as he conies up with the robber, takes out a pistol and shoots him, we are not to be told that this man was killed " in defence of life." Or go a step further, and a step further still, by which the intention of the robber to commit personal violence ' or inflict death is more and more probable : — You must at last shoot him in un- certainty whether your life was endangered or not. Besides, you can withdraw — you can fly. None but the predetermined murderer wishes to commit murder. But perhaps you exclaim — " Fly ! fly, and leave your property, unprotected ! " Yes — unless you mean to say that preservation of property, as well as preserva- tion of life, makes it lawful to kill an offender. This were to adopt a new and a very different proposition ; but a proposition which I suspect cannot be separated in practice from the former. He who affirms that he may kill another in order to preserve his life, and that he may endanger his life in order to protect his prop- erty, does in reality affirm that he may kill another in order to preserve his property. But such a proposi- tion, in an unconditional form, no one surely will tolerate. The laws of the land do not admit it, nor do they even admit the right of taking another's life simply because he is attempting to take ours. They require that we should be tender even of the murderer's life, and that we should fly rather than destroy it. * We say that the proposition that we may take life * Blackstone : Com. v. 4, c. 4. CHAP. XIV.] RIGHTS OP SPI,P-DEPENCP. 303 in order to preserve our property is intolerable. To pre- serve how much? five hundred pounds, or fifty, or ten, or a shilling or a sixpence ? It has actually been declared that the rights of self-defence " justify a man in taking all forcible methods which are necessary, in order to procure the restitution of the freedom or the property of which he had been unjustly deprived." * All forcible methods to obtain restitution of property ! No limit to the nature or effects of the force ! No limit to the insignificance of the amount of the prop- erty ! Apply, then, the rule. A boy snatches a bunch of grapes from a fruiterer's stall. The fruiterer runs after the thief, but finds that he is too light of foot to be overtaken. Moreover, the boy eats as he runs. " All forcible methods," reasons the fruiterer, "are justifiable to obtain restitution of property. I may fire after the plunderer, and when he falls regain my grapes." All this is just and right, if Gisborne's proposition is true. It is a dangerous thing to lay down maxims in morality. The conclusion, then, to which we are led by these enquiries is, that he who kills another, even upon the plea of self-defence, does not do it in the predominance nor in the exercise of Christian dispositions : and if this is true, is it not also true, that his life cannot be thus taken in conformity with the Christian law ? But this is very far from concluding that no resist- ance may be made to aggression. We may make, and we ought to make, a great deal. It is the duty of the civil magistrate to repress the violence of one man towards another, and by consequence it is the duty of the individual, when the civil power cannot operate, to endeavor to repress it himself. I perceive no reasona- ble exception to the rule — that whatever Christianity permits the magistrate to do in order to restrain * Gisborne : Moral Philosophy. 304 RIGHTS OF SElvF-DEFENCE. [ESSAY II. violence, it permits the individual, under such circum- stances to do also. I know the consequences to which this rule leads in the case of the punishment of death, and of other questions. These questions will hereafter be discussed. In the mean time, it may be an act of candor to the reader to acknowledge, that our chief motive for the discussions of the present chapter, has been to pioneer the way for a satisfactory investigation of the punishment of death, and of other modes by which human life is taken away. Many kinds of resistance to aggression come strictly within the fulfilment of the law of benevolence. He who, by securing a man, prevents him from commit- ting an act of great turpitude, is certainly his benefac- tor ; and if he be thus reserved for justice, the benevo- lence is great both to him and to the public. It is an act of much kindness to a bad man to secure him for the penalties of the law : or it would be such, if penal law were in the state in which it ought to be, and to which it appears to be making some approaches. It would then be very probable that the man would be reformed : and this is the greatest benefit which can be conferred upon him and upon the community. The exercise of Christian forbearance towards violent men is not tantamount to an invitation of outrage. Cowardice is one thing ; this forbearance is another- The man of true forbearance is of all men the least cowardly. It requires courage in a greater degree and of a higher order to practice it when life is threatened, than to draw a sword or fire a pistol. — No : It is the peculiar privilege of Christian virtue to approve itself even to the bad. There is something in the nature of that calmness, and self-possession, and forbearance, that religion effects, which obtains, nay which almost commands regard and respect. How different the effect upon the violent tenants of Newgate, the hardihood of CHAP. XIV.] RIGHTS OF SKI^-DKFKNCE. 305 a turnkey and the mild courage of an Elizabeth Fry ! Experience, incontestable experience, has proved, that the minds of few men are so depraved or desperate as to prevent them from being influenced by real Christian conduct. L,et him therefore who advocates the taking the life of an aggressor, first show that all other means of safety are vain ; let him show that bad men, not- withstanding the exercise of true Christian forbearance, persist in their purposes of death : when he has done this he will have adduced an argument in favor of taking their lives which will not indeed be conclusive, but which will approach nearer to conclusiveness than any that has yet been adduced. Of the consequences of forbearance, even in the case of personal attack, there are some examples : Arch- bishop Sharpe was assaulted by a footpad on the high- way, who presented a pistol and demanded his money. The Archbishop spoke to the robber in the language of a fellow man and of a Christian. The man was really in distress, and the prelate gave him such money as he had, and promised that, if he would call at the palace, he would make up the amount to fifty pounds. This was the sum of which the robber had said he stood in the utmost need. The man called and received the money. About a year and a half after- wards, this man again came to the palace and brought back the same sum. He said that his cir- cumstances had become improved and that, through the "astonishing goodness" of the Archbishop, he had become " the most penitent, the most grateful, and happiest of his species." — L,et the reader consider how different the Archbishop's feelings were, from what they would have been if, by his hand this man had been cut off.* *See Lond. Chron. "Aug. 12, 1785." See also life of Granville Sharpe, Esq., p. 13. 3°6 RIGHTS OF self-defence, [essay II. Barclay, the Apologist, was attacked by a highway- man. He substituted for the ordinary modes of resist- ance, a calm expostulation. The felon dropped his presented pistol, and offered no further violence. A Leonard Fell was similarly attacked, and from him the robber took both his money and his horse, and then threatened to blow out his brains. Fell solemnly spoke to the man on the wickedness of his life. The robber was astonished : he had expected, perhaps, curses, or perhaps a dagger. He declared he would not keep either the horse or the money, and returned both. " If thine enemy hunger, feed him ; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head."* — The tenor of the short narrative that follows is somewhat different. Ellwood, who is known to the literary world as the suggester to Milton of Paradise Regained, was attend- ing his father in his coach. Two men waylaid them in the dark and stopped the carriage. Young Ellwood got out, and on going up to the nearest, the ruffian raised a heavy club, "when,"* says Ellwood, "I whipped out my rapier and made a pass upon him. I could not have failed running him through up to the hilt," but the sudden appearance of the bright blade terrified the man so that he stepped aside, avoided the thrust, and both he and the other fled. "At that time," proceeds Ellwood, *' and for a good while after, I had no regret upon my mind for what I had done. ' ' This was whilst he was young, and when the forbear- ing principles of Christianity had little influence upon him. But afterwards, when this influence became powerful, " a sort of horror," he says, " seized on me when I considered how near I had been to the staining of my hands with human blood. And whensoever afterwards I went that way, and indeed as often since as the matter has come into my remembrance, my soul * " Select Anecdotes, &c." by John Barclay. CHAP XIV.] RIGHTS OE SELF-DEEENCE. 307 has blessed Him who preserved and withheld me from shedding man's blood."* That those over whom, as over Ellwood, the influ- ence of Christianity is imperfect and weak, should think themselves at liberty upon such occasions to take the lives of their fellow-men, needs to be no sub- ject of wonder. Christianity, if we would rightly estimate its obligations, must be felt in the heart. They in whose hearts it is not felt, or felt but little* cannot be expected perfectly to know what its obliga- tions are. I know not therefore that more appropriate advice can be given to him who contends for the law- fulness of taking another man's life in order to save his own, than that he would first enquire whether the influence of religion is dominant in his mind. If it is not, let him suspend his decision until he has attained to the fulness of the stature of a Christian man. Then, as he will be of that number who do the will of Heaven, he may hope to ! ' know of this doctrine whether it be of God." * EUwood's Life. ESSAY III.* POLITICAL RIGHTS AND OBLIGA- TIONS. CHAPTER I. PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL TRUTH, AND OF POLITICAL RECTITUDE. I. — ' ' Political Power is rightly exercised only when It is pos- sessed by consent of the community ' ' — Governors Officers of the public — Transfer of their rights by a whole people — The people hold the sovereign power — Rights of Governors — A conciliating system. II. — "Political Power is rightly exercised only when it sub- serves the welfare of the community" — Interference with other nations — Present expedients for present occasions — Proper business of Governments. III. — "Political Power is rightly exercised only when it sub- serves the welfare of the community by means which the moral law permits ' ' — The moral law alike binding on nations and individuals — Deviation from rectitude impolitic. [* This Essay the author did not live to revise, a circumstance which will account for a want of complete connection of the different parts of a subject which the reader will sometimes meet with. There occur also in this part of the manuscript numerous memoranda, which the author intended to make use of in a future revision. These are to be distinguished from the Notes, as the former refer, not to any particular passage but only to the subject of the chapter or section. They were hastily, as the thought occurred, written in the margin or on a blank leaf of the manuscript, and they are here introduced at the bottom of the page, in those parts to which they appear to have the nearest reference. — Ed.] CHAP. I.] PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL TRUTH, ETC. 309 The fundamental principles which are deducible from the law of nature and from Christianity, respect- ing political affairs, appear to be these : — 1 . Political Power is rightly possessed only when it is possessed by consent of the community ; — 2 . It is rightly exercised only when it subserves the welfare of the community ; — 3. And only when it subserves this purpose, by means which the moral law permits. I — "POLITICAL POWER IS RIGHTI.Y POSSESSED ONLY WHEN IT IS POSSESSED BY CONSENT OF THE COMMUNITY." Perfect liberty is desirable if it were consistent with the greatest degree of happiness. But it is not. Men find that, by giving up a part of their liberty, they are more happy than by retaining, or attempting to re- tain, the whole. Government, whatever be its. form, is the agent by which the i7iexpedient portion of individual liberty is taken away. Men institute gov- ernment for their own advantage, and because they find they are more happy with it than without it. This is the sole reason, in principle, how little soever it be adverted to in practice. Governors, therefore, are the officers of the public, in the proper sense of the word : not the slaves of the public ; for if they do not incline to conform to the public will, they are at lib- erty, like other officers, to give up their office. They are servants, in the same manner, and for the same purpose, as a solicitor is the servant of his client, and the physician of his patient. These are employed by the patient or the client voluntarily for his own advan- tage, and for nothing else. A nation, (not an individ- ual, but a nation,'), is under no other obligation to obe- dience, than that which arises from the conviction that obedience is good for itself : — or rather, in more 3IO PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL TRUTH, [ESSAY III. proper language, a nation is under no obligation to obe- dience at all. Obedience is voluntary. If they do not think it proper to obey — that is, if they are not satis- fied with their officers — they are at liberty to discon- tinue their obedience, and to appoint other officers instead. It is incidental to the office of the first public ser- vants, that they should exercise authority over those by whom they are selected ; and hence probably, it has happened that the terms ' ' public officer, " " public servant," have excited such strange controversies in the world. Men have not maintained sufficient dis- crimination of ideas. Seeing that governors are great and authoritative, a man imagines it cannot be proper to say they are servants. Seeing that it is necessary and right that individuals should obey, he cannot entertain the notion that they are the servants of those whom they govern. The truth is, that governors are not the servants of individuals but of the community. They are the masters of individuals,, the servants of the public ; and if this simple distinction had been sufficiently borne in mind, much perhaps of the vehement conten- tion upon these matters had been avoided. But the idea of being a servant to the public, is quite consistent with the idea of exercising authority over them. The common language of a patient is founded upon similar grounds. He sends for a physician : — the physician comes at his desire — is paid for his ser- vices — and then the patient says, I am ordered to adopt a regimen, I am ordered to Italy ; — and he obeys, not because he may not refuse to obey if he chooses, but because he confides in the judgment of the physician, and thinks that it is more to his benefit to be guided by the physician's judgment than by his own. But it will be said the physician cannot enforce his orders upon the patient against his will : neither I answer can the CHAP. I.] AND OF POWTlCAl, RECTITUDE. 311 governor enforce his upon the public against theirs. No doubt governors do sometimes so enforce them. What they do, however, and what they rightfully do, are separate considerations, and our business is only with the latter. The rule that - ' political power is rightly possessed only when it is possessed by consent of the community, ' ' necessarily applies to the choice of the person who is to exercise it. No man, and no set of men, rightly govern unless they are preferred by the public to others. It is of no consequence that a people should formally select a president or a king. They continually act upon the principle without this. A people who are satisfied with their governor make, day by day, the choice of which we speak. They prefer him to all others ; they choose to be served by him rather than by any other ; and he, therefore, is virtually, though not formally, selected by the public. But, when we speak of the right of a particular person or family to govern a people, we speak, as of all other rights, in conditional language. The right consists in the prefer- ence which is given to him ; and exists no longer than that preference exists. If any governor were fully conscious that the community preferred another man or another kind of government, he ought to regard himself in the light of an usurper if he nevertheless continues to retain his power. Not that every govern- ment ought to dissolve itself, or every governor to abdicate his office, because there is a general but tem- porary clamor against it. This is one thing — the steady deliberate judgment of the people is another. Is it too much to hope that the time may come when governments will so habitually refer to the purposes of government, and be regulated by them, that they will not even wish to hold the reins longer than the people desire it ; and that nothing more will be needed for a 312 PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL TRUTH, . [KSSAY III. quiet alteration than that the public judgment should be quietly expressed? Political revolutions are not often favorable to the accurate illustration of political truth ; because, such is the moral condition of mankind, that they have seldom acted in conformity with it. Revolutions have com- monly been the effect of the triumph of a party, or of the successes of physical power. Yet, if the illustra- tion of these principles has not been accurate, the general position of the right of the people to select their own rulers has often been illustrated. In England, when James II. left the throne, the people filled it with* another person, whose real title consisted in the choice of the people. James continued to talk of his rights to the crown ; but if William was preferred by the public, James was, what his son was afterwards called, a pre- tender. The nonjurors appear to have acted upon erroneous principles, (except indeed on the score of former oaths to James ; which, however, ought never to have been taken. ) If we acquit them of motives of party, they will appear to have entertained some notions of the rights of governors independently of the wishes of the people. At William's death, the nation preferred James's daughter to his son ; thus again elevating their judgments above all considerations of what the pretender called his rights. Anne had then a right to the throne, and her brother had not. At the death of Anne, or rather in contemplation of her death, the public had again to select their governor ; and they chose, not the immediate representative of the old family, but the elector of Hanover : and it is in virtue of the same choice, tacitly expressed at the present hour, that the heir of the elector now fills the throne. [The habitual consciousness on the part of a legisla- ture, that its authority is possessed in order to make it CHAP. I.] AND OF POUTlCAI, RECTITUDE. 313 an efficient guardian and promoter of the general wel- fare and the general satisfaction, would induce a more mild and conciliating system of internal policy than that which frequently obtains. Whether it has arisen from habit resulting from the violent and imperious character of international policy, or from that tendency to unkindness and overbearing which the conscious- ness of power induces, it cannot be doubted that meas- ures of government are frequently adopted and conducted with such a high hand as impairs the satis- faction of the governed, and diminishes, by example, that considerate attention to the claims of others, upon which much of the harmony, and therefore the happi- ness of society consists. Governments are too much afraid of conciliation. They too habitually suppose that mildness or concession indicates want of courage or want of power — that it invites unreasonable demands, and encourages encroachment and violence on the part of the governed. Man is not so intractable a being, or so insensible of the influence of candor and justice. In private life, he does not the most easily guide the con- duct of his neighbors, who assumes an imperious, but he who assumes a temperate and mild demeanor. The best mode of governing, and the most powerftd mode too, is to recommend state measures to the judgment and the affections of a people. If this had been suffi- ciently done in periods of tranquillity, some of those conflicts which have arisen between governments and the people had doubtless been prevented ; and governments had been spared the mortification of conceding that to violence which they refused to con- cede in periods of quiet. We should not wait for times of agitation to do that which Fox advised even at such a time, because at other periods it may be done with greater advantage and with a better grace. "It may be asked," said Fox, "what I would propose to do in 314 PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL TRUTH, [ESSAY III. times of agitation like the present ? I will answer openly : — If there is a tendency in the Dissenters to discontent, what should I do ? I would instantly repeal the corporation and test acts, and take from them thereby all cause of complaint. If there were any persons tinctured with a republican spirit, I would en- deavor to amend the representation of the Commons, and to prove that the House of Commons, though not chosen by all, should have no other interest than to prove itself the representative of all. If men were dis- satisfied on account of disabilities or exemptions, &c. , I would repeal the penal statutes, which are a disgrace to our law-books. If there were other complaints of grievance, I would redress them where they were really proved ; but, above all, I would consta?itly y cheerfully, patiently listen ; I would make it known, that if any man felt, or thought he felt a grievance, he might come freely to the bar of this House and bring his proofs. And it should be made manifest to all the world that where they did exist they should be redressed ; where not, it should be made manifest."* We need not consider the particular examples and measures which the statesman instanced. The temper and spirit is the thing. A government should do that of which every person would see the propriety in a private man ; if misconduct was charged upon him, show that the charge was unfounded ; or, being sub- stantiated, amend his conduct.] II. — ' * POLITICAL POWER IS RIGHTLY EXERCISED ONLY WHEN IT SUBSERVES THE WELFARE OF THE COMMUNITY." This proposition is consequent of the truth of the last. The community, which has the right to with- hold power, delegates it, of course, for its own advan- * Fell's Memoirs of the Public Life of C. J. Fox. CHAP. I.] AND OF POUTlCAI, RECTITUDE. 315 tage. If in any case its advantage is not consulted, then the object for which it was delegated is frustrated ; or, in simple words, the measure which does not pro- mote the public welfare is not right. It matters noth- ing whether the community have delegated specifically so much power for such and such purposes ; the power, being possessed, entails the obligation. Whether a sovereign derives absolute authority by inheritance, or whether a president is entrusted with limited authority for a year, the principles of their duty are the same. The obligation to employ it only for the public good, is just as real and just as great in one case as in the other. The Russian and the Turk have the same right to require that the power of their rulers shall be so em- ployed as the Englishman or American. They may not be able to assert this right, but that does not affect its existence nor the ruler's duty, nor his re- sponsibility to that Almighty Being before whom he must give an account of his stewardship. These reasonings, if they needed confirmation derive it from the fact that the Deity imperatively requires us, ac- cording to our opportunities, to do good to man. Governments commonly trouble themselves unneces- sarily and too much with the politics of other nations. A prince should turn his back towards other countries and his face towards his own — just as the proper place of a landholder is upon his own estates and not upon his neighbor's. If governments were wise, it would ere long be found that a great portion of the endless and wearisome succession of treaties and remonstrances, and embassies, and alliances, and memorials, and sub- sidies, might be dispensed with, with so little incon- venience and so much benefit, that the world would wonder to think to what futile ends they had been busying and how needlessly they had been injuring themselves. 3l6 PRINCIPLES OP POUTlCAI, TRUTH, [ESSAY III. No doubt, the immoral and irrational system of in- ternational politics which generally obtains, makes the path of one government more difficult than it would otherwise be ; and yet it is probable that the most effi- cacious way of inducing another government to attend to its proper business, would be to attend to our own. It is not sufficiently considered, nor indeed is it suffi- ciently known, how powerful is the influence of up- rightness and candor in conciliating the good opinion and the good offices of other men. Overreaching and chicanery in one person, induce overreaching and chicanery in another. Men distrust those whom they perceive to be unworthy of confidence. Real integrity is not without its voucher in the hearts of others ; and they who maintain it are treated with confidence, be- cause it is seen that confidence can be safely reposed. Besides, he who busies himself with the politics of foreign countries, like the busybodies in a petty com- munity, does not fail to offend. In the last century, our own country was so much of a busybody, and had involved itself in such a multitude of treaties and alliances, that it was found, I believe, quite impossible to fulfil one, without, by that very act, violating another. This, of course, would offend. In private life, that man passes through the world with the least annoyance and the greatest satisfaction, who confines his attention to its proper business, that is, generally, to his own : and who can tell why the experience of nations should in this case be different from that of private men? In a rectified state of international affairs, half a dozen princes on a continent would have little more occasion to meddle with one another than half a dozen neighbors in a street. But indeed, communities frequently contribute to their own injury. If governors are ambitious, or resent- ful, or proud, so, often, are the people ; — and the CHAP. I.] AND OF POLITICAL RKCTlTUDE. 3I7 . public good has often been sacrificed by the public, with astonishing preposterousness, to jealousy or vexa- tion. Some merchants are angry at the loss of a branch of trade ; they urge the government to inter- fere ; memorials and remonstrances follow to the state of whom thay complain ; — and so, by that process of exasperation which is quite natural when people think that high language and a high attitude is politic, the nations soon begin to fight. The merchants applaud the spirit of their rulers, while in one year they lose more by the war than they would have lost by the want of the trade for twenty ; and before peace returns, the nation has lost more than it would have lost by the continuance of the evil for twenty centuries. Peace at length arrives, and the government begins to devise means of repairing the mischiefs of the war. Both government and people reflect very complacently on the wisdom of their measures — forgetting that their con- duct is only that of a man who wantonly fractures his own leg with a club, and then boasts to his neighbors how dexterously he limps to a surgeon. We know what a sickening detail the history of Europe is ; and it is obvious to remark, that the sys- tem which has given rise to such a history must be vicious and mistaken in its fundamental principles. The same class of history will continue to after genera- tions unless these principles are changed — unless philosophy and Christianity obtain a greater influence in the* practice of government ; unless, in a word, gov- ernments are content to do their proper business, and to leave that which is not their business undone. When such principles are acted upon, we may reasonably expect a rapid advancement in the whole condition of the world. Domestic measures which are now postponed to the more stirring occupations of legislators, will be found to be of incomparably greater 3l8 PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL TRUTH, [ESSAY III. importance than they. A wise code of criminal law, will be found to be of more consequence and interest than the acquisition of a million, square miles of terri- tory : — a judicious encouragement of general education, will be of more value than all the ' ' glory ' ' that has been acquired from the days of Alfred till now. Of moral legislation, however, it will be our after business to speak ; meanwhile the lover of mankind has some reason for gratulation, in perceiving indications that governments will hereafter direct their attention more to the objects for which they are invested with power. The statesman who promotes this improvement will be what many statesman have been called — a great man. That government only is great which promotes the prosperity of its own people ; and that people only are prosperous, who are wise and happy. III. — ' ' POLITICAL POWER IS RIGHTLY EXERCISED ONLY WHEN IT SUBSERVES THE WELFARE OF THE COMMUNITY BY MEANS WHICH THE MORAL LAW PERMITS. ' ' It has been said by a Christian writer, that ' ' the science of politics is but a particular application of that of morals;" and it has been said by a writer who rejected Chistianity, that " the morality that ought to govern the conduct of individuals and of nations, is in all cases the same. ' ' If there be truth in the principles which are advanced in the first of these essays, these propositions are indisputably true. It is the chief pur- pose of the present work to enforce the supremacy of the moral law ; and to this supremacy there is no exception in the case of nations. In the conduct of nations this supremacy is practically denied, although, perhaps, few of those who make it subservient to other purposes would deny it in terms. With their lips they honor the doctrine, but in their works they deny it. Such CHAP. I.] AND OF POWTICAI, RECTlTUDf! 1 319 procedures must be expected to produce much self- contradiction, much vacillation between truth and the wish to disregard it, much vagueness of notions respect- ing political rectitude, and much casuistry to educe something like a justification of what cannot be justi- fied. Iyet the reader observe an illustration : — A moral philosopher says, "The Christian principles of love, and forbearance, and kindness, strictly as they are to be observed between man and man, are to be observed with precisely the same strictness between nation and nation." This is an unqualified assertion of the truth. But the writer thinks it would carry him too far, and so he makes exceptions. ' ■ In reducing to practice the Christian principles of forbearance, &c, it will not be always feasible, nor always safe, to proceed to the same extent as in acting towards an individual." L,et the reader exercise his skill in casuistry, by showing the difference between conforming to laws with ' J precise strictness, ' ' and conforming to them in their ' ' full extent." — Thus far Christianity and expediency are proposed as our joint governors. — We must observe the moral law, but still we must regulate our observance of it by considerations of what is feasible and safe. Presently afterwards, however, Christianity is quite dethroned, and we are to observe its laws only "so far as national ability and national security will permit."* — So that our rule of political conduct stands at length thus : obey Christianity with precise strictness — when it suits your interests. The reasoning by which such doctrines are supported, is such as it might be expected to be. We are told of the ' ' caution requisite in affairs of such magnitude — the great uncertainty of the future conduct of the other nation " — and of " patriotism." — So that, because the affairs are of great magnitude, the laws of the Deity * Gisborne's Moral Philosophy. 320 PRINCIPLES OP POIjTlCAI, TRUTH, [pSSAY III. are not to be observed ! It is all very well, it seems, to observe them in little matters, but for our more im- portant concerns we want rules commensurate with their dignity — we cannot then be bound by the laws of God ! The next reason is, that we cannot foresee ' ' the future conduct " of a nation. — Neither can we that of an individual. Besides this, inability to foresee incul- cates the very lesson that we ought to observe the laws of Him who can foresee. It is a strange thing to urge the limitation of our powers of judgment, as a reason for substituting it for the judgment of Him whose powers are perfect. Then ' ' patriotism " is a reason : and we are to be patriotic to our country at the expense of treason to our religion ! The principles upon which these reasonings are founded, lead to their legitimate results : "In war and negotiation," says Adam Smith, "the laws of justice are very seldom observed. Truth and fair dealing are almost totally disregarded. Treaties are violated, and the violation, if some advantage is gained by it, sheds scarce any dishonor upon the violator. The ambassador who dupes the minister of a foreign nation, is admired and applauded. The just man, the man who in all private transactions would be the most beloved and the most esteemed, in those public transactions is regarded as a fool and an idiot, who does not understand his business ; and he incurs always the contempt, and sometimes even the detestation, of his fellow citizens."* Now, against all such principles — against all endeav- ors to defend the rejection of the moral law in political affairs, we would with all emphasis protest. The reader sees that it is absurd : — can he need to be con- vinced that it is unchristian ? Christianity is of para- mount authority, or another authority is superior. He who holds another authority as superior, * Theory of Moral Sentiments. CHAP. I.] AND OE POUTlCAt RECTITUDE. $21 rejects Christianity ; and the fair and candid step woul be avowedly to reject it. He should say, in dis- tinct terms-— Christianity throws some light on political principles ; but its laws are to be held subservient; to our interests. This were far more satisfactory than the trimming system, the perpetual vacillation of obedience to two masters, and the perpetual endeavor to do that which never can be done — serve both. Jesus Christ legislated for man — not for individuals only, not for families only, not for Christian churches only, but for man in all his relationships and in all his circumstances. He legislated for states. In his moral law we discover no indications that states w T ere exempted from its application, or that any rule which bound social did not bind political communities. If any exemption were designed, the onus probandi rests upon those who assert it : unless they can show that the Christian precepts are not intended to apply to nations, the conclusion must be admitted that they are. But in reality, to except nations from the obligations is impos- sible ; for nations are composed of individuals, and if no individual may reject the Christian morality, a nation may not. Unless, indeed, it can be shown that when you are an agent for others you may do what neither yourself nor any of- them might do separately —a proposition of which certainly the proof must be required to be very clear and strong. But the truth is, that those who justify a suspension of Christian morality in political affairs, are often un- willing to reason distinctly and candidly upon the sub- ject. They satisfy themselves with a jest, or a sneer, or a shrug ; being unwilling either to contemn morality in politics, or to practise it : and it is to little purpose to offer arguments to him who does not need conviction, but virtue. Expediency is the rock upon which we split — upon 322 PRINCIPLES OE POUflCAI, TRUTH, [ESSAY III. which, strange as it appears, not only our principles but our interests suffer continual shipwreck. It has been upon expediency that European politics have so long been founded, with such lamentably inexpedient effects. We consult our interests so anxiously that we ruin them. But we consult them blindly : we do not know our interests, nor shall we ever know them whilst we continue to imagine that we know them better than he who legislated for the world. Here is the perpetual folly as well as the perpetual crime. Esteeming ourselves wise, we have, emphatically, been fools — of which no other evidence is necessary than the present political condition of the Christian world. If ever it was true of any human being, that by his deviations from rectitude he had provided scourges for himself, it is true at this hour of every nation in Europe. Iyet us attend to this declaration of a man who, whatever may have been the value of his general politics, was certainly a great statesman here : ' ' I am one of those who firmly believe, as much indeed as a man can believe anything, that the greatest resource a nation can possess, the surest principle of power, is strict at- tention to the principles of justice. I firmly believe that the common proverb of honesty being the best policy, is as applicable to nations as to individuals."— 11 In all interference with foreign nations justice is the best foundation of policy, and moderation is the surest pledge of peace." — "If therefore we have been de- ficient in justice towards other states, we have been deficient in wisdom." * Here, then, is the great truth for which we would contend — to be unjust is to be unwise. And since justice is not imposed upon nations more really than other branches of the moral law, the universal maxim * Fell's Memoirs of the Public lyife of C. J. Fox. CHAP. I.] AND OF POLITICAL RECTITUDE. 323 is equally true— to deviate from purity of rectitude is impolitic as well as wrong. When will this truth be learnt and be acted upon ? When shall we cast away the contrivances of a low and unworthy policy and dare the venture of the consequences of virtue? When shall we, in political affairs, exercise a little of that confidence in the knowledge and protection of God, which we are ready to admire in individual life ? — Not that it is to be assumed as certain that such fidelity would cost nothing. Christianity makes no such promise. But whatever it might cost it would be worth the purchase. And neither reason nor ex- perience allows the doubt that a faithful adherence to the moral law would more effectually serve national interests, than they have ever yet been served by the utmost sagacity whilst violating that law. The contrivances of expediency have become so habitual to measures of state, that it may probably be thought the dreamings of a visionary to suppose it pos- sible that they should be substituted by purity of rec- titude. And yet I believe it will eventually be done — not perhaps by the resolution of a few cabinets — it is not from them that reformation is to be expected — but by the gradual advance of sound principles upon the minds of men — principles which will assume more and more their rightful influence in the world, until at length the low contrivances of a fluctuating and im- moral policy will be substituted by firm, and con- sistent, and invariable integrity. 324 CIVIL UBERTY. [ESSAY III. CHAPTER II. CIVIL LIBERTY. Loss of Liberty — War — Useless laws. Of personal liberty we say nothing, because its full possession is incompatible with the existence of society. All government supposes the relinquishment of a por- tion of personal liberty. Civil liberty may, however, be fully enjoyed. It is enjoyed, where the principles of political truth and rectitude are applied in practice, because there the people are deprived of that portion only of liberty which it would be pernicious to themselves to possess. If political power is possessed by consent of the com- munity ; if it is exercised only for their good ; and if this welfare is consulted by Christian means, the people are free. No man can divine the particular enjoyments or exemptions which constitute civil liberty, because they are contingent upon the circumstances of the respective nations. A degree of restraint may be neces- sary for the general welfare of one community, which would be wholly unnecessary in another. Yet the first would have no reason to complain of their want of civil liberty. The complaint, if any be made, should be of the evils which make the restraint necessary. The single question is, whether any given degree of restraint is necessary or not. If it is, though the restraint may be painful, the civil - liberty of the com- munity may be said to be complete. It is useless to say that it is less complete than that of another nation ; for complete civil liberty is a relative and not a positive enjoyment. Were it otherwise, no people enjoy, or are likely for ages to enjoy full civil liberty ; because none enjoy so much that they could not, in a more vir- tuous state of mankind, enjoy more. "It is not the CHAP. II.] CIVII, LIBERTY. 325 rigor, but the inexpediency of laws and acts of author- ity, which makes them tyrannical."* Civil liberty (so far as its present enjoyment goes) does not necessarily depend upon forms of government. All communities enjoy it who are properly governed. It may be enjoyed under an absolute monarch ; as we know it may not be enjoyed under a republic. Actual, existing liberty, depends upon the actual, existing administration. One great cause of diminutions of civil liberty is war, and if no other motive induced a people jealously to scrutinize the grounds of a war, this might be suffi- cient. The increased loss of personal freedom to a military man is manifest ; — and it is considerable to other men. The man who now pays twenty pounds a year in taxes, would probably have paid but two if there had been no war during the past century. If he now gets a hundred and fifty pounds a year by his exertions, he is obliged to labor six weeks out of the fifty-two, to pay the taxes which war has entailed. That is to say, he is compelled to work two hours every day longer than he himself wishes, or than is needful for his support. This is a material deduction from per- sonal liberty, and a man would feel it as such, if the coercion were directly applied — if an officer came to his house every afternoon at four o'clock, when he had finished his business, and obliged him, under penalty of a distraint, to work till six. It is some loss of liberty, again, to a man to be unable to open as many windows in his house as he pleases — -or to be forbidden to acknowledge the receipt of a debt without going to the next town for a stamp — or to be obliged to ride in an uneasy carriage unless he will pay for springs. It were to no purpose to say he may pay for windows and springs if he will, and if he can. — A slave may, by the * Paley : Mor. and Pol. Phil. p. 3, b. 6, c. 5. 326 CIVII. LIBERTY. [ESSAY III. same reasoning, be shown to be free : because, if he will and if he can, he may purchase his freedom. There is a loss of liberty in being obliged to submit to the alter- native ; and we should feel it as a loss if such things were not habitual, and if we had not receded so con- siderably from the liberty of nature. Now, indeed, that war has created a large public debt, it is necessary to the general good that its inter- est should be paid ; and in this view a man's civil liberty is not encroached upon, though his personal liberty is diminished. The public welfare is consulted by the diminution. I may deplore the cause without complaining of the law. It may, upon emergency, be for the public good to suspend the habeas corpus act. I should lament that such a state of things existed, but I should not complain that civil liberty was invaded. The lesson which such considerations teach, is, jealous watchfulness against wars for the future. ' ' A law being found to produce no sensible good effects, is a sufficient reason for repealing it."* It is not, therefore, sufficient to ask in reply, what harm does the law occasion ? for you must prove that it does good : because all laws which do no good, do harm. They encroach upon or restrain the liberty of the com- munity, without that reason which only can make the deduction of any portion of liberty right — the public good. * Paley : Mor. and Pol. Phil. p. 3, b. 6, c. 5. CHAP. III.] CIVII, OBEDIENCE. 327 CHAPTER III. CIVIL OBEDIENCE. Expediency of Obedience — Obligations to Obedience — Extent of the Duty — Resistance to the Civil Power — Obedience may be withdrawn — King James — America — Non-compliance — In- terference of the Magistrate. Submission to government is involved in the very idea of the institution. None can govern, if none sub- mit : and hence is derived the duty of submission, so far as it is independent of Christianity. Government being necessary to the good of society, submission is necessary also, and therefore it is right. This duty is enforced with great distinctness by Christianity — " Be subject to principalities and pow- ers." — " Obey magistrates." — ''Submit to every ordi- nance of man." — The great question, therefore, is, whether the duty be absolute and unconditional ; and if not, what are its limits, and how are they to be ascertained ? The law of nature proposes few motives to obedience except those which are dictated by expediency. The object of instituting government being the good of the governed, any means of attaining that object is, in the view of natural reason, right. So that, if in any case a government does not effect its proper objects, it may not only be exchanged, but exchanged by any means which will tend on the whole to the public good. Re- sistance — arms — civil war — every act is, in the view of natural reason, lawful if it is useful. But although good government is the right of the people, it is, never- theless, not sufficient to release a subject from the obligation of obedience, that a government adopts some measures which he thinks are not conducive to the general good. A wise pagan would not limit his obe- dience to those measures in which a government acted 328 CIVII, OBEDIENCE. [ESSAY III. expediently ; because it is often better for the com- munity that some acts of misgovern ment should be borne, than that the general system of obedience should be violated. It is, as a general rule, more necessary to the welfare of a people that governments should be regularly obeyed, than that each of their measures should be good and right. In practice, therefore, even considerations of utility are sufficient, generally, to oblige us to submit to the civil power. When we turn from the law of nature to Christianity ', we find, as we are wont, that the moral cord is tight- ened, and that not every means of opposing govern- ments for the public good is permitted to us. The consideration of what modes of opposition Christianity allows, and w 7 hat it forbids, is of great interest and im- portance. " L,et every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God : the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. He is the minister of God to thee for good — a revenger, to execute wrath upon him that doath evil. Wherefore, ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake."* — Upon this often cited and often canvassed passage, three things are to be observed : — i . That it asserts the general duty of civil obedience, because government is an institution sanctioned by the Deity. 2. That it asserts this duty under the supposition that the governor is a minister of God for good. 3. That it gives but little other information respect- ing the extent of the duty of obedience. I. The obligation to obedience is not founded, there- fore, simply upon expediency, but upon the more * Rom. xiii. 1 to 5. CHAP. III.] CIVIL OBEDIENCE. 329 satisfactory and certain ground, the expressed will of God. And here the superiority of this motive over that of fear of the magistrate's power, is manifest. We are to be subject, not only for wrath, but for con- science' sake — not only out of fear of man, but out of fidelity to God. This motive, where it operates, is likely, as was observed in the first essay, to produce much more consistent and conscientious obedience than that of expediency or fear. II. The duty is inculcated under the supposition that the governor is a minister for good. It is upon this supposition that the apostle proceeds : ' 'for rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil ; ' ' which is tantamount to saying, that if they be not a terror to evil works but to good, the duty of obedience is altered. " The power that is of God'' says an in- telligent and Christian writer, ' ( leaves neither ruler nor subject to the liberty of his own will, but limits both to the will of God ; so that the magistrate hath no power to command evil to be done because he is a magistrate, and the subject hath no liberty to do evil because a magistrate doth command it."* When, therefore, the Christian teacher says, ' ' Let every soul be subject to the higher powers," he proposes not an absolute but a conditional rule — conditional upon the nature of the actions which the higher powers require. The expression, "There is no power but of God," does not invalidate this conclusion, because the Apos- tles themselves did not yield unconditional obedience to the powers that were. Similar observations apply to the parallel passage in ist Peter. "Submit your- selves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake ; whether it be to the king as supreme, or unto gov- ernors as unto them that are sent by him, for the * Crisp: " To the Rulers and Inhabitants in Holland, &c. Abt. Ann. 1670. 33° CIVIL OBEDIENCE. [ESSAY III. pwiishment of evildoers and for the praise of them that do well. ' ' The supposition of the just exercise of power is still kept in view. III. The precepts give little other information than this respecting the extent of the duty of obedience. ' ' Whosoever resisteth the power, resisteth the ordi- nance of God," is, like the direction, to "be subject," a conditional proposition. What precise meeting was here attached to the word " resisteth," cannot perhaps be known ; but there is reason to think that the mean- ing was not designed to be precise — that the propo- sition was general. ' * Magistrates are not to be re- sisted," without defining, or attempting to define the limits of civil obedience. Upon the whole, this often agitated portion of the Christian Scriptures does not appear to me to convey much information respecting the duties of civil obedi- ence ; and although it explicitly asserts the general duty of obedience to the magistrate, it does not inform us how far that duty extends, nor what are its limits. Concluding, then, that specific rules respecting the extent of civil obedience are not to be found in Script- ure, we are brought to the position, that we must ascertain this extent by the general duties which Christianity imposes upon mankind, and by the general principles of political truth. In attempting, upon these grounds, to illustrate our civil duties, I am solic- itous to remark that the individual Christian who, regarding himself as a journey er to a better country, thinks it best for him not to intermeddle in political affairs, may rightly pursue a path of simpler submission and acquiescence than that which I believe Christianity allows. Whatever may be the peculiar business of individuals, the business of man is to act as the Christian citizen — not merely to prepare himself for another world, but to do such good as he may, CHAP. III.] CIVII, OBEDIENCE. 331 political as well as social, in the present. And yet so fundamentally, so utterly incongruous with Chris- tian rectitude, is the state of many branches of political affairs in the present day, that I know not whether he who is solicitous to adhere to this rectitude is not both wise and right in standing aloof. This consideration applies, especially, to circumstances in which the limits of civil obedience are brought into practical illustrations. The tumult and violence which ordinarily attend any approach to political revolutions are such, that the best and proper office of a good man may be rather that of a moderator of both parties than of a partisan with either. — Nevertheless, it is fit that the obligations of civil obedience should be dis- tinctly understood. Referring, then, to political truth, it is to be remem- bered that governors are established, not for their own advantage but for the people's. If they so far disre- gard this object of their establishment, as greatly to sacrifice the public welfare, the people (and conse- quently individuals) may rightly consider whether a change of governors is not dictated by utility ; and if it is, they may rightly endeavor to effect such a change by recommending it to the public, and by transferring their obedience to those who, there is reason to believe, will better execute the offices for which government is instituted. I perceive nothing unchristian in this. A man who lived in 1688, and was convinced that it was for the general good that William should be placed on the throne instead of James, was at liberty to promote, by all Christian means, the accession of William, and consequently to withdraw his own, and to recommend others to withdraw their obedience, from James. The support of the bill of exclusion in Charles the Second's reign, was nearly allied to a withdrawing of civil obedience. The Christian of that day who was 33 2 CIVII. OBEDIENCE. [ESSAY III. persuaded that the bill would tend to the public welfare, was right in supporting it, and he would have been equally right in continuing his support if Charles had suddenly died, and his brother had suddenly stepped into the throne. If I had lived in America fifty years ago, and had thought the disobedience of the colonies wrong, and that the whole empire would be injured by their separation from England, I should have thought myself at liberty to urge these considerations upon other men, and otherwise to exert myself (always within the limits of Christian conduct) to support the British cause. I might, indeed, have thought that there was so much violence and wickedness on both sides, that the Christian could take part with neither : but this is an accidental connection, and in no degree affects the principle itself. But when the colonies were actually separated from Britain, and it was manifestly the general will to be independent, I should have readily transferred my obedience to the United States, convinced that the new government was preferred by the people ; that, therefore, it was the rightful govern- ment ; and, being such, that it was my Christian duty to obey it. Now the lawful means of discouraging or promoting an alteration of a government, must be determined by the general duties of Christian morality. There is, as we have seen, nothing in political affairs which conveys a privilege to throw off the Christian character ; and whatever species of opposition or support involves a sacrifice or suspension of this character is, for that reason, wrong. Clamorous and vehement debatings and harangues — vituperation and calumny — acts of bloodshed and violence, or instigations to such acts, are, I think, measures in which the first teachers of Christianity would not have participated ; measures which would have violated their own precepts ; and CHAP. III.] CIVII, OBEDIENCE. 333 measures, therefore, which a Christian is not at liberty to pursue. Objections to these sentiments will no doubt be at hand : we shall be told that such opposition would be ineffectual against the encroachments of power and the armies of tyranny — that it would be to no pur- pose to reason with a general who had orders to enforce obedience ; and that the nature of the power to be overcome, dictated the necessity of corresponding power to overcome it. To all which it is, in the first place, a sufficient answer, that the question is not what evils may ensue from an adherence to Christianity, but what Christianity requires. We renew the oft-repeated truth, that Christian rectitude is paramount. When the first Christians refused obedience to some of the existing authorities — they did not resist. They exem- plified their own .precepts — to prefer the will of God before all ; and if this preference subjected them to evils — to bear them without violating other portions of His will in order to ward them off. But if resistance to the civil power was thus unlawful when the magis- trate commanded actions that were morally wrong, much more clearly is it unlawful, when the wrongness consists only in political grievances. The inconven- iences of bad governments cannot constitute a superior reason for violence, to that which is constituted by the imposition of laws that are contrary to the laws of God. And if any one should insist upon the magnitude of political grievances, the answer is at hand — these evils cannot cost more to the community as a state, than the other class of evils costs to the individual as a man. If fidelity is required in private life, through what- ever consequences, it is required also in public. The national suffering can never be so great as the individ- ual may be. The individual may lose his life for his fidelity, but there is no such thing as a national martyr- dom. Besides it is by on means certain that Christian 334 ClVIly obedience. t ESSAY ***• opposition to tnisgovernment would be so ineffectual as is supposed. Nothing is so invincible as determin- ate non-compliance. He that resists by force, may be overcome by greater force ; but nothing can overcome a calm and fixed determination not to obey. Violence might, no doubt, slaughter those who practised it, but it were an unusual ferocity to destroy such persons in cool malignity. In such enquiries we forget how much difficulty we entail upon ourselves. A regiment which, after endeavoring to the uttermost to destroy its ene- mies, refuses to yield, is in circumstances totally dis- similar to that which our reasonings suppose. Such a regiment might be cut to pieces ; but it would be, I believe, a "new thing under the sun," to go on slaughtering a people, of whom it was known not only that they had committed no violence, but that they would commit none. Refer again to America : The Americans thought that it was best for the general welfare that they should be independent, but England persisted in imposing the tax. Imagine, then, America to have acted upon Christian principles, and to have refused to pay it, but without those acts of exasperation and violence which they committed. England might have sent a fleet and an army. To what purpose? Still no one paid the tax. The soldiery perhaps sometimes committed out- rages, and they seized goods instead of the impost : still the tax could not be collected, except by a system of universal distraint. — Does any man who employs his reason, believe that England would have overcome such a people? does he believe that any government, or any army would have gone on destroying them ? especially does he believe this, if the Americans con- tinually reasoned coolly and honorably with the other party, and manifested, by the unequivocal language of conduct, that they were actuated by reason and by CHAP. III.] CIVII, OBEDIENCE. 335 Christian rectitude ? No nation exists which would go on slaughtering such a people. It is not in human nature to do such things ; and I am persuaded not only that American independence would have been se- cured, but that very far fewer of the Americans would have been destroyed : that very much less of devasta- tion and misery would have been occasioned if they had acted upon these principles instead of upon the vulgar system of exasperation and violence. In a word, they would have attained the same advantage with more virtue, and at less cost. — With respect to those voluble reasoners who tell us of meanness of spirit, of pusillanimous submission, of base crouching before tyranny, and the like, it may be observed that they do not know what mental greatness is. Courage is not indicated most unequivocally by wearing swords, or by wielding them. Many who have courage enough to take up arms against a bad government, have not courage enough to resist it by the unbending firmness of the mind — to maintain a tranquil fidelity to virtue in opposition to power ; or to endure with serenity the consequences which may follow. The Reformation prospered more by the resolute non- compliance of its supporters, than if all of them had provided themselves with swords and pistols. The most severely persecuted body of Christians which this country has in later ages seen, was a body who never raised the arm of resistance. They wore out that iron rod of oppression which the attrition of violence might have whetted into a weapon that would have cut them off from the earth, and they now reap the fair fruit of their principles in the enjoyment of privileges from which others are still debarred. There is one class of cases in which obedience is to be refused to the civil power without any view to an alteration of existing institutions — that is, when the 336 CIVII, OBEDIENCE. [ESSAY ill. magistrate commands that which it would be immoral to obey. What is wrong for the Christian is wrong for the subject. "All human authority ceases at the point where obedience becomes criminal." Of 'this point of criminality every man must judge ultimately for himself ; for the opinion of another ought not to make him obey when he thinks it is criminal, nor to refuse obedience when he thinks it is lawful. Some even appear to think that the nature of actions is altered by the command of the state ; that what would be unlaw- ful without its command is lawful with it. This notion is founded upon indistinct views of the extent of civil authority ; for this authority can never be so great as that of the Deity, and it is the Deity who requires us not to do evil. The Protestant would not think him- self obliged to obey if the state should require him to acknowledge the authority of the Pope ; and why ? Because he thinks it would be inconsistent with the Divine will ; and this precisely is the reason why he should refuse obedience in other cases. He cannot rationally make distinctions, and say, " I ought to re- fuse obedience in acknowledging the Pope, but I ought to obey in becoming the agent of injustice or oppres- sion." If I had been a Frenchman, and had been ordered, probably at the instigation of some courtezan, to immure a man, whom I knew to be innocent, in the Bastile, I should have refused ; for it never can be right to be the active agent of such iniquity. Under an enlightened and lenient government like our own, the cases are not numerous in which the Christian is exempted from the obligation to obedience. When, a century or two ago, persecuting acts were passed against some Christian communities, the mem- bers of these communities were not merely at liberty, they were required to disobey them. One act imposed a fine of twenty pounds a month for absenting one's CHAP. III.] CIVII, OBEDIENCE. 337 self from a prescribed form of worship. He who thought that form less acceptable to the Supreme Being than another, ought to absent himself notwith- standing the law. So, when in the present day, a Christian thinks the profession of arms, or the payment of preachers whom he disapproves, is wrong, he ought, notwithstanding any laws, to decline to pay the money or to bear the arms. Illegal commands do not appear to carry any obliga- tion to obedience. Thus, when the Apostles had been "beaten openly and uncondemned, being Romans," the} 7 did not regard the directions of the magistracy to leave the prison, but asserted their right to legal jus- tice, by making the magistrates ' ' come themselves and fetch them out." When Charles I, made his demands of supplies upon his own illegal authority, I should have thought myself at liberty to refuse to pay them. This were not a disobedience to government. Govern- ment w r as broken. One of its constituent parts refused to impose the- tax, and one imposed it. I might, indeed, have held myself in doubt whether Charles con- stituted the government or not. If the people had thought it best to choose him alone for their ruler, he constituted the government, and his demand would have been legal ; for a law is but the voice of that govern- ing power whom the people prefer. As it was, the people did not choose such a government ; the demand was illegal, and might therefore be refused. . 33 8 CIVII, OBEDIENCE. [ESSAY III. CHAPTER IV. POLITICAL INFLUENCE. Effects of influence — Incongruity of public notions — Patronage — Dependency on the mother country. The system of governing by influence appears to be a substitute for the government of force — an interme- diate step between awing by the sword and directing by reason and virtue. When the general character of political measures is such, that reason and virtue do not sufficiently support them to recommend them, on their own merits, to the public approbation — these measures must be rejected, or they must be supported by foreign means ; and when, by the political institutions of a people, force is necessarily excluded, nothing remains but to have recourse to some species of influ- ence. There is another ground upon which influence becomes, in a certain sense, necessary — which is, that there is so much imperfection of virtue in the majority of legislators — they are so much guided by interested or ambitious or party motives, that for a measure to be recommended by its own excellence, is sometimes not sufficient to procure their concurrence ; and thus it happens that influence is resorted to, not merely be- cause public measures are deficient in purity, but because there is a deficiency of uprightness in public men. The degree of this influence, which may be required to give stability to an executive body, (and therefore to a constitution,) will vary with the character of its own policy. The more widely that policy deviates from rectitude, the greater will be the demand for influence to induce concurrence in its measures. The degree of influence that is actually exerted by a government, is therefore no despicable criterion of the excellence of its practice. CHAP. IV.] CIVII, OBEDIENCE. 339 But let it be constantly borne in mind, that when we thus speak of the ' ' necessity ' ' for influence to support governments, we speak only of governments as they are, and of nations as they are. There is no necessity for influence to support good government over a good people. All influence but that which addresses itself to the judgment, is wrong — wrong in morals, and therefore indefensible upon whatever plea. 4 - All influence but that which addresses itself to the judgment, is wrong. ' ' Of the moral offence which this influence implies, many are guilty who oppose govern- ments, as well as those who support them, or as govern- ments themselves. It is evidently not a whit more virtuous to exert influence in opposing governments than in sup- porting them : nor, indeed, is it so virtuous. To what is a man influenced ? Obviously, to do that which, without the influence, he would not do ;— that is to say, he is induced to violate his judgment at the request or at the will of other men. It can need no argument to show that this is vicious. In truth, it is vicious in a very high degree ; for to conform our conduct to our ow?i sober judgment, is one of the first dictates of the moral law : and the viciousness is so much the greater, because the express purpose for which a man is appointed to legislate, is that the community may have the benefit of his unin- fluenced judgment. Breach of trust is added to the sacrifice of individual integrity. A nation can gain nothing by the knowledge or experience of a million of " influenced " legislators. It is curious, that the sub- mission to influence which men often practise as legis- lators, they would abhor as judges. What should we say of a judge or a juryman who accepted a place or a promise as a bribe for an unjust sentence? We should prosecute the juryman and address the parliament for a removal of the judge. Is it then of so much less con- sequence in what manner affairs of state are conducted 340 CIVIIy OBEDIENCE. [ESSAY III. than the affairs of individuals, that that which would be disgraceful in one case, is reputable in another? No account can be given of this strange in- congruity of public notions, than that custom has in one case blinded our eyes, and in the other has taught us to see. Let the legislator who would abhor to ac- cept a purse to bribe him to write ignoramus upon a true bill, apply the principle upon which his abhor- rence is founded to his political conduct. When our moral principles are consistent these incongruities will cease. When uniform truth takes the place of vulgar practice and opinion, these incongruities will become wonderful for their absurdity ; and men will scarcely believe that their fathers, who could see so clearly, saw so ill. The same sort of stigma which now attaches to Lord Bacon, will attach to multitudes who pass for honorable persons in the present day. A man may lawfully, no doubt, take a more active part in political measures, in compliance with the wishes of another, than he might otherwise incline to do ; but to support the measures of an opposition or an administration, because they are their measures, can never be lawful. — Nor can it ever be lawful to magnify the advantages or to expatiate upon the mischiefs of a measure, beyond his secret estimate of its demerits or its merits. That legislator is viciously influenced, who says or who does any thing which he would think it not proper to say or do if he were an independent man. But it will be said, Since influence is inseparable from the possession of patronage, and since patronage must be vested somewhere, what is to be done ? or how are the evils of influence to be done away ? — a question which, like many other questions in political morality, is attended with accidental rather than essential diffi- culties. Patronage, in a virtuous state of mankind, CHAP. IV. J CIVII, OBEDIENCE. 341 would be small. There would be none in the church and little in the state. Men would take the over-sight of the Christian flock, not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind. If the ready mind existed, the influence of patronage would be needless : and, as a needless thing, it would be done away. And as to the state, when we consider how much of patronage in all nations results from the vicious condition of mankind — especially for military and naval appointments — it will appear that much of this class of patronage is ac- cidental also. Take away that wickedness and violence in which hostile measures originate, and fleets and armies would no longer be needed ; and with their dis- solution there would be a prodigious diminution of patronage and of influence. So, if we continue the enquiry, how far any given source of influence arising from patronage is necessary to the institution of civil government, we shall find, at last, that the necessary portion is very small. We are little accustomed to consider how simple a thing civil government is — nor what an unnumbered multiplicity of offices and sources of patronage would be cut off, if it existed in its simple and rightful state. 342 MORAE LEGISLATION. [ESSAY III. CHAPTER V. MORAL- LEGISLATION. Duties of a Ruler — The two objects of moral legislation — Edu- cation of the People — Abrogation of bad laws. If a person who considered the general objects of the institution of civil government, were to look over the titles of the acts of a legislature during fifteen or twenty years, he would probably be surprised to find the pro- portion so small of those of which it was the express object to benefit the moral character of the people. He would find many laws that respected foreign policy, many perhaps that referred to internal political economy, many for the punishment of crime — but few that tended positively to promote the general happiness by increasing the general virtue. This, I say, may be a reasonable subject of surprise, when it is considered that the attainment of this happiness is the original and proper object of all government. There is a general want of advertence to this object, arising in part, perhaps, from the insufficient degree of conviction that virtue is the best promoter of the general weal. To prevent an evil is always better than to repair it : for which reason, if it be in the power of the legislator to diminish temptation or its influence, he will find that this is the most efficacious means of diminishing the offences and of increasing the happiness of a people. He who vigilantly detects and punishes vicious men, does well ; but he who prevents them from becoming vicious, does better. It is better, both for a sufferer, for a culprit, and for the community, that a man's purse should remain in his pocket, than that, when it it is taken away, the thief should be sure of a prison. So far as is practicable, a government ought to be to a people, what a judicious parent is to a family— not CHAP. V.] MORAI, I^GlSIyATlON. 343 merely the ruler, but the instructor and the guide. It is not perhaps so much in the power of a government to form the character of a people to virtue or to vice, as it is in the power of a parent to form that of his children. But much can be done if every thing cannot be : and indeed when we take into account the relative duration of the political body as compared with that of a family, we may have reason to doubt whether govern- ments cannot effect as much in ages as parents can do in years. Now, a judicious father adopts a system of moral culture as well as of restraint : he does not merely lop the vagrant branches of his intellectual plant, but he trains and directs them in their proper course. The second object is to punish vice — the first to promote virtue. You may punish vice without securing virtue ; but, if you secure virtue, the whole work is done. Yet this primary object of moral legislation is that to which, comparatively, little attention is paid. Penal- ties are multiplied upon the doers of evil, but little endeavor is used to prevent the commission of evil by inducing principles and habits which overpower the tendency to the commission. In this respect, we begin to legislate at the secondary part of our office rather than at the first. We are political surgeons, who cut out the tumors in the state, rather than the prescribers of that wholesome regimen by which the diseases in the political body are prevented. But here arises a difficulty — How shall that political parent teach virtue which is not virtuous itself ? The governments of most nations, however they may incul- cate virtue in their enactments, preach it very imper- fectly by their example. — What then is to be done? 1 ' Make the tree good. ' ' The first step in moral legis- lation is to rectify the legislator. It holds of nations as of men, that the beam should be first removed out of our own eye. Laws, in their insulated character, will 344 MORAI, LEGISLATION. [ESSAY III. be but partially effectual, whilst the practical example of a government is bad. To this consideration sufficient attention is not ordinarily paid. We do not adequately estimate the influence of a government's example upon the public character. Government is an object to which we look up as to our superior ; and the many interests which prompt men to assimilate themselves to the character of the government, added to the natural tendency of subordinate parts to copy the example of the superior, occasions the character of a government, independently of its particular measures, to be of im- mense influence upon the general virtue. Illustrations abound. If, in any instance, political subserviency is found to be a more efficient recommendation than integrity of character, it is easy to perceive that sub- serviency is practically inculcated, and that integrity is practically discouraged. Amongst that portion, then, of a legislator's office which consists in endeavoring the moral amelioration of a people, the amendment of political institutions is conspicuous. In proportion to the greatness of the in- fluence of governments, is the obligation to direct that influence in favor of virtue. A government of which the principles and practice were accordant with recti- tude, would very powerfully affect the general morals. He, therefore, who explodes one vicious principle, or who amends one corrupt practice, is to be regarded as amongst the most useful and honorable of public men. If, however, in any state there are difficulties, at present insurmountable, in the way of improving political institutions, still let us do what we can. Pre- cept without example may do some good : nor are we to forget, that if the public virtue is increased by whatever means, it will react upon the governing power. A good people will not long tolerate a bad government. CHAP. V.] MORAL LEGISLATION. 345 Amongst the most obvious means of rectifying the general morals by positive measures, one is the encourag- ing a judicious education of the people. Upon this judiciousness almost all its success depends. But you say, All this will add to the national bur- dens. We need not be very jealous on this head, whilst we are so little jealous of more money worse spent. Is it known, or is it considered, that the ex- pense of an ordinary campaign would endow a school in every parish in England and Ireland for ever f Yet how coolly (who will contradict me if I say — how needlessly?) we devote money to conduct a campaign ! — Prevent, by a just and conciliating policy, one single war, and the money thus saved would provide, perpet- ually, a competent mental and moral education for every individual who needs it in the three kingdoms. Let a man for a moment indulge his imagination — let him rather indulge his reason, in supposing that one of our wars during the last century had been avoided, and that, fifty years ago, such an education had been provided. Of what comparative importance is the war to us now ? In the one case, the money has provided the historian with materials to fill his pages with armaments, and victories, and defeats : — it has en- abled us To point a moral or adorn a tale ; — in the other, it would have effected, and would be now effecting, and would be destined for ages to effect, a great amount of solid good ; a great increase of the virtue, the order, and the happiness of the people. 346 OF THE PROPER ENDS OP PUNISHMENT. [ESSAY III. CHAPTER VI. OF THE PROPER ENDS OF PUNISHMENT. The Three Objects of Punishment : — Reformation of the Offen- der : — Example : — Restitution — Punishment may be increased as well as diminished. Why is a man who commits an offence punished for the act ? Is it for his own advantage, or for that of others, or for both? — For both, and primarily for his own : * which answer will perhaps the more readily recommend itself, if it can be shown that the good of others, that is, of the public, is best consulted by those systems of punishment which are most effectual in benefiting the offender himself. When we recur to the precepts and the spirit of Christianity, we find that the one great pervading prin- ciple by which it requires us to regulate our conduct towards others, is that of operative, practical good-will — that good-will which, if they be in suffering, will prompt us to alleviate the misery ; if they be vicious, will prompt us to reclaim them from vice. That the misconduct of the individual exempts us from the obligation to regard this rule, it would be futile to imagine. It is by him that the exercise of benevo- lence is peculiarly needed. He is the morally sick, who needs the physician ; and such a physician he, who by comparison is morally whole, should be. If we adopt the spirit of the declaration, " I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance, ' ' we shall entertain no doubt that the reformation of offenders is the primary business of the Christian in devising * ' ' The end of all correction is either the amendment of wicked men or to prevent the influence of ill example." This is the rule of Seneca ; and by mentioning amendment first, he appears to have regarded it as the primary object. CHAP. VI.] OF THE PROPER ENDS OF PUNISHMENT. 347 punishments. There appears no reason why, in the case of public criminals, the spirit of the rule should not be acted upon — ' ' If a brother be overtaken in a fault restore such an one. ' ' Amongst the Corinthians there was an individual who had committed a gross offence, such as is now punished by the law of England. Of this criminal Paul speaks in strong terms of repro- bation in the first epistle. The effect proved to be good ; and the offender having apparently become re- formed, the Corinthians were directed in the second epistle, to forgive and to comfort him. When therefore a person has committed a crime, the great duty of those who in common with himself are candidates for the mercy of God, is to endeavor to meliorate and rectify the dispositions in which his crime originates ; to subdue the vehemence of his pas- sions — to raise up in his mind a power that may coun- teract the power of future temptation. We should feel towards these mentally diseased, as we feel towards the physical sufferer — compassion ; and the great object should be to cure the disease. No doubt, in endeavor- ing this object, severe remedies must often be em- ployed. It is just what we should expect ; and the remedies will probably be severe in proportion to the inveteracy and malignity of the complaint. But still the end should never be forgotten, and I think a just estimate of our moral obligations, will lead us to re- gard the attainment of that end as paramount to every other. There is one great practical advantage in directing the attention especially to this moral cure, which is this, that if it be successful, it prevents the offender from offending again. It is well known that the pro- portion of those who, having once suffered the stated punishment, again transgress the laws and are again 348 OF THE PROPER ENDS OF PUNISHMENT. [ESSAY III. convicted, is great. But to whatever extent reformation was attained, this unhappy result would be prevented. The second object of punishment, that of example, appears to be recognised as right by Christianity, when it says that the magistrate is a ' ' terror ' ' to bad men ; and when it admonishes such to be ' ' afraid ' ' of his power. There can be no reason for speaking of pun- ishment as a terror, unless it were right to adopt such punishments as would deter. In the private discipline of the church the same idea is kept in view : — "Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear."* The parallel of physical disease may also still hold. The offender is a member of the social body ; and the physi- cian who endeavors to remove a local disease, always acts with a reference to the health of the system. In stating reformation as the first object, we also conclude, that if, in any case, the attainment of reforma- tion and the exhibition of example should be found to be incompatible, the former is to be preferred. I say if; for it is by no means certain that such cases will ever arise. The measures which are necessary to reformation must operate as example ; and in general, since the reformation of the more hardened offenders is not to be expected, except by severe measures, the influence of terror in endeavoring reformation will increase with the malignity of the crime. This is just what we need and what the penal legislator is so solici- tous to secure. The point for the exercise of wisdom is, to attain the second object in attaining the first. A primary regard to the first object is compatible with many modifications of punishment, in order more effect- ually to attain the second. If there are two measures, of which both tend alike to reformation, and one tends most to operate as example, that one should unques- tionably be preferred. * i Tim. v. 20. CHAP. VI.] OF THE PROPER ENDS OF PUNISHMENT. 349 There is a third object which, though subordinate to the others, might perhaps still obtain greater notice from the legislator than it is wont to do — restitution or compensation.* Since what are called criminal actions are commonly injuries committed by one man upon another, it appears to be a very obvious dictate of reason that the injury should be repaired ; — that he from whom the thief steals a purse should regain its value ; that he who is injured in his person or otherwise, should receive such compensation as he may. When my house is broken into and a hundred pounds' worth of property is carried off, it is but an imperfect satisfac- tion to me that the robber will be punished. I ought to recover the value of my property. The magistrate, in taking care of the general, should take care of the individual weal. The laws of England do now award compensation in damages for some injuries. This is a recognition of the principle ; although it is remarkable, not only that the number of offences which .are thus punished is small , but that they are frequently of a sort in which pecuniary loss has not been sustained by the injured party. I do not imagine that in the present state of penal law, or of the administration of justice, a general regard to compensation is practical ;>le, but this does not pro\^ that it ought not to be regarded. If in an im- proved state of penal affairs, it should be found practi- cable to oblige offenders to recompense by their labor those who had suffered by their crime, this advantage would attend, that while it would probably involve considerable punishment, it would approve itself to the offender's mind as the demand of reason and of justice. * " The law of nature commands that reparation be made." Mor. and Pol. Phil. b. 6, c. 8. And this dictate of nature appears to have been recognized in the Mosaic law, in which compensation to the suffering party is expressly required. 350 OF THE PROPER ENDS OE PUNISHMENT. [ESSAY III. This is no trifling consideration ; for in every species of coercion and punishment, public or domestic, it is of consequence that the punished party should feel the justice and propriety of the measures which are adopted. Respecting the relative utility of different modes of punishment and of prison discipline, we have little to say, partly because the practical recognition of refor- mation as a primary object affords good security for the adoption of judicious measures, and partly because these topics have already obtained much of the public attention. One suggestion may, however, be made, that as good consequences have followed from making a prisoner's confinement depend for its duration on his conduct, so that if it be exemplary the period is dimin- ished, there appears no sufficient reason why the par- allel system should not be adopted of increasing the original sentence if his conduct continue vicious. There is no breach of reason or of justice in this. For the reasonable object of punishment is to attain certain ends, and if, by the original sentence, it is found that these ends are not attained, reason appears to dictate that stronger motives should be employed. — It cannot surely be less reasonable to add to a culprit's penalty if his conduct be bad, than to deduct from it if it be good- For a sentence should not be considered as a propitia- tion of the law, nor when it is inflicted should it be considered, as of necessity, that all is done. The sen- tence which the law pronounces is a general rule — good perhaps as a general rule, but sometimes inade- quate to its end. And the utility of retaining the power of adding to a penalty is the same in kind, and proba- bly greater in degree, than the power of diminishing it. In one case the culprit is influenced by hope, and in the other by fear. Fear is the more powerful agent CHAP. VII.] PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. 35 1 upon some men's minds, and hope upon others. And as to the justice of such an institution , it appears easily to be vindicated; for what is the standard of justice? The sentence of the law ? No ; for if it were, it would be unjust to abate of it as well as to add. Is it the original crime of the offender ? No ; for if it were, the same crime, by whatever variety of conduct it was afterwards followed, must always receive an equal pen- alty. The standard of justice is to be estimated by the ends for which punishments are inflicted. Now, although it would be too much to affirm that any penalty, or duration of penalty, would be just until these ends were attained, yet surely it is not unjust to endeavor their attainment by some additions to an origi- nal penalty when they cannot be attained without. CHAPTER VII. PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. Of the three objects of punishment, the punishment of death regards but one — Reformation of minor offenders : Greater criminals neglected — Capital punishments not efficient as examples — Public executions — Paul — Grotius — Murder — The punishment of death irrevocable — Rousseau — Recapitulation. I SELECT for observation this peculiar mode of pun- ishment on account of its peculiar importance. And here we are impressed at the outset with the consideration, that of the three great objects which have just been proposed as the proper ends of punish- ment, the punishment of death regards but one ; and that one not the first and the greatest. The only end which is consulted in taking the life of an offender, is that of example to other men. His own reformation 352 PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. [ESSAY III. is put almost out of the question. Now if the prin- ciples delivered in the preceding chapter be sound, they present at once an almost insuperable objection to the punishment of death. If reformation be the primary object, and if the punishment of death pre- cludes attention to that object, the punishment of death is wrong. To take the life of a fellow -creature is to exert the utmost possible power which man can possess over man. It is to perform an action the most serious and awful which a human being can perform. Respecting such an action, then, can any truth be more manifest than that the dictates of Christianity ought, especially to be taken into account ? If these dictates are rightly urged upon us in the minor concerns of life, can any man doubt whether they ought to influence us in the greatest? Yet what is the fact? Why, that in de- fending capital punishments, these dictates are almost placed out of the question. We hear a great deal about security of property and life, a great deal about the necessity of making examples ; but almost nothing about the moral law. It might be imagined that upon this subject our religion imposed no obligations ; for nearly every argument that is urged in favor of capital punishments would be as valid and as appropriate in the mouth of a pagan as in our own. Can this be right? Is it conceivable that, in the exercise of the most tremendous agency which is in the power of man, it can be right to exclude all reference to the expressed will of God ? I acknowledge that this exclusion of the Christian law from the defences of the punishment, is to me almost a conclusive argument that the punishment is wrong. Nothing that is right can need such an ex- clusion ; and we should not practise it if it were not for a secret perception, that to apply the pure requisitions CHAP. VII.] PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. 353 of Christianity would not serve the purpose of the ad- vocate. Look for a moment upon the capital offender and upon ourselves. He, a depraved and deep violator of the law of God — one who is obnoxious to the ven- geance of heaven — one, however, whom Christ came peculiarly to call to repentance and to save — Ourselves, his brethren — brethren by the relationship of nature — brethren in some degree in offences against God — brethren especially in the trembling hope of a common salvation. How ought beings so situated to act towards one another ? Ought we to kill or to amend him ? Ought we, so far as is in our power, to cut off his future hope, or, so far as is in our power, to strengthen the foundation of that hope ? Is it the reasonable or de- cent office of one candidate for the mercy of God to hang his fellow-candidate upon a gibbet ? I am serious, though men of levity may laugh. If such men reject Christianity, I do not address them. If they admit its truth, let them manfully show that its principles should not thus be applied. No one disputes that the reformation of offenders is desirable, though some may not allow it to be the primary object. For the purposes of reformation we have recourse to constant oversight — to classification of offenders — to regular labor — to religious instruction. For whom ? For minor criminals. Do not the greater criminals need reformation too ? If all these endeavors are necessary to effect the amendment of the less de- praved, are they not necessary to effect the amendment of the more? But we stop just where our exertions are most needed ; as if the reformation of a bad man was of the less consequence as the intensity of his wickedness became greater. If prison discipline and a penitentiary be needful for sharpers and pickpockets, surely they are necessary for murderers and highway- men. Yet we reform the one and hang the other ! 354 PUNISHMENT OE DEATH. [ESSAY III Since, then, so much is sacrificed to extend the terror of example, we ought to be indisputably certain that the terror of capital punishment is greater than that of all others. We ought not certainly to sacrifice the requisitions of the Christian law unless we know that a regard to them would be attended with public evil.* Do we know this ? Are we indisputably certain that capital punishments are more efficient as examples than any others ? We are not. We do not know from experience, and we cannot know without it. —In Eng- land the experiment has not been made. The punish- ment therefore is wrong in us, whatever it might be in a more experienced people. For it is wrong unless it can be shown to be right. It is not a neutral affair. If it is not indispensably necessary, it is unwarrantable. And since we do not know that it is indispensable, it is, so far as we are concerned, unwarrantable. And with respect to the experience of other nations, who will affirm that crimes have been increased in con- sequence of the diminished frequency of executions ? Who will affirm that the laws and punishments of America are not as effectual as our own ? Yet they have abolished capital punishment for all private crimes except murder of the first degree. Where, then, is our pretension to a justification of our own practice ? It is a satisfaction that so many facts and arguments are before the public which show the inefficacy of the punishment of death in this country ; and this is one reason why they are not introduced here. \ ' There are no practical despisers of death like those who touch, and taste, and handle death daily, by daily committing capital offences. They make a jest of death in all its forms ; and all its terrors are in their * We ought not for any reason to do this ; but I speak in the present paragraph of the pretensions of expediency. CHAP. VII.] PUNISHMKNT OF DEATH. 355 mouths a scorn."* " Profligate criminals, such as common thieves and highwaymen," ''have always been accustomed to look upon the gibbet as a lot very likely to fall to them. When it does fall to them therefore, they consider themselves only as not quite so lucky as some of their companions, and submit to their fortune without any other uneasiness than what may arise from the fear of death — a fear which even, by such worthless wretches, we frequently see can be so easily and so very completely conquered." A man some time ago was executed for uttering forged bank- notes, and the body was delivered to his friends. What was the effect of the example upon them ? Why, with the corpse lying on a bed before them, they were them- selves seized in the act of again uttering forged bank- notes. The testimony upon a subject like this, of a person who has had probably greater and better op- portunities of ascertaining the practical efficiency of punishments than any other individual in Europe, is of great importance. " Capital convicts," says Elizabeth Fry, "pacify their conscience with the dangerous and most fallacious notion, that the violent death which awaits them will serve as a full atonement for all their sins." f It is their passport to felicity — the purchase- money of heaven ! Of this deplorable notion the effect is doubly bad. First, it makes them comparatively little afraid of death, because they necessarily regard it as so much less an evil ; and, secondly, it encourages them to go on in the commission of crimes, because they imagine that the number or enormity of them, how- ever great, will not preclude them from admission into heaven. Of both these mischiefs, the punishment of death is the immediate source. Substitute another punishment, and they will not think that that is an * Irving's Orations, t Observations on the visiting, &c., of Female Prisoners, p. 73. 356 PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. [ESSAY III. " atonement for their sins," and will not receive their present encouragement to continue their crimes. But with respect to example, this unexceptionable authority speaks in decided language. ' ' The terror of example is very generally rendered abortive by the predestinarian notion, vulgarly prevalent among thieves, that ' if they are to be hanged they are to be hanged, and noth- ing can prevent it/"* It may be said that the same notion might be attached to any other punishment, and that thus that other would become abortive ; but there is little reason to expect this, at least in the same de- gree. The notion is now connected expressly with hanging, and it is not probable that the same notion would ever be transferred with equal power to another penalty. Where then is the overwhelming evidence of utility, which alone, even in the estimate of ex- pediency, can justify the punishment of death? It cannot be adduced ; it does not exist. But if capital punishments do little good, they do much harm. "The frequent public destruction of life has a fearfully hardening effect upon those whom it is intended to intimidate. While it excites in them the spirit of revenge, it seldom fails to lower their esti- mate of the life of man, and renders them less afraid of taking it away in their turn by acts of personal vio- lence, "f This is just what a consideration of the principles of the human mind would teach us to expect. To familiarize men with the destruction of life, is to teach them not to abhor that destruction. It is the legitimate process of the mind in other things. He who blushes and trembles the first time he utters a lie, learns by repetition to do it with callous indifference. Now you execute a man in order to do good by the spec- tacle — while the practical consequence, it appears, is, * Observations on the visiting, &c, of Female Prisoners, p. 73. t Ibid. CHAP. VII.] PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. 357 that bad men turn away from the spectacle more pre- pared to commit violence than before. It will be said, that this effect is produced only upon those who are already profligate, and that a salutary example is held out to the public. But the answer is at hand — The public do not usually begin with capital crimes. These are committed after the person has become depraved — that is, after he has arrived at that state in which an execution will harden rather than deter him. We " lower their estimate of the life of man." It cannot be doubted. It is the inevitable tendency of executions. There is much of justice in an observation of Beccaria's. "Is it not absurd that the laws which detect and punish homicide should, in order to prevent murder, publicly commit murder themselves?"* By the pro- cedures of a court, we virtually and perhaps literally expatiate upon the sacredness of human life, upon the dreadful guilt of taking it away — and then forthwith take it away ourselves ! It is no subject of wonder that this "lowers the estimate of the life of man." The next sentence of the writer upon whose testimony I offer these comments, is of tremendous import : — 1 • There is much reason to believe that our public exe- cutions have had a direct and positive tendency to pro- mote both murder and suicide. " " Why, if a consider- able time elapse between the trial and the execution, do we find the severity of the public changed into com- passion ? For the same reason that a master, if he do not beat his slave in the moment of resentment, often feels a repugnance to the beating him at all."f This is remarkable. If executions were put off for a twelve- month, I doubt whether the public would bear them. But why if they were just and right ? Respecting " the contempt and indignation with which every one looks on * Essay on Capital Punishments ; c. 28. t Godwin : Enq. Pol. Just. v. 2, p. 726. 358 PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. [ESSAY III. an executioner, ' ' Beccaria says the reason is, ■ ' that in a secret corner of the mind, in which the original impres- sions of nature are still preserved, men discover a senti- ment which tells them that their lives are not lawfully in the power of any one. ' ' * Let him who has the power of influencing the legislature of the country or public opinion, (and who has not ?) consider the responsibility which this declaration implies, if he lifts his voice for the punishment of death ! But further : the execution of one offender excites in others " the spirit of revenge." This is extremely natural. Many a soldier, I dare say, has felt impelled to revenge the death of his comrades ; and the member of a gang of thieves, who has fewer restraints of prin- ciple, is likely to feel it too. But upon whom is his revenge inflicted ? Upon the legislature, or the jury, or the witnesses ? No, but upon the public or upon the first person whose life is in their power, and which they are prompted to take away. You execute a man, then, in order to save the lives of others ; and the effect is, v that you add new inducements to take the lives of others away. Of a system which is thus unsound — unsound because it rejects some of the plainest dictates of the moral law — and unsound because so many of its effects are bad, I should be ready to conclude, with no other evidence, that it was utterly inexpedient and impolitic — that as it was bad in morals, it was bad in policy. And such appears to be the fact. — " It is incontrovertibly proved that punishments of a milder and less injurious nature are calculated to produce, for every good purpose, afar more powerful effect.' \\ Finally. — "The best of substitutes for capital pun- ishment will be found in that judicious management of * Beccaria : Essay on Capital Punishments, chap. 28. | Observations on the visiting, &c, of Female Prisoners, p. 75 CHAP. VII.] PUNISHMENT OE DEATH. 359 criminals in prison which it is the object of the present tract to recommend ;"* which management is Christia?i management — a system in which reformation is made the first object, but in which it is found that in order to effect reformation severity to hardened offenders is needful. Thus then we arrive at the goal : — we begin with urging the system that Christianity dictates as right ; we conclude by discovering that, as it is the right system, so it is practically the best. But an argument in favor of capital punishments has been raised from the Christian Scriptures themselves. — "If I be an offender, or have committed anything worthy of death, I refuse not to die. "f This is the language of an innocent person who was persecuted by malicious enemies. It was an assertion of innocence ; an assertion that he had done nothing worthy of death. The case had no reference to the question of the law- fulness of capital punishment, but to the question of the lawfulness of inflicting it upon him. Nor can it be supposed that it was the design of the speaker to convey any sanction of the punishment itself, because the design would have been wholly foreign to the occasion. The argument of Grotius goes perhaps too far for his own purpose. " If 1 be an offender, or have done any- thing worthy of death, I refuse not to die." He refused not to die, then, if he were an offender, if he had done one of the ' ' many and grievous things ' ' which the Jews charged upon him. But will it be con- tended that he meant to sanction the destruction of every person who was thus " an offender?" — His enemies were endeavoring to take his life, and he, in earnest asseveration of his innocence, says, '* If you can fix your charges upon me, take it." * Observations on the visiting, &c., of Female Prisoners, p. 76. t Acts, xxv. 1 1 ; see Grotius : Rights of War and Peace. 360 PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. [ESSAY HI. Grotius adduces, as an additional evidence of the sanction of the punishment by Christianity, this passage, " Servants be subject to your masters with all fear, &c. — What glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently ? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God."* Some arguments disprove the doctrine which they are advanced to support, and this surely is one of them. It surely cannot be true that Christianity sanctions capital punishments, if this is the best evidence of the sanction that can be found. f Some persons again suppose that there is a sort of moral obligation to take the life of a murderer : ''Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. ' ' This supposition is an example of that want of advertence to the supremacy of the Chris- tian morality, which in the first essay we had occasion to notice. Our law is the Christian law, and if Chris- tianity by its precepts or spirit prohibits the punish- ment of death, it cannot be made right to Christians by referring to a commandment which was given to Noah. There is, in truth, some inconsistency in the reason- ings of those who urge the passage. The fourth, fifth, and sixth verses of Genesis ninth, each contains a law delivered to Noah. Of these three laws, we habitually disregard two : how then can we with reason insist on the authority of the third ? % After all, if the command were in full force, it would not justify our laws ; for they shed the blood of many who have not shed blood themselves. * 1 Pet. ii. 18, 20. f " Wickliffe," says Priestley, " seems to have thought it wrong to take away the life of a man on any account. ' ' % Indeed it would almost appear from Genesis ix. 5, that even accidental homicide was thus to be punished with death : and if so, it is wholly disregarded in our present practice. CHAP. VII.] PUNISHMENT OP DEATH. 361 And this conducts us to the observation, that the grounds upon which the United States of America still affix death to murder of the first degree, do not appear very clear ; for if other punishments are found effectual in deterring from crimes of all degrees of enormity up to the last, how is it shown that they would not be effectual in the last also ? There is nothing in the con- stitution of the human mind to indicate, that a mur- derer is influenced by passions which require that the counteracting power should be totally different from that which is employed to restrain every other crime. The difference too in the personal guilt of the perpetra- tors of some other crimes, and of murder, is sometimes extremely small. At any rate, it is not so great as to imply a necessity for a punishment totally dissimilar. The truth appears to be, that men entertain a sort of indistinct notion that murder is a crime which requires a peculiar punishment, which notion is often founded, not upon any process of investigation, by which the propriety of this peculiar punishment is discovered, but upon some vague ideas respecting the nature of the crime itself. But the dictate of philosophy is, to employ that punishment which will be most efficacious. Effi- cacy is the test of its propriety ; and in estimating this efficacy, the character of the crime is a foreign consid- eration. Again, the dictate of Christianity is, to em- ploy that punishment which, while it deters the spectator, reforms the man. Now, neither philosophy nor Christianity appears to be consulted in punishing murder with death, because it is murder. And it is worthy of especial remembrance, that the purpose for which Grotius defends the punishment of death is, that he may be able to defend the practice of war : — a bad foundation if this be its best ! . It is one objection to capital punishment that it is absolutely irrevocable. If an innocent man suffers it 362 PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. [ESSAY III. is impossible to recall the sentence of the law. Not that this consideration alone is a sufficient argument against it, but it is one argument amongst the many. In a certain sense, indeed, all personal punishments are irrevocable. The man who by a mistaken verdict has been confined twelve months in a prison, cannot be repossessed of the time. But if irrevocable punishments cannot be dispensed with, they should not be made needlessly common, and especially those should be regarded with jealousy which admit of no removal or relaxation in the event of subsequently discovered innocence, or subsequent reformation. It is not suffi- ciently considered that a jury or a court of justice never know that a prisoner is guilty. — A witness may know it who saw him commit the act, but others cannot know it who depend upon testimony, for testimony may be mistaken or false. All verdicts are founded upon prob- abilities — probabilities which, though they sometimes approach to certainty, never attain to it. Surely it is a serious thing for one man to destroy another upon grounds short of absolute certainty of his guilt. There is a sort of indecency attached to it — an assumption of a degree of authority which ought to be exercised only by Him whose knowledge is infallibly true. It is un- happily certain that some have been put to death for actions which they never committed. At one assizes, we believe, not less than six persons were hanged, of whom it was afterwards discovered that they were entirely innocent. A deplorable instance is given by Dr. Smollett: — "Rape and murder were perpetrated upon an unfortunate woman in the neighborhood of Iyondon, and an innocent man suffered death for this complicated outrage, while the real criminals assisted at his execution, heard him appeal to Heaven for his innocence, and in the character of friends embraced him while he stood on the brink of eternity."* Others * Hist, of Eng. v. 3, p. 318. CHAP. VII.] PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. 363 equally innocent, but whose innocence has never been made known, have doubtless shared the same fate. These are tremendous considerations, and ought to make men solemnly pause before, upon grounds neces- sarily uncertain, they take away that life which God has given, and which they cannot restore. Of the merely philosophical speculations respecting the rectitude of capital punishments, whether affirma- tive or negative, I would say little ; for they in truth deserve little. One advantage indeed attends a brief review — that the reader will perceive how little the speculations of philosophers will aid us in the investi- gation of a Christian question. The philosopher, however, would prove what the Christian cannot, and Mably accordingly says, " In the state of nature, I have a right to take the life of him who lifts his arm against mine. This right, upo?i entering into society, I surrender to the magistrate. ' ' If we conceded the truth of the first position, (which we do not,) the conclusion from it is an idle sophism ; for it is obviously preposterous to say, that because I have a right to take the life of a man who will kill me if I do not kill him, the state, which is in no such danger, has a right to do the same. That danger which constitutes the alleged right in the individual, does not exist in the case of the state. The foun- dation of the right is gone, and where can be the right itself? Having, however, been thus told that the state has a right to kill, we are next informed, by Filangieri, that the criminal has no right to live. He says, " If I have a right to kill another man, he has lost his right to life."* Rousseau goes a little further. He tells us, that in consequence of the u social con- tract ' ' which we make with the sovereign on entering into society, "Life is a conditional grant of the * Montagu on Punishment of Death. 364 PUNISHMENT OF DEATH.' [ESSAY III. state :"* so that we hold our lives, it seems, only as 1 ' tenants at will, ' ' and must give them up whenever their owner, the state, requires them. The reader has probably hitherto thought that he retained his head by some other tenure. The right of taking an offender's life being thus proved, Mably shows us how its exercise becomes ex- pedient. "A murderer," says he, "in taking away his enemy's life, believes he does him the greatest possible evil. Death, then, in the murderer's estimation, is the greatest of evils. By the fear of death, therefore, the excesses of hatred and revenge must be restrained." If language wilder than this can be held, Rousseau, I think , holds it. He says, ' ' The preservation of both sides (the criminal and the state) is incompatible ; one of the two must perish." How it happens that a nation " must perish," if a convict is not hanged, the reader, I suppose, will not know. Even philosophy, however concedes as much: " Absolute necessity alone,'" says Pastoret, " can justify the punishment of death ;" and Rousseau himself acknowledges that ' ' we have no right to put to death, even for the sake oj example, any but those who cannot be permitted to live without danger. ' ' Beccaria limits the right to one specific case — and in doing this he appears to sacrifice his own principle, (deduced from that splendid fiction, the "social con- tract,") which is, that "the punishment of death is not authorized by any right : — no such right exists. ' ' For myself, I perceive little value in such specula- tions to whatever conclusions they lead, for there are shorter and surer roads to truth ; but it is satisfactory to find that, even upon the principles of such philosophers, the right to put criminals to death is not easily made out. The argument, then, respecting the punishment of death is both distinct and short. * Contr. Soc. ii. 5, Montagu. CHAP. VIII.] REUGrOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. 365 It rejects, by its very nature, a regard to the first and greatest object of punishment. It does not attain either of the other objects so well as they may be attained by other means. It is attended with numerous evils peculiarly its own. CHAPTER VIII. RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. The primitive church — The established church of Ireland — America — Advantages and disadvantages of established churches — Alliance of a church with the state — Persecution generally the growth of religious establishments — State reli- gions injurious to the civil welfare of a people — Voluntary payment. A large number of persons embark from Europe, and colonize an uninhabited territory in the South Sea. They erect a government — suppose a republic — and make all persons, of whatever creed, eligible to the legislature. The community prospers and increases. In process of time a member of the legislature, who is a disciple of John Wesley, persuades himself that it will tend to the promotion of religion that the preachers of Methodism should be supported by a national tax ; that their stipends should be sufficiently ample to pre- vent them from necessary attention to any business but that of religion ; and that accordingly they shall be precluded from the usual pursuits of commerce and from the professions. He proposes the measure. It is contended against by the Episcopalian members, and the Independents, and the Catholics, and the Unitarians — by all but- the adherents to his own creed. They insist upon the equality of civil and religious rights, 366 RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. [ESSAY III. but in vain. The majority prove to be Methodists ; they support the measure : the law is enacted ; and Methodism becomes, thenceforth, the religion of the state. This is a religious establishment. But it is a religious establishment in its best form ; and, perhaps, none ever existed of which the constitu- tion was so simple and so pure. During one portion of the papal history, the Romish church was indeed not so much an ' ' establishment ' ' of the state as a separate and independent constitution. For though some species of alliance subsisted, yet the Romanists did not acknow- ledge, as Protestants now do, that the power of estab- lishing a religion resides in the state. In the present day other immunities are possessed by ecclesiastical establishments than those which are necessary to constitute the institution — such, for exam- ple, as that of exclusive eligibility to the legislature : and other alliances with the civil power exist than that which necessarily results from any preference of a par- ticular faith — such as that of placing ecclesiastical patronage in the hands of a government, or of those who are under its influence. From these circumstances it happens, that in enquiring into the propriety of relig- ious establishments, we cannot confine ourselves to the enquiry whether they are proper as they usually exist. And this is so much the more needful, because there is little reason to expect that when once an eccle- siastical establishment has been erected — when once a particular church has been selected for the preference and patronage of the civil power — that preference and patronage will be confined to those circumstances which are necessary to the subsistence of an establish- ment at all. It is sufficiently obvious that it matters nothing to the existence of an established church, what the faith of that church is, or what is the form of its government. CHAP. VIII.] RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. 367 It is not the creed which constitutes the estab- lishment, but the preference of the civil power. Our business is not with churches but with church estab- lishments. The actual history of religious establishments in Christian countries, does not differ in essence from that which we have supposed in the South Sea. They have been erected by the influence or the assistance of the civil power. In one country a religion may have owed its political supremacy to the superstitions of a prince ; and in another to his policy or ambition : but the effect has been similar. Whether superstition or policy, the contrivances of a priesthood, or the fortuitous predomi- nance of a party, have given rise to the established church, is of comparatively little consequence to the fundamental principles of the institution. The only ground upon which it appears that relig- ious establishments can be advocated are, first, that of example or approbation in the primitive churches ; and, secondly, that of public utility. I. The primitive church was not a religious estab- lishment in any sense or in any degree. No establish- ment existed until the church had lost much of its purity. Nor is there any expression in the New Testa- ment, direct or indirect, which would lead a reader to suppose that Christ or his apostles regarded an estab- lishment as an eligible institution. "We find, in his religion no scheme of building up a hierarchy, or of min- istering to the views of human governments." — "Our religion, as it came out of the hands of its Founder and his apostles, exhibited a complete abstraction from all views either of ecclesiastical or civil policy.''' 1 *' The evi- dence which these facts supply respecting the moral character of religious establishments, whatever be its weight, tends manifestly to show that that character is * Paley : Evidences of Christianity, p. 2, c. 2. 368 REUGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. [ESSAY III. not good. I do not say because Christianity exhibited this "complete abstraction," that it therefore neces- sarily condemned establishments ; but I say that the bearing and the tendency of this negative testimony is against them. In the discourses and writings of the first teachers of our religion, we find such absolute disinterestedness, so little disposition to assume political superiority, that to have become the members of an established church would certainly have been inconsistent in them. It is indeed almost inconceivable that they could ever have desired the patronage of the state for themselves or for their converts. No man conceives that Paul or John could have participated in the exclusion of any portion of the Christian church from advantages which they themselves enjoyed. Every man perceives that to have done this, would have been to assume a new character, a character which they had never exhibited before, and which was incongruous with their former principles and motives of action. But why is this incongruous with the apostolic character unless it is incongruous with Christianity ? Upon this single ground, therefore, there is reason for the sentiment of ' ' many well-in- formed persons, that it seems extremely questionable whether the religion of Jesus Christ admits of any civil establishment at all."* I lay stress upon these considerations. We all know that much may be learnt respecting human duty by a contemplation of the spirit and temper of Christianity as it was exhibited by its first teachers. When the spirit and temper is compared with the essential char- acter of religious establishments, thev are found to be incongruous — foreign to one another — having no nat- ural relationship or similarity. I should regard such facts, in reference to any question of rectitude, as of * Simpson's Plea for Religion and the Sacred Writings. CHAP. VIII.] RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. 369 great importance ; but upon a subject so intimately connected with religion itself, the importance is pecul- iarly great. II. The question of the utility of religious estabr lishments is to be decided by a comparison of their advantages and their evils. Of their advantages, the first and greatest appears to be that they provide, or are assumed to provide, relig- ious instruction for the whole community. If this instruction be left by the state to be cared for by each Christian church as it possesses the zeal or the means, it may be supposed that many districts will be destitute of any public religious instruction. At least the state cannot be assured before hand that every district will be supplied. And when it is considered how great is the importance of regular public worship to the virtue of a people, it is not to be denied, that a scheme which, by destroying an establishment, would make that in- struction inadequate or uncertain, is so far to be regarded as of questionable expediency. But the effect which would be produced by dispensing with establish- ments is to be estimated, so far as is in our power, by facts. Now dissenters are in the situation of separate unestablished churches. If they do not provide for the public officers of religion voluntarily, they will not be provided for. Yet where is any considerable body of dissenters to be found who do not provide themselves with a chapel and a preacher ? And if those churches which are not established, do in fact provide public in- struction, how is it shown that it would not be provided although there were no established religion in a state ? Besides, the dissenters from an established church pro- vide this under peculiar disadvantages ; for after pay- ing, in common with others, their quota to the state religion, they have to pay in addition to their own. But perhaps it will be said that dissenters from a state 370 RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. [ESSAY III. religion are actuated by a zeal with which the profes- sors of that religion are not ; and that the legal pro- vision supplies the deficiency of zeal. If this be said, the inquiry imposes itself — How does this dispropor- tion of zeal arise ? Why should dissenters be more zeal- ous than churchmen ? What account can be given of the matter, but that there is something in the patron- age of the state which induces apathy upon the church that it prefers? One other account may indeed be offered — that to be a dissenter is to be a positive relig- ionist, whilst to be a churchman is frequently only to be nothing else ; that an establishment embraces all who are not embraced by others ; and that if those whom other churches do not include were not cared for by the state religion, they would not be cared for at all. This is an argument of apparent weight, but the effect of reasoning is to diminish that weight. For what is meant by "including," by "caring for," the indifferent and irreligious ? An established church only offers them instruction ; it does not ' ' compel them to come in," and we have just seen that this offer is made by unestablished churches also. Who doubts whether in a district that is sufficient to fill a temple of the state religion, there would be found persons to offer a temple of public worship though the state did not compel it ? Who doubts whether this would be the case if the dis- trict were inhabited by dissenters ? and if it would not be done supposing the inhabitants to belong to the state religion, the conclusion is inevitable, that there is a tendency to indifference resulting from the patronage of the state. To estimate the relative influence of religion in two countries is no easy task. Yet, I believe, if we com- pare its influence in the United States with that which it possesses in most of the European countries which possess state religions, it will be found that the CHAP. VIII.] REUGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. 37 1 balance is in favor of the community in which there is no established church : at any rate, the balance is not so much against it as to afford any evidence in favor of a state religion. A traveller in America has remarked ' ' There is more religion in the United States than in England, and more in England than in Italy. The closer the monopoly, the less abundant the supply. ' ' * Another traveller writes almost as if he had anticipated the present disquisition — " It has been often said, that the disinclination of the heart to religious truth, renders a state establishment absolutely necessary for the purpose of Christianizing the country. Ireland and America can furnish abundant evidence of the fallacy of such an hypothesis. In the one country we see an ecclesiastical establishment of the most costly descrip- tion utterly inoperative in dispelling ignorance or re- futing error ; in the other no establishment of any kind, and yet religion making daily and hourly progress, pro- moting enquiry, diffusing knowledge, strengthening the weak, and mollifying the hardened. ' ! f In immediate connection with this subject is the argument that Dr. Paley places at the head of those which he advances in favor of religious establishments — that the knowledge and profession of Christianity can- not be upholden without a clergy supported by legal pro- vision, and belonging to o?ie sect of Christians. X The justness of this proposition is fo7inded upon the necessity of research. It is said that ' ' Christianity is an histori- cal religion," and that the truth of its history must be investigated ; that in order to vindicate its authority and to ascertain its truths, leisure and education and learning are indispensable — so that such an ' ' order of clergy is necessary to perpetuate the evidences of reve- lation, and to interpret the obscurity of those ancient * Hall. f Duncan's Trav. in America. | See Mor. and Pol. Phil. b. 6 c. 10. 372 RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. [ESSAY III. writings in which the religion is contained. ' ' To all this there is one plain objection, that when once the evidences of religion are adduced and made public, when once the obscurity of the ancient writings is in- terpreted, the work, so far as discovery is concerned, is done ; and it can hardly be imagined that an estab- lished clergy is necessary in perpetuity to do that which in its own nature can be done but once. What- ever may have been the validity of this argument in other times, when few but the clergy possessed any learning, or when the evidences of religion had not been sought out, it possesses little validity now. These evidences are brought before the world in a form so clear *and accessible to literary and good men, that, in the present state of society, there is little reason to fear they will be lost for want of an established church. Nor is it to be forgotten that with respect to our own country, the best defences of Christianity which exist in the language, have not been the work either of the established clergy or of members of the established church. The expression, that such "an order of clergy is necessary to perpetuate the evidences of reve- lation," appears to contain an illusion. Evidences can in no other sense be perpetuated than by being again and again brought before the public. If this be the meaning, it belongs rather to the teaching of religious truths than to their discovery ; but it is upon the discovery, it is upon the opportunity of research, that the argument is founded : and it is particularly to be noticed, that this is the primary argument which Paley adduces in decid- ing ' ' the first and most fundamental question upon the subject." It pleases Providence to employ human agency in the vindication and diffusion of his truth ; but to employ the expression ' ' the knowledge and profession of Christianity ' ' cannot be upholden without an CHAP. VIII.] RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. 373 established clergy, approaches to irreverence. Even a re- jector of Christianity says, " If public worship be con- formable to reason, reason without doubt will prove adequate to its vindication and support. If it be from God it is profanation to imagine that it stands in need of the alliance of the state." * And it is clearly un- true in fact ; because, without such a clergy, it is actually upheld, and because, during the three first centuries, the religion subsisted and spread and pros- pered without any encouragement from the state. And it is remarkable, too, that the diffusion of Christianity in our own times 'in pagan nations, is effected less by the clergy of established churches than by others, f One particular manner in which the establishment of a church injures the character of the church itself is, by the temptation which it holds out to equivocation or hypocrisy. It is necessary to the preference of the teachers of a particular sect, that there should be some means of discovering who belong to that sect :"— there must be some test. Before the man who is desirous of undertaking the ministerial office, there are placed two roads, one of which conducts to those privileges which a state religion enjoys, and the other does not. The latter may be entered by all who will : the former by tho.se only who affirm their belief of the rectitude of some church forms or of some points of theology. It requires no argument to prove that this is to tempt men to affirm that which they do not believe : that it is to say to the man who does not believe the stipulated points, Here is money for you if you will violate your * Godwin's Pol. Just. 2, 608. f In the preceding discussion, I have left out all reference to the proper qualification or appointment of Christian ministers, and have assumed (but without conceding) that the magistrate is at liberty to adjust those matters if he pleases. 374 REUGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. [ESSAY III. conscience. By some the invitation will be accepted ; * and what is the result? Why that, just as they are going publicly to insist upon the purity and sanctity of the moral law, they violate that law themselves. The injury which is thus done to a Christian church by establishing it, is negative as well as positive. You not only tempt some men to equivocation or hypocrisy, but exclude from the office others of sounder integrity. Two persons, both of whom do not assent to the pre- scribed points, are desirous of entering the church. One is upright and conscientious, the other subservient and unscrupulous. An establishment excludes the good man and admits the bad. ' ' Though some pur- poses of order and tranquillity may be answered by the establishment of creeds and confessions, yet they are at all times attended with serious inconveniences : they check enquiry ; they violate liberty ; they ensnare the consciences of the clergy, by holding out temptations to prevarication." f And with respect to the habitual accommodation of the exercise of the ministry to the desires of the state it is manifest that an enlightened and faithful minister may frequently find himself restrained by a species of political leading-strings. He had not the full command of his intellectual and religious attainments. He may not perhaps communicate the whole counsel of God. % It was formerly co?iceded to the English clergy that they might preach against the horrors and impolicy of w r ar, * " Chilli ngworth declared in a letter to Dr. Sheldon, that if he subscribed he subscribed his own damnation, and yet in no long space of time he actually did subscribe to the articles of the church again and again." Simpson's plea. t Paley : Mor. and Pol. Phil. b. 6, c. 10. X li Honest and disinterested boldness in the path of duty is one of the first requisites of a minister of the gospel." Gis- borne. But how shall they be thus disinterested ? Mem. in the MS. CHAP. VIII.] REWGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. 375 provided they were not chaplains to regiments or in the navy. Conceded ! Then if the state had pleased, it might have withheld the concession ; and accordingly from some the state did withhold it. They were pro- hibited to preach against that, against which the apostles wrote ! What would these apostles have said if a state had bidden them keep silence respecting the most unchristian custom in the world ? They would have said, Whether we ought to obey God rather than man, judge ye. What would they have done? They would have gone away and preached against it as be- fore. One question more should be asked — What would they have said to an alliance which thus brought the Christian minister under bondage to the state ? It is sufficiently manifest, that whatever tends to diminish the virtue, or to impeach the character, of the ministers of religion, must tend to diminish the influ- ence of religion upon mankind. If the teacher is not good, we are not to expect goodness in the taught. If a man enters the church with impure or unworthy mo- tives, he cannot do his duty when he is there. If he makes religion subservient to interest in his own prac- tice, he cannot eifectually teach others to make relig- ion paramount to all. Men associate (they ought to do it less) the idea of religion with that of its teachers ; and their respect for one is freqently measured by their respect for the other. Now, that the effect of religious establishments has been to depress their teachers in the estimation of mankind, cannot be disputed. The effect is, in truth, inevitable. And it is manifest that what- ever conveys disrespectful ideas of religion diminishes its influence upon the human mind. In brief, we have seen that to establish a religion is morally pernicious to its ministers ; and whatever is injurious to them dimin- ishes the power of religion in the world. Christianity is a religion of good-will and kind 37 6 RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. [ESSAY III. affections. Its essence, so far as the intercourse of society is concerned, is love. Whatever diminishes good-will and kind affections amongst Christians, attacks the essence of Christianity. Now, religious establishments do this. They generate ill-will, heart-burnings, ani- mosities — those very things which our religion depre- cates more almost than any other. It is obvious that if a fourth or a third of a community think they are unreasonably excluded from privileges which the other parts enjoy, feelings of jealousy or envy are likely to be generated. If the minority are obliged to pay to the support of a religion they disapprove, these feelings are likely to be exacerbated. They soon become reciprocal ; attacks are made by one party and repelled by another, till there arises an habitual sense of unkindness or ill-will.* The deduction from the practical influence of religion upon the minds of men which this effect of religious establishments occasions, is great. The evil, I trust, is diminishing in the world ; * I once met with rather a grotesque definition of religious dissent, but it illustrates my proposition :—" Dissenterism " — that is, " systematic opposition to the established religion." "The placing all the religious sects (in America) upon an equal footing with respect to the government of the country, has effectually secured the peace of the community, at the same time that it has essentially promoted the interests of truth and virtue." — Mem. Dr. Priestley, p. 175. Mem. in the MS. Pennsylvania. — " Although there are so many sects and such a difference of religious opinions in this province, it is surpris- ing the harmony which subsists among them ; they consider themselves as children of the same father, and live like brethren because they have the liberty of thinking like men ; to this pleasing harmony, in a great measure is to be attributed the rapid and flourishing state of Pennsylvania above all the other provinces." Travels through the interior parts of North Amer- ica, by an officer. 1791. Dond. The officer was Thomas Aubery, who was taken prisoner by the Americans. Mem. in the MS. CHAP. VI I I.J RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. 377 but then the diminution results, not from religious establishments, but from that power of Christianity which prevails against these evils. III. Then as to the effect of religious establishments upon the civil welfare of a state — we know that the connection between religious and civil welfare is inti- mate and great. Whatever therefore diminishes the influence of religion upon a people, diminishes their general welfare. In addition, however, to this general consideration, there are some particular modes of the injurious effects of religious establishments which it may be proper to notice. And, first, religious establishments are incompatible with complete religious liberty. This consideration we requested the reader to bear in mind when the question of religious liberty was discussed.* "If an establish- ment be right, religious liberty is not ; and if religious liberty be right, an establishment is not." Whatever arguments therefore exist to prove the rectitude of com- plete religious liberty, they prove at the same time the wrongness of religious establishments. Nor is this aM ; for it is the manifest tendency of these establish- ments to withhold an increase of religious liberty, even when on other grounds it would be granted. The secular interests of the state religion are set in array against an increase of liberty. If the established church allows other churches to approach more nearly to an equality with itself, its own relative eminence is dimin- ished ; and if by any means the state religion adds to its own privileges, it is by deducting from the privileges of the rest. The state religion is, be- sides, afraid to dismiss any part even of its confessedly useless privileges, lest, when an alteration is begun, it should not easily be stopped. And there is no reason to doubt that it is temporal rather than religious * Essay 3, c. 4. 378 RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. [ESSAY III. considerations— interest rather than Christianity— which now occasions restrictions and disabilities and tests. In conformity with these views, persecution has gen- erally been the work of religious establishments. In- deed, some alliance or some countenance at least from the state is necessary to a systematic persecution. Popular outrage may persecute men on account of their religion, as it often has done ; but fixed stated perse- cutions have perhaps always been the work of the relig- ion of the state. It was the state religion of Rome that persecuted the first Christians ; not to mention that it was the state religion of Judea that put our Saviour himself to death. — " Who was it that crucified the Saviour of the world for attempting to reform the religion of his country ? The Jewish priesthood. — Who was it that drowned the altars of their idols with the blood of Christians for attempting to abolish paganism ? The pagan priesthood. — Who was it that persecuted to flames and death those who, in the time of Wickliffe and his followers, labored to reform the errors of Popery? The Popish priesthood. — Who was it, and who is it that, both in England and in Ireland since the Reformation — but I check my hand, being unwil- ling to reflect upon the dead, or to exasperate the liv- ing."* We also are unwilling to reflect upon or to exasperate, but our business is with plain truth. Who, then, was it that since the Reformation has persecuted dissentients from its creed, and who is it that at this hour thinks and speaks of them with unchristian antipathy ? The English priesthood. It was, and it is, the state religion in some European countries that now perse- cutes dissenters from its creed. It was the state relig- ion in this country that persecuted the Protestants ; since Protestantism has been established, it is the state * Miscellaneous Tracts by Richard Watson, D. D., Bishop of Landaff, v. 2. CHAP. VIII.] RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. ^79 religion which has persecuted Protestant dissenters. Is this the fault principally of the faith of these churches, or of their alliance with the state ? No man can be in doubt for an answer. On the other hand, there are some advantages atten- dant on the voluntary system which that of a legal provision does not possess. But this does not imply that even voluntary pay- ment is conformable with the dignity of the Christian ministry, with its usefulness, or with the requisitions of the Christian law. And heie I am disposed, in the outset, to acknowl- edge that the question of payment is involved in an antecedent question — the necessary qualifications of a Christian minister. If one of these necessary qualifica- tions be, that he should devote his youth and early manhood to theological studies, or to studies or exer- cises of any kind, I do not perceive how the propriety of voluntary payment can be disputed ; for, when a man who might otherwise have fitted himself, in a counting-house or an office, for procuring his after- support, employs his time necessarily in qualifying himself for a Christian instructor, it is indispensable that he should be paid for his instructions. Or if, after he has assumed the ministerial function, it be his indispensable business to devote all or the greater por- tion of his time to studies or other preparations for the pulpit, the same necessity remains. He must be paid for his ministry, because, in order to be a minister, he is prevented from maintaining himself. But the necessary qualifications of a minister of the gospel cannot here be discussed. We pass on, there- fore, with the simple expression of the sentiment, that how beneficial soever a theological education and theo- logical enquiries may be in the exercise of the office, yet that they form no necessary qualifications ; — that 380 REUGI0US ESTABLISHMENTS. [ESSAY III. men may be, and that some are, true and sound min- isters of that gospel, without them. Now, in enquiring into the Christian character and ten- dency of payment for preaching Christianity, one posi- tion will perhaps be recognized as universally true — that if the same ability and zeal in the exercise of the ministry could be attained without payment as with it, the pay- ment might reasonably and rightly be forborne. Nor will it perhaps be disputed, that if Christian teachers of the present day were possessed of some good portion of the qualifications, and were actuated by the motives of the first teachers of our religion, stated remuneration would not be needed. If love for mankind, and the - ' ability which God giveth," were strong enough to induce and to enable men to preach the gospel without payment, the employment of money as a motive would be without use or propriety. Remuneration is a contrivance adapted to an imperfect state of the Christian church : — nothing but imperfection can make it needful ; and, when that imperfection shall be re- moved, it will cease to be needful again. These considerations would lead us to expect, even antecedently to enquiry, that some ill effects are at- tendant upon the system of remuneration. Respect- ing these effects, one of the advocates of a legal pro- vision holds language which, though it be much too strong, nevertheless contai?is much truth. " Upon the voluntary plan," says Dr. Paley, " preaching, in time, would become a mode of begging. With what sincer- ity or with what dignity can a preacher dispense the truths of Christianity, whose thoughts are perpetually solicited to the reflection how he may increase his sub- scription? His eloquence, if he possess any, resembles rather the exhibition of a player who is computing the profits of his theatre, than the simplicity of a man who, feeling himself the awful expectations of religion, is CHAP. VIII.] RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. 381 seeking to bring others to such a sense and undertak- ing of their duty as may save their souls. — He, not only whose success but whose subsistence depends upon collecting and pleasing a crowd, must resort to other arts than the acquirement and communication of sober and profitable instruction. For a preacher to be thus at the mercy of his audience, to be obliged to adapt his doctrines to the pleasure of a capricious multitude, to be continually affecting a style and manner neither natural to him nor agreeable to his judgment, to live in constant bondage to tyrannical and insolent direc- tors, are circumstances so mortifying not only to the pride of the human heart but to the virtuous love of independency, that they are rarely submitted to with- out a sacrifice of principle and a depravation of char- acter ; — at least it may be pronounced, that a ministry so degraded would soon fall into the lowest hands ; for it would be found impossible to engage men of worth and ability in so precarious and humiliating a pro- fession."* To much of this it is a sufficient answer, that the predictions are contradicted by the fact. Of those teachers who are supported by voluntary subscriptions, it is not true that their eloquence resembles the exhi- bition of a player who is computing the profits of l;is theatre ; for the fact is, that a very large proportion of them assiduously devote themselves from better mo- tives to the religious benefit of their flocks : — it is not true that the office is rarely undertaken without what can be called a depravation of character ; for the char- acter, both religious and moral, of those teachers who are voluntarily paid, is at least as exemplary as that of those who are paid by provision of the state : — it is not true that the office falls into the lowest hands, and that it is impossible to engage men of worth and ability in * Mor. and Pol. Phil. b. 6, c. 10. 382 RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. [ESSAY III. the profession, because very many of such men are actually engaged in it. But although the statements of the Archdeacon are not wholly true, they are true in part. Preaching will become a mode of begging. When a congregation wants a preacher, and we see a man get into the pulpit ex- pressly and confessedly to show how he can preach, in order that the hearers may consider how they like him, and when one object of his thus doing is confessedly to obtain an income, there is reason — not certainly for speaking of him as a beggar — but for believing that the dignity and freedom of the gospel are sacrificed. — Thoughts perpetually solicited to the reflection how he may increase his subscription. Supposing this to be the language of exaggeration, supposing the increase of his subscription to be his subordinate concern, yet still it is his concern, and being his concern, it is his temp- tation. It is to be feared, that by the influence of this temptation his sincerity and his independence may be impaired, that the consideration of what his hearers. wish rather than of what he thinks they need, may prompt him to sacrifice his conscience to his profit, and to add or to deduct something from the counsel of God. Such temptation necessarily exists ; and it were only to exhibit ignorance of the motives of human conduct to deny that it will sometimes prevail. — To live in constant bondage to insolent and tyrannical directors. It is not necessary to suppose that directors will be tyrannical or insolent, nor by consequence to suppose that the preacher is in a state of constant bondage. But if they be not tyrants and he a slave, they may be masters and he a servant ; a servant in a sense far different from that in which the Christian minister is required to be a ser- vant of the Church — in a sense which implies an undue subserviency of his ministrations to the will of men, CHAP. VIII.] REUGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. 383 and which is incompatible with the obligation to have no master but Christ. Other modes of voluntary payment may be and per- haps they are adopted, but the effect will not be essen- tially different. Subscriptions may be collected from a number of congregations and thrown into a common fund, which fund may be appropriated by a directory or conference : but the objections still apply ; for he who wishes to obtain an income as a preacher, has then to try to propitiate the directory instead of a congrega- tion, and the temptation to sacrifice his independence and his conscience remains. There is no way of obtaining emancipation from this subjection, no way of avoiding this temptation, but by a system in which the Christian ministry is absolutely free. But the ill effects of thus paying preachers are not confined to those who preach. The habitual conscious- ness that tiie preacher is paid, and the notion which some men take no pains to separate from this con- sciousness, that he preaches because he is paid, have a powerful tendency to diminish the influence of his ex- hortations, and the general effect of his labors. The vulgarly irreligious think, or pretend to think, that it is a sufficient excuse for disregarding these labors to say, They are a matter of course — preachers must say some- thing, because it is their trade. And it is more than to be feared that notions, the same in kind however dif- ferent in extent, operate upon a large proportion of the community. It is not probable that it should be other- wise ; and thus it is that a continual deduction is made by the hearer from the preacher's disinterestedness or sincerity, and a continual deduction therefore from the effect of his labors. How seldom can such a pastor say, with full demon- stration of sincerity, "I seek not yours, but you." 3S4 RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. [ESSAY lit. The flock may indeed be, and happily it often is, his first and greatest motive to exertion ; but the demon- strative evidence that it is so, can only be afforded by those whose ministrations are absolutely free. The deduction which is thus made from the practical influ- ence of the labors of stipended preachers, is the same in kind (though differing in amount) as that which is made from a pleader's addresses in court. He pleads because he is paid for pleading. Who does not per- ceive, that if an able man came forward and pleaded in a cause without a retainer, and simply from the desire that justice should be awarded, he would be listened to with much more of confidence, and that his argu- ments would have much more weight, than if the same words were uttered by a barrister who was fee'd? A similar deduction is made from the writings of paid ministers especially if they advocate their own particu- lar faith. ■ ' He is interested evidence, ' ' says the reader — he has got a retainer, and of course argues for his client ; and thus arguments that may be invincible, and facts that may be incontrovertibly true, lose some portion of their effect, even upon virtuous men, and a large portion upon the bad, because the preacher is paid. If, as is sometimes the case, "the amount of the salary given is regulated very precisely by the frequency of the ministry required," — so that a hearer may possibly allow the reflection, The preacher will get half a guinea for the sermon he is going to preach — it is almost im- possible that the dignity of the Christian ministry should not be reduced, as well as that the influence of his exhortations should not be diminished. "It is however more desirable," says Milton, "for example to be, and for the preventing of offence or suspicion, as well as more noble and honorable in itself, and condu- cive to our more complete glorying in God, to render an unpaid service to the church, in this as well as in CHAP. VIII.] RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. 385 all other instances ; and, after the example of our Iyord, to minister and serve gratuitously."* Some ministers expend all the income which they derive from their office in acts of beneficence. To these we may safely appeal for confirmation of these remarks. Do you not find that the consciousness, in the minds of your hearers, that you gain nothing by your labor, greatly increases its influence upon them ? Do you not find that they listen to you with more con- fidence and regard, and more willingly admit the truths which you inculcate and conform to the advices which you impart ? If these things be so — and who will dis- pute it ? — how great must be the aggregate obstruction which pecuniary remuneration opposes to the influence of religion in the world. But indeed it is not practicable to the writer to illus- trate the whole of what he conceives to be the truth upon this subject, without a brief advertence to the qualifications of the minister of the gospel ; because, if his view of these qualifications be just, the stipula- tion for such and such exercise of the ministry, and such and such payment is impossible. If it is ' ' ad- mitted that the ministry of the gospel is the work of the Lord, that it can be rightly exercised only in virtue of his appointment," and only when " a neces- sity is laid upon the minister to preach the gospel, ' ' — it is manifest that he cannot engage beforehand to preach when others desire it. It is manifest, that " the compact which binds the minister to preach on the con- dition that his hearers shall pay him for his preaching, assumes the character of absolute inconsistency with the spirituality of the Christian religion." f * Christian Doctrine : p. 484. t I would venture to suggest to some of those to whom these considerations are offered, whether the notion that a preacher is 3^6 RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. [ESSAY J II. " Freely ye have received, freely give." When we contemplate a Christian minister who illustrates, both in his commission and in his practice, this language of his Lord ; who teaches, advises, reproves, with the authority and affection of a commissioned teacher ; who fears not to displease his hearers, and desires not to receive their reward ; who is under no temptation to withhold, and does not withhold, any portion of that counsel which he thinks God designs for his church ; — when we contemplate such a man, we may feel some- what of thankfulness and of joy ; — of thankfulness and joy that the Universal Parent thus enables his creatures to labor for the good of one another, in that same spirit in which He cares for them and blesses them him- self. I censure not, either in word or in thought, him who, in sincerity of mind, accepts remuneration for his labors in the church. It may not be inconsistent with the dispensations of Providence, that in the present imper- fect condition of the Christian family, imperfect prin- ciples respecting the ministry should be permitted to prevail : nor is it to be questioned that some of those who do receive remuneration, are fulfilling their proper a sine qua non of the exercise of public worship, is not taken up without sufficient consideration of the principles which it involves. If, ' ' where two or three are gathered together in the name " of Christ, there He, the minister of the sanctuary, is " in the midst of them," it surely cannot be necessary to the ex- ercises of such worship, that another preacher should be there. Surely, too, it derogates something from the excellence, some- thing from the glory of the Christian dispensation, to assume that, if a number of Christians should be so situated as to be without a preacher, there the public worship of God cannot be performed. This may often happen in remote places, in voyages or the like : and I have sometimes been impressed with the im- portance of these considerations when I have heard a person say, " is absent, and therefore there will be no Divine service this morning." CHAP. IX.] PATRIOTISM. 387 allotments in the universal church. But this does not evince that we should not anticipate the arrival, and promote the extension, of a more perfect state. It does not evince that a higher allotment may not await their successors — that days of greater purity and brightness may not arrive ; — of purity, when every motive of the Christian minister shall be simply Christian ; and of brightness, when the light of truth shall be displayed with greater effulgence. When the Great Parent of all shall thus turn his favor towards his people : when He shall supply them with teachers exclusively of his own appointment, it will be perceived that the ordinary present state of the Christian ministry is adapted only to the twilight of the Christian day ; and some of those who now faithfully labor in this hour of twilight will be amongst the first to rejoice in the greater glory of the noon. CHAPTER IX. PATRIOTISM. Patriotism as it is viewed by Christianity — A Patriotism which is opposed to general benignity — Patriotism not the soldier's motive. We are presented with a beautiful subject of con- templation, when we discover that the principles which Christianity advances upon its own authority, are rec- ommended and enforced by their practical adaptation to the condition and the wants of man. With such a subject I think we are presented in the case of patriot- ism. ' ' Christianity does not encourage particular patriot- ism in opposition to general benignity."* If it did, it * Bishop Watson. 388 PATRIOTISM. [ESSAY III. would not be adapted for the world. The duties of the subject of one state would often be in opposition to those of the subject of another, and men might inflict evil or misery upon neighbor nations in conforming to the Christian law. Christianity is designed to benefit, not a community, but the world. The promotion of the interests of one community by injuring another — that is, ' ' patriotism in opposition to general benign- ity," — it utterly rejects as wrong ; and in doing this, it does that which in a system of such wisdom and be- nevolence we should expect.— " The love of our country," says Adam Smith, " seems not to be derived from the love of mankind."* I do not mean to say that the word patriotism is to be found in the New Testament, or that it contains any disquisitions respecting the proper extent of the love of our country — but I say that the universality of benevolence which Christianity inculcates, both in its essential character and in its precepts, is incompatible with that patriotism which would benefit our own com- munity at the expense of general benevolence. Pa- triotism, as it is often advocated, is a low and selfish principle, a principle wholly unworthy of that enlight- ened and expanded philanthropy which religion pro- poses. Nevertheless Christianity appears not to encourage the doctrine of being a M citizen of the world," and of paying no more regard to our own community than to every other. And why ? Because such a doctrine is not rational ; because it opposes the exercise of natural and virtuous feelings ; and because, if it were attempted to be reduced to practice, it may be feared that it would destroy confined benignity without effecting a counterbalancing amount of universal philanthropy. * Theo. Mor. Sent. The limitation with which this opinion should be regarded, we shall presently propose. CHAP. IX.] PATRIOTISM. 389 This preference of our own nation is indicated in. that strong language of Paul, "I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kins- men according to the flesh, who are Israelites."* And a similar sentiment is inculcated by the admonition — " As we have therefore, opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith . " f I* 1 another place the same senti- ment is applied to more private life ; — "If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith." \ All this is perfectly consonant with reason and with nature Since the helpless and those who need assis- tance must obtain it somewhere, where can they so rationally look for it, where shall they look for it at all, except from those with whom they are connected in society ? If these do not exercise benignity to- wards them, who will? And as to the dictate of nature, it is a law of nature that a man shall provide for his own. He is prompted to do this by the im- pulse of nature. Who, indeed, shall support, and cherish, and protect a child if his parents do not ? That speculative philosophy is vain which would sup- plant these dictates by doctrines of general philan- thropy. It cannot be applicable to human affairs until there is an alteration in the human constitution. Not only religion therefore, but reason and nature, reject that philosophy which teaches that no man should pre- fer or aid another because he is his countryman, his neighbor, or his child : — for even this, the philosophy has taught us ; and we have been seriously told that, in pursuance of general philanthropy, we ought not to cherish or support our own offspring in preference to other children. The effect of these doctrines, if they * Rom. ix. 3. f Gal. vi. 10. % 1 Tim. v. 8. 39° PATRIOTISM. [KSSAY III, were reduced to practice, would be, not to diffuse uni- versal benevolence, but to contract or destroy the charities of men for their families, their neighbors, and their country. It is an idle system of philosophy which sets out with extinguishing those principles of human nature which the Creator has implanted for wise and good ends. He that shall so far succeed in practising this philosophy as to look with indifference upon his parent, his wife, and his son, will not often be found with much zeal to exercise kindness and benevolence to the world at large. Christianity rejects alike the extravagance of patriot- ism and the extravagance of seeming philanthropy. Its precepts are addressed to us as men with human constitutions, and as men in society. But to cherish and support my own child rather than others ; to do good to my neighbors rather than to strangers ; to benefit my own country rather than another nation, does not imply that we may injure other nations, or strangers, of their children, in order to do good to our own. Here is the point for discrimination — a point which vulgar patriotism and vulgar philosophy have alike overlooked. The proper mode in which patriotism should be exer- cised is that which does not necessarily respect other na- tions. 'He is the truest patriot who benefits his own coun- try without diminishing the welfare of another. For which reason, those who induce improvements in the ad- ministration of justice, in the maxims of governing, in the political constitution of the state — or those who ex- tend and rectify the education, or in any other manner amend the moral or social condition of a people, possess incomparably higher claims to the praise of patriotism than multitudes of those who receive it from the popu- lar voice. That patriotism which is manifested in political CHAP. IX.] PATRIOTISM. 39I partizanship, is frequently of a very questionable kind. The motives to this partizanship are often far other than the love of our country, even when the measure which a party pursues tends to the country's good ; and many are called patriots, of whom both the motives and the actions are pernicious or impure. The most vulgar and unfounded talk of patriotism is that which relates to the agents of military operations. In general, the patriotism is of a kind which Christianity condemns ; because it is ft in opposition to general benignity." It does more harm to another country than good to our own. In truth, the merit often con- sists in the harm that is done to another country, with but little pretensions to benefiting our own. These agents therefore, if they were patriotic at all, would commonly be so in an unchristian sense. Upon the whole, we shall act both safely and wisely in lowering the relative situation of patriotism in the scale of Christian virtues. It is a virtue ; but it is far from the greatest or the highest. The world has given to it an unwarranted elevation — an elevation to which it has no pretensions in the view of truth ; and if the friends of truth consign it to its proper station, it is probable that there will be fewer spurious pretensions to its praise. 39 2 WAR. [ESSAY III. CHAPTER X. WAR. Causes of War. — Want of enquiry : Indifference to human misery : National irritability : Interest : Secret motives of Cabinets : Ideas of glory — Foundation of military glory. Consequences oe War. — Destruction of human life : Taxa- tion : Moral depravity : Familiarity with plunder : Implicit submission to superiors : Resignation of moral agency : Bond- age and degradation — Loan of armies — Effects on the com- munity. Lawfulness of War. — Influence of habit — Of appealing to antiquity — The Christian Scriptures — Subjects of Christ's benediction — Matt. xxvi. 52. — The Apostles and Evangelists — The Centurion — Cornelius — Silence not a proof of approba- tion — Luke xxii. 36. — John the Baptist — Negative evidence — Prophecies of the old Testament — The requisitions of Chris- tianity of present obligation — Primitive Christians — Example and testimony of early Christians — Christian soldiers — Wars of the Jews — Duties of individuals and nations— Offensive and defensive war — Wars always aggressive — Paley — War wholly forbidden. Of the probable practical Effects of adhering to the Moral Law in respect to War. — Quakers in America and Ireland — Colonization of Pennsylvania — Unconditional reli- ance on Providence — Recapitulation — General Observations. It is one amongst the numerous moral phenomena of the present times, that the enquiry is silently yet not slowly spreading in the world — Is war compatible with the Christian religion f There was a period when the question was seldom asked, and when war was re- garded almost by every man both as inevitable and right. That period has certainly passed away ; and not only individuals but public societies, and societies in distant nations, are urging the question upon the attention of mankind. The simple circumstance that it is thus urged contains no irrational motive to inves- tigation : for why should men ask the question if they CHAP. X.] WAR. 393 did not doubt ; and how, after these long ages of pre- scription, could they begin to doubt, without a reason? It is not unworthy of remark, that whilst disquisi- tions are frequently issuing from the press, of which the tendency is to show that war is not compatible with Christianity, few serious attempts are made to show that it is. Whether this results from the circumstance that no individual peculiarly is interested in the proof — or that there is a secret consciousness that proof can- not be brought — or that those who may be desirous of defending the custom, rest in security that the impo- tence of its assailants will be of no avail against a cus- tom so established and so supported — I do not know ; yet the fact is remarkable, that scarcely a defender is to be found. It cannot be doubted that the question is one of the utmost interest and importance to man. Whether the custom be defensible or not, every man should enquire into its consistency with the moral law. If it is defensible he may, by enquiry, dismiss the scruples which it is certain subsist in the minds of mul- titudes, and thus exempt himself from the offence of participating in that which, though pure, he " esteem- eth to be unclean. " If it is not defensible, the pro- priety of investigation is increased in a tenfold degree. It may be a subject therefore of reasonable regret to the friends and the lovers of truth, that the question of the moral lawfulness of war is not brought fairly before the public. I say fairly : because though many of the publications which impugn its lawfulness advert to the ordinary arguments in its favor, yet it is not to be as- sumed that they give to those arguments all that vigor and force which would be imparted by a stated and an able advocate. Few books, it is probable, would tend more powerfully to promote the discovery and dissemi- nation of truth, than one which should frankly and fully and ably advocate, upon sound moral principles, 394 WAR. [ESSAY III. the practice of war. The public would then see the whole of what can be urged in its favor without being obliged to seek for arguments, as they now must, in incidental or imperfect or scattered disquisitions : and possessing in a distinct form the evidence of both parties, they would be enabled to judge justly between them. Perhaps if, invited as the public are to the discussion, no man is hereafter willing to adventure in the cause, the conclusion will not be unreasonable, that no man is destitute of a consciousness that the cause is not a good one. Meantime it is the business of him whose enquiries have conducted him to the conclusion that the cause is not good, to exhibit the evidence upon which the con- clusion is founded. It happens upon the subject of war, more than upon almost any other subject of human enquiry, that the individual finds it difficult to contemplate its merits with an uninfluenced mind. He finds it difficult to examine it as it would be examined by a philosopher to whom the subject was new. He is familiar with its details ; he is habituated to the idea of its miseries ; he has perhaps never doubted, because he has never questioned, its rectitude ; nay, he has associated with it ideas not of splendor only but of honor and of merit. That such an enquirer will not, without some effort of abstraction, examine the ques- tion with impartiality and justice, is plain ; and there- fore the first business of him who would satisfy his mind respecting the lawfulness of war, is to divest him- self of all those habits of thought and feeling which have been the result not of reflection and judgment, but of the ordinary associations of life. And perhaps he may derive some assistance in this necessary but not easy dismissal of previous opinions, by referring first to some of the ordinary causes and consequences of war. The reference will enable us also more satisfactorily to CHAP. X.] CAUSES OF WAR. 395 estimate the moral character of the practice itself : for is no unimportant auxiliary in forming such an esti- mate of human actions or opinions, to know how they have been produced and what are their effects. CAUSES OF WAR. Of these causes one undoubtedly consists in the want of enquiry. We have been accustomed from earliest life to a familiarity with its ' ' pomp and cir- cumstance ; " soldiers have passed us at every step, and battles and victories have been the topic of every one around us. It therefore becomes familiarized to all our thoughts and interwoven with all our associa- tions. We have never enquired whether these things should be : the question does not even suggest itself. We acquiesce in it, as we acquiesce in the rising of the sun without any other idea than that it is a part of the ordinary processess of the world. And how are we to feel disapprobation of a system that we do not ex- amine, and of the nature of which we do not think ? Want of enquiry has been the means by which long- continued practices, whatever has been their enormity, have obtained the general concurrence of the world, and by which they have continued to pollute or de- grade it, long after the few who enquire into their nature have discovered them to be bad. It was by these means that the slave trade was so long tolerated by this land of humanity. Men did not think of its iniquity. We were induced to think, and we soon ab- horred, and then abolished it. Of the effects of this want of enquiry we have indeed frequent examples upon the subject before us. Many who have all their lives concluded that war is lawful and right, have found, when they began to examine the question, that their conclusions were founded upon no evidence ; — that they 39^ CAUSES OF WAR. [ESSAY III. had believed in its rectitude not because they had pos- sessed themselves of proof, but because they had never enquired whether it was capable of proof or not. In the present moral state of the world, one of the first concerns of him who would discover pure morality should be, to question the purity of that which now obtains. Another cause of our complacency with war, and therefore another cause of war itself, consists in that callousness to human misery which the custom in- duces. They who are shocked at a single murder on the highway, hear with indifference of the slaughter of a thousand on the field. They whom the idea of a single corpse would thrill with terror, contemplate that of heaps of human carcasses mangled by human hands, with frigid indifference. If a murder is committed, the narrative is given in the public newspaper, with many adjectives of horror — with many expressions of com- miseration, and many hopes that the perpetrator will be detected. In the next paragraph, the editor, per- haps, tells us that he has hurried a second 'edition to the press, in order that he may be the first to glad the public with the intelligence, that in an engagement which has just taken place, eight hundred and fifty of the enemy were killed. Now, is not this latter intelli- gence eight hundred and fifty times as deplorable as the first? Yet the first is the subject of our sorrow, and this — of our joy ! The inconsistency and dispro- portionateness which has been occasioned in our senti- ments of benevolence, offers a curious moral phe- nomenon. * * Part of the Declaration and Oath prescribed to be taken by Catholics is this: "I do solemnly declare before God, that I believe that no act in itself unjust, immoral, or wicked, can ever be justified or excused by or under pretence or color that it was done either for the good of the church or in obedience to CHAP. X.] CAUSES OF WAR. 397 The immolations of the Hindoos fill us with compas- sion or horror, and we are zealously laboring to pre- vent them. The sacrifices of life by our own criminal executions, are the subject of our anxious commisera- tion, and we are strenuously endeavoring to diminish their number. We feel that the life of a Hindoo or a malefactor is a serious thing, and that nothing but imperious necessity should induce us to destroy the one, or to permit the destruction of the other. Yet what are these sacrifices of life in comparison with the sacrifices of war? In the late campaign in Russia, there fell, during one hundred and seventy-three days in succession, an average of two thousand nine hun- dred men per day : more than five hundred thousand human beings in less than six months ! And most of any ecclesiastical power whatsoever. ' ' This declaration is re- quired as a solemn act, and is supposed, of course, to involve a great and sacred principle of rectitude. We propose the same declaration to be taken by military men, with the alteration of two words. " I do solemnly declare before God, that I believe that no act in itself unjust, immoral, or wicked, can ever be justified or excused by or under pretence or color that it was done either for the good of the state or in obedience to any military power whatsoever. ' ' How would this declaration assort with the customary practice of the soldier? Put state for church, and military for ecclesiastical, and then the world thinks that acts in themselves most unjust, immoral, and wicked, are not only justified and excused, but very meritorious : for in the whole system of warfare, justice and morality are utterly disre- garded. Are those who approve of this Catholic declaration conscious of the grossness of their own inconsistency ? Or will they tell us that the interests of the state are so paramount to those of the church, that what would be wickedness in the ser- vice of one, is virtue in the service of the other ? The truth we suppose to be, that so intense is the power of public opinion, that of the thousands who approve the Catholic declarations and the practices of war, there are scarcely tens who even perceive their own inconsistency. — Mem. in the MS. OF THB ■UNIVERSITY 39$ CAUSES OF WAR. [ ESSAY III. these victims expired with peculiar intensity of suffer- ing. We are carrying our benevolence to the Indies, but what becomes of it in Russia, or at Leipsic ? We are laboring to save a few lives from the gallows, but where is our solicitude to save them on the field ? I^ife is life wheresoever it be sacrificed, and has every where equal claims to our regard. I am not now say- ing that war is wrong, but that we regard its miseries with an indifference with which we regard no others : that if our sympathy were reasonably excited respect- ing them, we should be powerfully prompted to avoid war ; and that the want of this reasonable and virtuous sympathy, is one cause of its prevalence in the world. And a?iother consists in national irritability. It is assumed (not indeed upon the most rational grounds) •that the best way of supporting the dignity, and main- taining the security of a nation is, when occasions of disagreement arise, to assume a high attitude and a fearless tone. We keep ourselves in a state of irrita- bility which is continually alive to occasions of offence ; and he that is prepared to be offended readily finds offences. A jealous sensibility sees insults and injuries where sober eyes see nothing, and nations thus surround themselves with a sort of artificial ten- tacula, which they throw wide in quest of irritation, and by which they are stimulated to revenge by every touch of accident or inadvertency. They who are easily offended will also easily offend. What is the experience of private life ? The man who is always on the alert to discover trespasses on his honor or his rights, never fails to quarrel with his neighbors. Such a person may be dreaded as a torpedo. We may fear, but we vShall not love him ; and fear, without love, easily lapses into enmity. There are, therefore, many feuds and litigations in the life of such a man, that would never have disturbed its quiet if he had not CHAP. X.] CAUSES OF WAR. 399 captiously snarled at the trespasses of accident, and sav- agely retaliated insignificant injuries. The viper that we chance to molest, we suffer to live if he continue to be quiet ; but if he raise himself in menaces of de- struction we knock him on the head. It is with nations as with men. If on every offence we fly to arms, we shall of necessity provoke exasper- ation ; and if we exasperate a people as petulant as ourselves we may probably continue to butcher one another, until we cease only from emptiness of ex- chequers or weariness of slaughter. To threaten war, is therefore often equivalent to beginning it. In the present state of men's principles, it is not probable that one nation will observe another levying men, and building ships, and founding cannon, without provid- ing men, and ships, and cannon themselves ; and when both are thus threatening and defying, what is the hope that there will not be a war ? If nations fought only when they could not be at peace, there would be very little fighting in the world. The wars that are waged for ' ' insults to flags, ' ' and an endless train of similar motives, are perhaps generally attributable to the irritability of our pride. We are at no pains to appear pacific towards the offender : our remonstrance is a threat ; and the nation which would give satisfaction to an enquiry, will give no other answer to a menace than a menace in return. At length we begin to fight, not because w T e are aggrieved, but because we are angry. One example may be offered : " In 1789, a small Spanish vessel committed some violence in Nootka Sound, under the pretence that the country belonged to Spain. This appears to have been the principal ground of offence ; and with this both the government and the people of England were very angry. The irritability and haughtiness which they manifested were unaccountable to the 400 CAUSES OF WAR. [ESSAY III Spaniards, and the peremptory tone was imputed by Spain, not to the feelings of offended dignity and violated justice, but to some lurking enmity, and some secret designs which we did not choose to avow. 1 '* If the tone had been less peremptory and more rational, no such suspicion would have been excited, and the hostility which was consequent upon the suspicion would, of course, have been avoided. Happily the English were not so passionate, but that before they proceeded to fight they negotiated, and settled the affair amicably. The preparations for this foolish war cost, however, three millions one hundred and thirty- three thousand pounds ! So well indeed is national irritability known to be an efficient cause of war, that they who from any motive wish to promote it, endeavor to rouse the temper of a people by stimulating their passions — just as the boys in our streets stimulate two dogs to fight. These persons talk of the insults, or the encroachments, or the con- tempts of the destined enemy, with every artifice of aggravation ; they tell us of foreigners who want to trample upon our rights, of rivals who ridicule our power, of foes who will crush, and of tyrants who will enslave us. They pursue their object, certainly, by efficacious means : they desire a war, and therefore irri- tate our passions ; and when men are angry they are easily persuaded to fight. That this cause of war is morally bad — that petu- lance and irritability are wholly incompatible with Christianity, these pages have repeatedly shown. Wars are often promoted from considerations of in- terest, as well as from passion. The love of gain adds its influence to our other motives to support them ; and without other motives, we know that this love is sufficient to give great obliquity to the moral judgment, * Smollett's England. CHAP. X.] CAUSES OF WAR. 401 and tempt us to many crimes. During a war of ten years there will always be many whose income depends on its continuance ; and a countless host of commissar- ies, and purveyors, and agents, and mechanics, com- mend a war because it fills their pockets. And unhappily, if money is in prospect, the desolation of a kingdom is often of little concern : destruction and slaughter are not to be put in competition with a hun- dred a-year. In truth, it seems sometimes to be the system of the conductors of a war, to give to the sources of gain endless ramifications. The more there are who profit by it the more numerous are its supporters ; and thus the projects of a cabinet become identified with the wishes of a people, and both are gratified in the prosecution of war. A support more systematic and powerful is however given to war, because it offers to the higher ranks of society a profession which unites gentility with profit, and which, without the vulgarity of trade maintains or enriches them. It is of little consequence to enquire whether the distinction of vulgarity between the toils of war and the toils of commerce be fictitious. In the abstract, it is fictitious ; but of this species of reputation public opinion holds the arbitrium etjus et norma ; and public opinion is in favor of war. The army and the navy, therefore, afford to the middle and higher classes a most acceptable profession. The profession of arms is like the profession of law or physic — a regular source of employment and profit. Boys are educated for the army as they are educated for the bar ; and parents appear to have no other idea than that war is part of the business of the world. Of younger sons, whose fathers in pursuance of the un- happy system of primogeniture, do not choose to sup- port them at the expense of the heir, the army and the navy are the common resource. They would not know 402 CAUSES OF WAR. [ESSAY III. what to do without them. To many of these the news of a peace is a calamity ; and though they may not lift their voices in favor of new hostilities for the sake of gain, it is unhappily certain that they often secretly desire it. It is in this manner that much of the rank, the influ- ence, and the wealth of a country become interested in the promotion of wars ; and when a custom is promoted by wealth, and influence, and rank, what is the wonder that it should be continued ? It is said, (if my memory serves me, by Sir Walter Raleigh,) " he thattakethup his rest to live by this profession shall hardly be an honest man." By depending upon war for a subsistence, a powerful inducement is given to desire it ; and when the question of war is to be decided, it is to be feared that the whispers of interest will prevail, and that humanity, and religion, and conscience will be sacrificed to pro- mote it. Of those causes of war which consist in the ambition of princes or statesmen or commanders, it is not neces- sary to speak, because no one to whom the world will listen is willing to defend them. Statesmen however have, besides ambition, many purposes of nice policy which make wars convenient : and when they have such purposes, they are sometimes cool speculators in the lives of men. They who have much patronage have many dependents, and they who have many dependents have much power. By a war, thousands become dependent on a minister ; and if he be disposed, he can often pursue schemes of guilt, and intrench himself in unpunished wickedness, because the war enables him to silence the clamor of opposition by an office, and to secure the suffrages of venality by a bribe. He has therefore many motives to war — in ambition, that does not refer to conquest ; or in fear, CHAP. X.] CAUSES OF WAR. 403 that extends only to his office or his pocket : and fear or ambition, are sometimes more interesting considera- tions than the happiness and the lives of men. Cab- inets have in truth, many secret motives to wars of which the people know little. They talk in public of invasions of right, of breaches of treaty, of the support of honor, of the necessity of retaliation, when these mo- tives have no influence on their determinations. Some untold purpose of expediency, or the private quarrel of a prince or the pique or anger of a minister, are often the real motives to a contest, whilst its promoters are loudly talking of the honor or the safety of the country. But perhaps the most operative cause of the popu- larity of war, and of the facility with which we engage in it, consists in this ; that an idea of glory is attached to military exploits, and of honor to the military pro- fession. The glories of battle, and of those who perish in it, or who return in triumph to their country, are favorite topics of declamation w 7 ith the historian, the biographer, and the poet. They have told us a thou- sand times of dying heroes, who ' ' resign their lives amidst the joys of conquest, and, filled with their country's glory, smile in death;" and thus every excitement that eloquence and genius can command, is employed to arouse that ambition of fame which can be gratified only at the expense of blood. Into the nature and principles of this fame and glory we have already enquired ; and in the view alike of virtue and of intellect, they are low and bad. * ' ' Glory is the most selfish of all passions except love."f — ,J I can- not tell how or why the love of glory is a less selfish principle than the love of riches. ' ' % Philosophy and intellect may therefore well despise it, and Christianity * See Essay II, c. 10. f West. Rev. No. 1, for 1827. \ Mem. and Rem. of the late Jane Taylor. 404 CAUSES OF WAR. [ESSAY III. silently, yet emphatically, condemns it. "Christian- ity," says Bishop Watson, "quite annihilates the dis- position for martial glory." Another testimony, and from an advocate of war, goes further — No part of the heroic character is the subject of the " commendation, or precepts, or example of Christ ; " but the character the most opposite to the heroic is the subject of them all. * Such is the foundation of the glory which has for so many ages deceived and deluded multitudes of man- kind ! Upon this foundation a structure has been raised so vast, so brilliant, so attractive, that the greater portion of mankind are content to gaze in ad- miration, without any inquiry into its basis or any splicitude for its durabilty. If, however, it should be, that the gorgeous temple will be able to stand only till Christian truth and light become predominant, it surely will be wise of those who seek a niche in its apartments as their paramount and final good, to pause ere they pro- ceed. If they desire a reputation that shall outlive guilt and fiction, let them look to the basis of military fame. If this fame should one day sink into oblivion and con- tempt, it will not be the first instance in which wide- spread glory has been found to be a glittering bubble, that has burst and been forgotten. Look at the days of chivalry. Of the ten thousand Quixotes of the middle ages, where is now the honor or the fame ? yet poets once sang their praises, and the chronicler of their achievements believed he was recording an ever- lasting fame. Where are now the glories of the tour- nament ? glories 11 Of which all Europe rang from side to side." Where is the champion whom princesses caressed and nobles envied? Where are now the triumphs of Duns * Paley : Evidences of Christianity, p. 2, c. 2. CHAP. X.] CAUSES OF WAR. 405 Scot us, and where are the folios that perpetiiated his fame ? The glories of war have indeed outlived these ; human passions are less mutable than human follies ; but I am willing to avow my conviction, that these glories are alike destined to sink into forgetfulness ; and that the time is approaching when the applauses of heroism, and the splendors of conquest, will be remembered only as follies and iniquities that are past. L,et him who seeks for fame, other than that which an era of Christian purity will allow, make haste ; for every hour that he delays its acquisition will shorten its dur- ation. This is certain if there be certainty in the promises of heaven. Of this factitious glory as a cause of war, Gibbon speaks in the Decline and Fall. ' ' As long as mankind, ' ' says he, "shall continue to bestow more liberal ap- plause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters. " " ' Tis strange to imagine, ' ' says the Earl of Shaftesbury, that war, which of all things appears the most savage, should be the passion of the most heroic spirits." — But he gives us the rea- son. — " By a small misguidance of the affection, a lover of mankind becomes a ravager ; a hero and deliverer becomes an oppressor and destroyer."* These are amongst the great perpetual causes of war. And what are they ? First, that we do not en- quire whether war is right or wrong. Secondly, That we are habitually haughty and irritable in our inter- course with other nations. Thirdly, That war is a source of profit to individuals, and establishes profes- sions which are very convenient to the middle and higher ranks of life. Fourthly, That it gratifies the ambition of public men, and serves the purposes oj state policy. Fifthly, that notions of glory are attached to * Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humor. 406 CONSEQUENCES OF WAR. [ESSAY III. warlike affairs ; which glory is factitious and impure. In the view of reason, and especially in the view of religion, what is the character of these causes ? Are they pure? Are they honorable? Are they, when connected with their effects, compatible with the moral law ? — Lastly, and especially, is it probable that a sys- tem of which these are the great ever-during causes, can itself be good or right ? CONSEQUENCES OF WAR. To expatiate upon the miseries which war brings upon mankind, appears a trite and a needless employ- ment. We all know that its evils are great and dread- ful. Yet the very circumstance that the knowledge is familiar, may make it unoperative upon our sentiments and our conduct. It is not the intensity of misery, it is not the extent of evil alone, which is necessary to animate us to that exertion which evil and misery should excite ; if it were, surely we should be much more averse than we now are to contribute, in word or in action, to the promotion of war. But there are mischiefs attendant upon the system which are not to every man thus familiar, and on which, for that reason, it is expedient to remark. In referring especially to some of those moral consequences of war which commonly obtain little of our attention, it may be observed, that social and political considera- tions are necessarily involved in the moral tendency ; for the happiness of society is always diminished by the diminution of morality ; and enlightened policy knows that the greatest support of a state is the virtue of the people. And yet the reader should bear in mind — what noth- ing but the frequency of the calamity can make him forget — the intense sufferings and irreparable depriva- tions which one battle inevitably entails upon private CHAP. X.] CONSEQUENCES OF WAR. 407 life. These are calamities of which the world thinks little, and which, if it thought of them, it could not remove. A father or a husband can seldom be re- placed ; a void is created in the domestic felicity which there is little hope that the future will fill. By the slaughter of a war, there are thousands who weep in unpitied and unnoticed secrecy, whom the world does not see ; and thousands who retire, in silence, to hope- less poverty, for whom it does not care. To these, the conquest of a kingdom is of little importance. The loss of a protector or a friend is ill repaid by empty glory. An addition of territory may add titles to a king, but the brilliancy of a crown throws little light upon domestic gloom. It is not my intention to insist upon these calamities, intense, and irreparable, and un- numbered as they are ; but those who begin a war without taking them into their estimates of its conse- quences, must be regarded as, at most, half -seeing pol- iticians. The legitimate object of political measures is the good of the people ; — and a great sum of good a war must produce, if it out-balances even this portion of its mischiefs. Nor should we be forgetful of that dreadful part of all warfare, the destruction of mankind. The fre- quency with which this destruction is represented to our minds, has almost extinguished our perception of its awfulness and horror. Between the years 1141 and 18 15, an interval of six hundred and seventy years, our country has been at war, with France alone, two hundred arid sixty-six years. If to this we add our wars with other countries, probably we shall find that one-half of the last six or seven centuries has been spent by this country in war ! A dreadful picture of human violence ! How many of our fellow-men, of our fellow- Christians, have these centuries of slaughter cut 408 CONSEQUENCES OE WAR. [ESSAY III. off ! What is the sum total of the misery of their deaths ?* When political writers expatiate upon the extent and the evils of taxation, they do not sufficiently bear in mind the reflection, that almost all our taxation is the effect of war. A man declaims upon national debts. He ought to declaim upon the parent of those debts. Do we reflect that if heavy taxation entails evils and misery upon the community, that misery and those evils are inflicted upon us by war ? The amount of supplies in Queen Anne's reign was about seventy mil- lions ;f and of this about sixty-six millions! was ex- pended in war. Where is our equivalent good ? Such considerations ought, undoubtedly, to influence the conduct of public men in their disagreements with other states even if higher considerations do not influ- ence it. They ought to form part of the calculations of the evil of hostility. I believe that a greater mass of human suffering and loss of human enjoyment are occasioned by the pecuniary distresses of a war, than any ordinary advantages of a war compensate. But this consideration seems too remote to obtain our notice. Anger at offence or hope of triumph, overpowers the sober calculations of reason, and outbalances the weight of after and long-continued calamities. The only ques- tion appears to be, whether taxes enough for a war can be raised, and whether a people will be willing to pay them. But the great question ought to be, (setting questions of Christianity aside,) whether the nation * "Since the peace of Amiens more than four millions of human beings have been sacrificed to the personal ambition of Napoleon Bonaparte." — Quarterly Review, 25 Art. 1, 1825. f The sum was ^69,815,457. % The sum was ^65,853,799. " The nine years' war of 1739, cost this nation upwards of sixty-four millions without gaining any object." Chalmer's Estimate of the Strength of Great Britain. CHAP. X.] CONSEQUENCES OF WAR. 409 will gain as much by the war as they will lose by tax- ation and its other calamities. If the happiness of the people were, what it ought to be, the primary and the ultimate object of national measures, I think that the policy which pursued this object, would often find that even the pecuniary dis- tresses resulting from a war make a greater deduction from the quantum of felicity, than those evils which the war may have been designed to avoid. ' ' But war does more harm to the morals of men than even to their property and persons."* If, indeed, it depraves our morals, more than it injures our persons and deducts from our property, how enormous must its mischiefs be ! I do not know whether the greater sum of moral evil resulting from war, is suffered by those who are imme- diately engaged in it, or by the public. The mischief is most extensive upon the community, but upon the profession it is most intense. " Rara fides pietasque viris qui castra sequuntur" — L,ucan. No one pretends to applaud the morals of an army, and for its religion, few think of it at all. The fact is too notorious to be insisted upon, that thousands who had filled their stations in life with propriety, and been vir. tuous from principle, have lost, by a military life, both the practice and the regard of morality ; and when they have become habituated to the vices of war, have laughed at their honest and plodding brethren, who are still spiritless enough for virtue or stupid enough for piety. Does any man ask, What occasions depravity in mil- itary life? I answer in the words of Robert Hall.f " War reverses, with respect to its objects, all the rules of morality. It is nothing less than a temporary repeal * Erasmus. f Sermon, 1822. 4IO CONSEQUENCES OE WAR. [ESSAY III. of all the principles of virtue. It is a system out of which almost all the virtues are excluded, and in which nearly all the vices are incorporated." And it requires no sagacity to discover, that those who are engaged in a practice which reverses all the rules of morality — which repeals all the principles of virtue, and in which nearly all the vices are incorporated, cannot, without the intervention of a miracle, retain their minds and morals undepraved. I^ook for illustration to the familiarity with the plunder of property and the slaughter of mankind which war induces. He who plunders the citizen of another nation without remorse or reflection, and bears away the spoil with triumph, will inevitably lose some- thing of his principles of probity.* He who is familiar with slaughter, who has himself often perpetrated it, and who exults in the perpetration, will not retain un- depraved the principles of virtue. His moral feelings are blunted ; his moral vision is obscured ; his princi- ples are shaken ; an inroad is made upon their integ- rity, and it is an inroad that makes after inroads the more easy. Mankind do not generally resist the influ- ence of habit. If we rob and shoot those who are " enemies " to-day, we are in some degree prepared to shoot and rob those who are not enemies to-morrow. I^aw may indeed still restrain us from violence ; but the power and efficiency of principle is diminished : and this alienation of the mind from the practice, the love, and the perception of Christian purity, therefore, of necessity extends its influence to the other circum- stances of life. The whole evil is imputable to war ; and we say that this evil forms a powerful evidence * See Smollett's England, vol. 4, p. 376. "This terrible truth, which I cannot help repeating, must be acknowledged : — indifference and selfishness are the predominant feelings in an army." Miot's M^moires de l'Exp£dition en Egypte, &c. Mem. in the MSS. CHAP. X.I CONSEQUENCES OE WAR. 411 against it, whether we direct that evidence to the ab- stract question of its lawfulness, or to the practical question of its expediency. That can scarcely be law- ful which necessarily occasions such wide-spread im- morality. That can scarcely be expedient, which is so pernicious to virtue, and therefore to the state. The economy of war requires of every soldier an im- plicit submission to his superior ; and this submission is required of every gradation of rank to that above it. ' ' I swear to obey the orders of the officers who are set over me: so help me, God." This system maybe necessary to hostile operations, but I think it is un- questionably adverse to intellectual and moral excel- lence. The very nature of unconditional obedience implies the relinquishment of the use of the reasoning powers. Little more is required of the soldier than that he be obedient and brave. His obedience is that of an animal, which is moved by a goad or a bit, without judgment of his own ; and his bravery is that of a mastiff that fights whatever mastiff others put before him.* It is obvious that- in such agency the intellect and the understanding have little part. Now I think that this is important. He who, with whatever motive, resigns the direction of his conduct implicitly to another, surely cannot retain that erectness and inde- pendence of mind, that manly consciousness of mental freedom, which is one of the highest privileges of our nature. A British captain declares that ' \ the tendency of strict discipline, sucli as prevails on board ships of war, where almost every act of a man's life is regulated by the orders of his superiors, is to weaken the faculty * By one article of the Constitutional Code even of republican France, "the army were expressly prohibited from deliberating on any subject whatever." 412 CONSEQUENCES OE WAR. [ESSAY III. of independent thought."* Thus the rational being becomes reduced in the intellectual scale : an encroachment is made upon the integrity of its inde- pendence. God has given us, individually, capacities for the regulation of our individual conduct. To re- resign its direction, therefore, to the absolute disposal of another, appears to be an unmanly and unjustifiable relinquishment of the privileges which he has granted to us. And the effect is obviously bad ; for although no character will apply universally to any large class of men, and although the intellectual character of the military profession does not result only from this un- happy subjection ; yet it will not be disputed, that the honorable exercise of intellect amongst that profession is not relatively great. It is not from them that we expect, because it is not from them that we generally find, those vigorous exertions of intellect which dignify our nature and which extend the boundaries of human knowledge. But the intellectual effects of military subjection form but a small portion of. its evils. The great mis- chief is, that it requires the relinquishment of our moral agency ; that it requires us to do what is opposed to our consciences, and what we know to be wrong. A soldier must obey, how criminal soever the com- mand, and how criminal soever he knows it to be. It is certain, that of those who compose armies, many commit actions which they believe to be wicked, and which they would not commit but for the obligations of a military life. Although .a soldier determinately believes that the war is unjust, although he is con- vinced that his particular part of the service is atro- ciously criminal, still he must proceed — he must * Captain Basil Hall : Voyage to L,oo Choo, c. 2. We make no distinction between the military and naval professions, and employ one word to indicate both. CHAP. X.] CONSEQUENCES OF WAR. 4I3 prosecute the purposes of injustice or robbery, he must participate in the guilt, and be himself a robber. To what a situation is a rational and responsible being reduced, who commits actions, good or bad, at the word of another ? I can conceive no greater degra- dation. It is the lowest, the final abjectness of the moral nature. It is this if we abate the glitter of war, and if we add this glitter it is nothing more. Such a resignation of our moral agency is not con- tended for, or tolerated in any one other circumstance of human life. War stands upon this pinnacle of de- pravity alone. She, only, in the supremacy of crime, has told us that she has abolished even the obligation to be virtuous. Some writers who have perceived the monstrousness of this system, have told us that a soldier should as- sure himself, before he engages in a war, that it is a lawful and just one ; and they acknowledge that, if he does not feel this assurance, he is a " murderer. ' ' But how is he to know that the war is just ? It is fre- quently difficult for the people distinctly to discover what the objects of a war are. And if the soldier knew that it was just in its commencement, how is he to know that it will continue just in its prosecution? Every war is, in some parts of its course, wicked and unjust; and who can tell what that course will be? You say — When he discovers any inj ustice or wicked- ness, let him withdraw : we answer, He cannot ; and the truth is, that there is no way of avoiding the evil, but by avoiding the army. It is an enquiry of much interest, under what cir- cumstances of responsibility a man supposes himself to be placed, who thus abandons and violates his own sense of rectitude and of his duties. Either he is re- sponsible for his actions, or he is not ; and the question 414 CONSEQUENCES OE WAR. [ESSAY III. is a serious one to determine.* Christianity has cer- tainly never stated any cases in which personal re- sponsibility ceases. If she admits such cases, she has at least not told us so ; but she has told us, explicitly and repeatedly, that she does require individual obe- dience and impose individual responsibility. She has made no exceptions to the imperativeness of her obli- gations, whether we are required by others to neglect them or not ; and I can discover in her sanctions no reason to suppose, that in her final adjudications she admits the plea, that another required us to do that which she required us to forbear. — But it may be feared, it may be believed, that how little soever religion will abate of the responsibility of those who obey, she will impose not a little upon those who command. They, at least, are answerable for the enormities of war : un- less, indeed, any one shall tell me that responsibility attaches nowhere ; that that which would be wicked- ness in another man, is innocence in a soldier ; and that heaven has granted to the directors of war a privileged immunity, by virtue of which crime incurs no guilt and receives no punishment. And here it is fitting to observe, that the obedience to arbitrary power which war exacts, possesses more of the character of servility, and even of slavery, than we are accustomed to suppose. I will acknowledge that when I see a company of men in a stated dress, * Vattel indeed tells us that soldiers ought to ' • submit their judgment." " What," says he, "would be the consequence, if at every step of the Sovereign the subjects were at liberty to weigh the justice of his reasons, and refuse to march to a war which, to them, might appear unjust? " Law of Nat. b. 3, c. 11, sec. 187. Gisborne holds very different language. "It is," he says, " at all times the duty of an Englishman steadfastly to decline obeying any orders of his superiors, which his conscience should tell him were in any degree impious or unjust." Duties of Men. CHAP. X.] CONSEQUENCES OF WAR. 415 and of a stated color, ranged, rank and file, in the at- titude of obedience, turning or walking at the word of another, now changing the position of a limb and now altering the angle of a foot, I feel that there is some- thing in the system that is wrong — something incon- gruous with the proper dignity, with the intellectual station of man. I do not know whether I shall be charged with indulging in idle sentiment or idle affecta- tion. If I hold unusual language upon the subject, let it be remembered that the subject is itself unusual. I will retract my affectation and sentiment, if the reader will show me any case in life parallel to that to which I have applied it. No one questions whether military power be arbi- trary. And what are the customary feelings of man- kind with respect to a subjection to arbitrary power ? How do we feel and think, when we hear of a person who is obliged to do whatever other men command, and who, the moment he refuses, is punished for at- tempting to be free ? If a man orders his servant to do a given action, he is at liberty, if he thinks the action improper, or if, from any other cause, he choose not to do it, to refuse his obedience. Far other is the nature of military subjection. The soldier is compelled to obey, whatever be his inclination or his will. It matters not whether he have entered the service voluntarily or involuntarily. Being in it, he has but one alternative — submission to arbitrary power, or punishment — the punishment of death perhaps — for refusing to submit. Let the reader imagine to himself any other cause or purpose for which freemen shall be subjected to such a condition, and he will then see that condition in its proper light. The influence of habit and the gloss of public opinion make situations that would otherwise be loathsome and revolting, not only tolerable but pleasurable. Take away this influence 416 CONSEQUENCES OF WAR. [ESSAY III, and this gloss from the situation of a soldier, and what should we call it ? We should call it a state of degra- dation and of bondage. But habit and public opinion, although they may influence notions, cannot alter things. It is a state intellectually, morally, and politically, of bondage and degradation. But the reader will say that this submission to arbi- trary power is necessary to the prosecution of war. I know it ; and that is the very point for observation. It is because it is necessary to war that it is noticed here ; for a brief but clear argument results : — That custom to which such a state of mankind is necessary, must inevitably be bad ; — it must inevitably be adverse to rectitude and to Christianity . So deplorable is the bond- age which war produces, that we often hear, during a war, of subsidies from one nation to another, for the loan, or rather for the purchase of an army. — To bor- row ten thousand men who know nothing of our quarrel and care nothing for it, to help us to slaughter their fellows ! To pay for their help in guineas to their sovereign ! Well has it been exclaimed, " War is a game, that, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at." A prince sells his subjects as a farmer sells his cattle ; and sends them to destroy a people, whom, if they had been higher bidders, he would perhaps have sent them to defend. The historian has to record such miserable facts, as that a potentate's troops were, dur- ing one war, ' ' hired to the king of Great Britain and his enemies alternately, as the scale of convenience happened to preponderate ! " * That a large number of persons with the feelings and reason of men, should coolly listen to the bargain of their sale, should com- pute the guineas that will pay for their blood, and * Smollet's England, v. 4, p. 330. CHAP. X.] CONSEQUENCES OE WAR. 417 should then quietly be led to a place where they are to kill people towards whom they have no animosity, is simply wonderful. To what has inveteracy of habit reconciled mankind ! I have no capacity of supposing a case of slavery, if slavery be denied in this. Men have been sold in another continent, and philanthropy has been shocked and aroused to interference ; yet these men were sold not to be slaughtered but to work : but of the purchases and sales of the world's political slave- dealers, what does philanthropy think or care ? There is no reason to doubt that, upon other subjects of horror, similar familiarity of habit would produce similar effects ; or that he who heedlessly contemplates the purchase of an army, wants nothing but this familiarity to make him heedlessly look on at the com- mission of parricide. Yet I do not know whether, in its effects on the mil- itary character, the greatest moral evil of war is to be sought. Upon the community its effects are indeed less apparent, because they who are the secondary sub- jects of the immoral influence, are less intensely affected by it than the immediate agents of its diffusion. But whatever is deficient in the degree of evil, is probably more than compensated by its extent. The influence is like that of a continual and noxious vapor : we neither regard nor perceive it, but it secretly under- mines the moral health. Every one knows that vice is contagious. The de- pravity of one man has always a tendency to deprave his neighbors, and it therefore requires no unusual acuteness to discover, that the prodigious mass of im- morality and crime which is accumulated by a war, must have a powerful effect in ' ' demoralizing ' ' the public. But there is one circumstance connected with the injurious influence of war, which makes it pecul- iarly operative and malignant. It is, that we do not 4l8 CONSEQUENCES OF WAR. [ESSAY III. hate or fear the influence, and do not fortify ourselves against it. Other vicious influences insinuate them- selves into our minds by stealth ; but this we receive with open embrace. Glory, and patiotism, and brav- ery, and conquest, are bright and glittering things. Who, w r hen he is looking, delighted, upon these things, is armed against the mischiefs which they veil ? The evil is, in its own nature, of almost universal operation. During a war, a whole people become familiarized with the utmost excesses of enormity — with the utmost intensity of human wickedness — and they rejoice and exult in them ; so that there is proba- bly not an individual in a hundred who does not lose something of his Christian principles by a ten years' war. "It is, in my mind," said Fox, "no small misfor- tune to live at a period when scenes of horror and blood are frequent." — " One of the most evil consequences of war is, that it tends to render the hearts of mankind callous to the feelings and sentiments of humanity."* Those who know what the moral law of God is, and who feel an interest in the virtue and the happiness of the world, will not regard the animosity of party and the restlessness of resentment which are produced by a war, as trifling evils. If any thing be opposite to Christianity, it is retaliation and revenge. In the ob- ligation to restrain these dispositions much of the char- acteristic placability of Christianity consists. The very essence and spirit of our religion are abhorrent from resentment. — The very essence and spirit of war are promotive of resentment ; and what, then, must be their mutual adverseness ? That war excites these pas- sions, needs not to be proved. When a war is in con- templation, or when it has been begun, what are the endeavors of its promoters ? They animate us by every * Fell's Life of C. J. Fox. CHAP. X.] CONSEQUENCES OF WAR. 419 artifice of excitement to hatred and animosity. Pam- phlets, placards, newspapers, caricatures — every agent is in requisition to irritate us into malignity. Nay, dreadful as it is, the pulpit resounds with declamations to stimulate our too sluggish resentment, and to invite us to slaughter. — And thus the most unchristianlike of all our passions, the passion which it is most the object of our religion to repress, is excited and fostered. Christianity cannot be flourishing under circumstances like these. The more effectually we are animated to war, the more nearly we extinguish the dispositions of our religion. War and Christianity are like the oppo- site ends of a balance, of which one is depressed by the elevation of the other. These are the consequences which make war dread- ful to a state. Slaughter and devastation are suffi- ciently terrible, but their collateral evils are their greatest. It is the immoral feeling that war diffuses — it is the depravation of principle, which forms the mass of its mischief. To attempt to pursue the consequences of war through all their ramifications of evil, were, however, both endless and vain. It is a moral gangrene, which diffuses its humors through the whole political and social system. To expose its mischief, is to exhibit all evil ; for there is no evil which it does not occasion, and it has much that is peculiar to itself. That, together with its multiplied evils, war produces some good, I have no wish to deny. I know that it sometimes elicits valuable qualities which had other- wise been concealed, and that it often produces collat- eral and adventitious, and sometimes immediate advantages. If all this could be denied, it would be needless to deny it ; for it is of no consequence to the question whether it be proved. That any wide-ex- tended system should not produce some benefits, can 420 I,AWFUI,NESS OF WAR. [ESSAY III. never happen. In such a system , it were an unheard-of- purity of evil, which was evil without any mixture of good. — But, to compare the ascertained advantages of war with its ascertained mischiefs and to maintain a question as to the preponderance of the balance, im- plies, not ignorance, but disingenuousness, not inca- pacity to decide, but a voluntary concealment of truth. And why do we insist upon these consequences of war ! — Because the review prepares the reader for a more accurate judgment respecting its lawfulness. Because it reminds him what war is, and because, knowing and remembering what it is, he will be the better able to compare it with the standard of rectitude. LAWFULNESS OF WAR. I would recommend to him who would estimate the moral character of war, to endeavor to forget that he has ever presented to his mind the idea of a battle, and to endeavor to contemplate it with those emotions which it would excite in the mind of a being w T ho had never before heard of human slaughter. The prevail- ing emotions of such a being would be astonishment and horror. If he were shocked by the horribleness of the scene, he would be amazed at its absurdity. That a large number of persons should assemble by agree- ment, and deliberately kill one another, appears to the understanding a proceeding so preposterous, so mon- strous, that I think a being such as I have supposed would inevitably conclude that they were mad. Nor is it likely, if it were attempted to explain to him some motives to such conduct, that he would be able to com- prehend how any possible circumstances could make it reasonable. The ferocity and prodigious folly of the act w r ould, in his estimation, outbalance the weight of CHAP. X.] LAWFULNESS OF WAR. 421 every conceivable motive, and he would turn unsatis- fied away. " Astonished at the madness of mankind." There is an advantage in making suppositions such as these ; because when the mind has been familiar- ized to a practice, however monstrous or inhuman, it loses some of its sagacity of moral perception ; the practice is perhaps veiled in glittering fictions, or the mind is become callous to its enormities. But if the subject is, by some circumstance, presented to the mind unconnected w T ith any of its previous associations, we see it with a new judgment and new feelings ; and wonder, perhaps, that we have not felt so or thought so before. And such occasions it is the part of a wise man to seek ; since, if they never happen to us, it will often be difficult for us accurately to estimate the qual- ities of human actions, or to determine whether we approve them from a decision of our judgment, or whether we yield to them only the acquiescence of habit. It may properly be a subject of wonder that the arguments which are brought to justify a custom such as war receive so little investigation. It must be a studious ingenuity of mischief which could devise a practice more calamitous or horrible ; and yet it is a practice of which it rarely occurs to us to enquire into the necessity, or to ask whether it cannot be, or ought not to be avoided. In one truth, however, all will ac- quiesce — that the arguments in favor of such a practice should be unanswerably strong. Let it not be said that the experience and the prac- tice of other ages have superseded the necessity of en- quiry in our own ; that there can be no reason to question the lawfulness of that which has been sanc- tioned by forty centuries ; or that he who presumes to 422 I,AWFUI,NESS OF WAR. [ESSAY III. question it, is amusing himself with schemes of vision- ary philanthropy. "There is not, it maybe," says Lord Clarendon, " a greater obstruction to the investi- gation of truth or the improvement of knowledge, than the too frequent appeal, and the too supine resignation of our understanding to antiquity."* Whosoever pro- poses an alteration of existing institutions, will meet, from some men, with a sort of instinctive opposition, which appears to be influenced by no process of reason- ing, by no considerations of propriety or principles of rectitude which defends the existing system because it exists, and which would have equally defended its opposite if that had been the oldest. ■ ' Nor is it out of modesty that we have this resignation, or that we do, in truth, think those who have gone before us to be wiser than ourselves ; we are as proud and as peevish as any of our progenitors ; but it is out of laziness ; we will rather take their words than take the pains to ex- amine the reason they governed themselves by. "f To those who urge objections from the authority of ages, it is, indeed, a sufficient answer to say, that they apply to every long-continued custom. Slave-dealers urged them against the friends of the abolition ; Papists urged them against Wickliffe and Luther, and the Athenians probably thought it a good objection to an apostle, " that he seemed to be a setter forth of strange gods." It is some satisfaction to be able to give on a question of this nature, the testimony of some great minds against the lawfulness of war, opposed, as these testi- monies are, to the general prejudice and the general practice of the world. It has been observed by Bec- caria, that ' ' it is the fate of great truths to glow only like a flash of lightning amidst the dark clouds in which error has enveloped the universe;" and if our testi- monies are few or transient, it matters not, so that * Ivord Clarendon's Essays. t Id. CHAP. X.] LAWFULNESS OF WAR. 423 their light be the light of truth. There are, indeed, many, who in describing the horrible particulars of a siege or a battle, indulge in some declamation on the horrors of war, such as has been often repeated, and often applauded, and as often forgotten. But such declamations are of little value and of little effect ; he who reads the next paragraph finds, probably, that he is invited to follow the path to glory and to victory ; — to share the hero's da?iger and partake the hero's praise ; and he soon discovers that the moralizing parts of his author are the impulse of feelings rather than of prin- ciples, and thinks that though it may be very well to write, yet it is better to forget them. There are, however, testimonies, delivered in the calm of reflection, by acute and enlightened men, which may reasonably be allowed at least so much weight as to free the present enquiry from the charge of being wild or visionary. Christianity indeed needs no such auxiliaries ; but if they induce an examination of her duties, a wise man will not wish them to be dis- regarded. "They who defend war," says Erasmus, "must de- fend the dispositions which lead to war : and these dis- positions are absolutely forbidden by the gospel. — Since the time that Jesus Christ said, Put up thy sword into its scabbard, Christians ought not to go to war. — Christ suffered Peter to fall into an error in this matter, on purpose that, when he had put up Peter's sword, it might remain no longer a doubt that war was pro- hibited, which, before that order had been considered as allowable." — " Wickliffe seems to have thought it was wrong to take away the life of man on any account, and that war was utterly unlawful."* — "lam per- suaded," says the Bishop of Landaff, " that when the spirit of Christianity shall exert its proper influence war * Priestly. 424 LAWFULNESS OF WAR. [ESSAY III. will cease throughout the whole Christian world."* "War," says the same acute prelate, "has practices and principles peculiar to itself, which but ill quadrate with the rule of moral rectitude, and are quite abhorrent from the benignity of Christianity.''' f A living writer of eminence bears this remarkable testimony : — ' ' There is but one community of Christians in the world, and that unhappily of all communities one of the smallest, enlightened enough to understand the prohibition of war by our Divine Master ; in its plai?i, literal, and un- deniable sense, and conscientious enough to obey it, subduing the very instinct of nature to obedience. ' ' X Dr. Vicessimus Knox speaks in language equally specific: — " Morality and religion forbid war, in its motives, conduct and consequences." § Those who have attended to the mode in which the moral law is instituted in the expressions of the will of God, will have no difficulty in supposing that it con- tains no specific prohibition of war. Accordingly, if w r e be asked for such a prohibition, in the manner in which Thou shall ?iot kill is directed to murder, we willingly answer that no such prohibition exists ; — and it is not necessary to the argument. Even those who would re- quire such a prohibition, are themselves satisfied re- specting the obligation of many negative duties on which there has been no specific decision in the New Testament. They believe that suicide is not lawful : yet Christianity never forbade it. It can be shown, indeed, by implication and inference, that suicide could not have been allowed, and with this they are satisfied. Yet there is, probably, in the Christian * Life of Bishop Watson. | Id. % Southey's History of Brazil. \ Essays — The Paterines or Gazari of Italy in the nth, 12th, and 13th centuries " held that it was not lawful to bear arms or to kill mankind." CHAP. X.] ^AWfUI^NESS OF WAR. 425 scriptures, not a twentieth part of as much indirect evidence against the lawfulness of suicide as there is against the lawfulness of war. To those who require such a command as Thou shalt not engage in war, it is therefore sufficient to reply, that they require that, which, upon this and upon many other subjects, Christianity has not seen fit to give. We have had many occasions to illustrate, in the course of these disquisitions, the characteristic nature of the moral law as a law of benevolence. This benevo- lence, this good -will and kind affections towards one another, is placed at the basis of practical morality — it is " the fulfilling of the law " — it is the test of the validity of our pretensions to the Christian character. We have had occasion, too, to observe, that this law of benevolence is universally applicable to public affairs as well as to private, to the intercourse of nations as well as of men. Let us refer, then, to some of those requisitions of this law which appear peculiarly to re- spect the question of the moral character of war. Have peace one with another. — By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples ~, if ye have love one to another. Walk with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suf- fering, forbearing one another in love. Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one oj a7iother ; love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous : not rendering evil for evil, or railifig for railing. Be at peace among yourselves. See that none re?ider evil for evil unto any ma?i. — God hath called us to peace. Follow after love, patience, meekness. — Be gentle, showing all meekness unto all men. — Live in peace. Lay aside all malice. — Put off anger, wrath, ?nalice. — Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all ma- lice. 426 I^AWFUENESS OF WAR. [ESSAY III. Avenge ?iot yourselves. — If thine enemy hunger, feed him: if he thirst, give him drink. — Recompense to no man evil for evil. — Overcome evil with good. Now we ask of any man who looks over these pas- sages, What evidence do they convey respecting the lawfulness of war ? Could any approval or allowance of it have been subjoined to these instructions, without obvious and most gross inconsistency ? — But if war is obviously and most grossly inconsistent with the gen- eral character of Christianity ; if war could not have been permitted by its teachers, without an egregious violation of their own precepts, we think that the evi- dence of its unlawfulness, arising from this general character alone, is as clear, as absolute, and as exclu- sive, as could have been contained in any form of pro- hibition whatever. But it is not from general principles alone that the law of Christianity respecting war may be deduced. — Ye have heard that it hath been said, " An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth : but /say unto you, that ye resist not evil : but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right check, turn to him the other also. — Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy : but /say unto you, L,o ve your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you ; for if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye?"* Of the precepts from the Mount the most obvious characteristic is greater moral excellence and superior purity. They are directed, not so immediately to the external regulation of the conduct, as to the restraint and purification of the affections. In another precept it is not enough that an unlawful passion be just so far restrained as to produce no open immorality — the pas- * Mat. v. 38, &c. CHAP. X.] LAWFULNESS OF WAR. 427 sion itself is forbidden. The tendency of the discourse is to attach guilt not to action only but also to thought. It has been said, " Thou shalt not kill ; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment : but / say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother, without a cause, shall be in danger of the judgment."* Our Lawgiver attaches guilt to some of the violent feelings, such as resentment, hatred, revenge ; and by doing this, we contend that he at- taches guilt to war. War cannot be carried on without those passions which he prohibits. Our argument, therefore, is syllogistical : — War cannot be allowed, if that which is necessary to war is prohibited. This, indeed, is precisely the argument of Erasmus: — " They who defend war must defend the dispositions which lead to war ; and these dispositions are absolutely forbidden." Whatever might have been allowed under the Mosaic institution as to retaliation or resentment, Christianity says, "If ye love them only which love you, what reward have ye? — L,ove your enemies." Now what sort of love does that man bear towards his enemy, who runs him through with a bayonet ? We repeat, that the distinguishing duties of Christianity must be sacrified when war is carried on. The question is between the abandonment of these duties and the abandonment of war, for both cannot be retained. f It is however objected, that the prohibitions, * Mat. v. 2i f 22. f Yet the retention of both has been, unhappily enough, at- tempted. In a late publication, of which a part is devoted to the defence of war, the author gravely recommends soldiers, whilst shooting and stabbing their enemies, to maintain towards them a feeling of good-will !" — Tracts and Essays by the late William Hey, Esq., F. R. S. And Gisborne, in his Duties of Men, holds similar language. He advises the soldier " never to forget the comman ties of human nature by which he is insepa- rably united to his enemy." 428 LAWFULNESS OF WAR. [ESSAY III. "Resist not eviL," &c, are figurative ; and that they do not mean that no injury is to be punished, and no out- rage to be repelled. It has been asked with compla- cent exultation, What would these advocates of peace say to him who struck them on the right cheek ? Would they turn to him the other ? What would these patient moralists say to him who robbed them of a coat ? Would they give a cloak also ? What w r ould these philanthropists say to him who asked them to lend a hundred pounds ? Would they not turn away ? This is argiimentum ad hominem; one example amongst the many, of that low and dishonest mode of intellectual warfare, which consists in exciting the feel- ings instead of convincing the understanding. It is however, some satisfaction, that the motive to the adop- tion of this mode of warfare is itself an indication of a bad cause ; for what honest reasoner would produce only a laugh, if he were able to produce conviction ? We willingly grant that not all the precepts from the Mount were designed to be literally obeyed in the intercourse of life. But what then ! To show that their meaning is not literal, is not to show that they do not forbid war. We ask in our turn, What is the meaning of the precepts ? What is the meaning of ' ' Resist not evil ?' ' Does it mean to allow bombard- ment — devastation — slaughter ? If it does not mean to allow all this, it does not mean to allow war. What, again, do the objectors say is the meaning of, "Love your enemies, " or of, " Do good to them that hate you?" Does it mean, " ruin their commerce " — " sink their fleets" — "plunder their cities" — "shoot through their hearts ?' ' If the precept does not mean to allow all this, it does not mean to allow war. It is, therefore, not at all necessary here to discuss the pre- cise signification of some of the precepts from the Mount, or to define what limits Christianity may admit CHAP. X.] tAWFUtNESS OF WAR. 429 in their application, since whatever exceptions she may allow, it is manifest what she does not allow :* for if we give to our objectors whatever license of interpre- tation they may desire, they cannot, without virtually rejecting the precepts, so interpret them as to make them allow war. Of the injunctions that are contrasted with, " eye for eye, and tooth for tooth," the entire scope and purpose is the suppression of the violent passions, and the in- culcation of forbearance and forgiveness, and benevo- lence and love. They forbid not specifically, the act, but the spirit of war ; and this method of prohibition Christ ordinarily employed. He did not often con- demn the individual doctrines or customs of the age, however false or however vicious ; but he condemned the passions by which only vice could exist, and incul- cated the truth which dismissed every error. And this method was undoubtedly wise. In the gradual altera- tions of human wickedness, many new species of profli- gacy might arise which the world had not yet practised : in the gradual vicissitudes of human error, many new fallacies might obtain which the w T orld had not yet held : and how were these errors and these crimes to be opposed, but by the inculcation of principles that were applicable to every crime and to every error ? — principles which define not always what is wrong, but which tell us what always is right. There are two modes of censure or condemnation; the one is to reprobate evil, and the other to enforce * It is manifest, from the New Testament, that we are not re- quired to give a " cloak," in every case, to him who robs us of 1 ' a coat ;" but I think it is equally manifest that we are required to give it not the less, because he has robbed us : the circum- stance of his having robbed us, does not entail an obligation to give ; but it also does not impart a permission to withhold. If the necessities of the plunderer require relief, it is the business of the plundered to relieve them. 430 I,AWtfUI,NESS OF WAR. [ ESSAY III. the opposite good ; and both those modes were adopted by Christ. — He not only censured the passions that are necessary to war, but inculcated the affections which are most opposed to them. The conduct and disposi- tions upon which he pronounced his solemn benediction are exceedingly remarkable. They are these, and in this order : Poverty of spirit ; — mourning ; — meekness ; — desire of righteousness ; — mercy ; — purity of heart ; — peacemaking ; — sufferance of persecution. Now let the reader try whether he can propose eight other qualities, to be retained as the general habit of the mind which shall be more incongruous with war. Of these benedictions, I think the most emphatical is that pronounced upon the peacemakers. " Blessed are the peacemakers : for they shall be called the children of God."* Higher praise or a higher title, no man can receive. Now, I do not say that these bene- dictions contain an absolute proof that Christ prohibited war, but I say they make it clear that he did not ap- prove it. He selected a number of subjects for his solemn approbation ; and not one of them possesses any congruity with war, and some of them cannot possibly exist in conjunction with it. Can any one believe that he who made this selection, and who distinguished the peacemakers with peculiar approbation, could have sanctioned his followers in destroying one another ? Or does any one believe that those who were mourners, and meek and merciful and peacemaking, could at the same time perpetrate such destruction ? If I be told that a temporary suspension of Christian dispositions, although necessary to the prosecution of war, does not imply the extinction of Christian principles ; or that these dispositions may be the general habit of the mind, and may both precede and follow the acts of war, I answer that this is to grant all that I require, * Matt. v. 9. CHAP. X.] LAWFULNESS OF WAR. 43I since it grants that, when we engage in war, we abandon Christianity. When the betrayers and murderers of Jesus Christ approached him, his followers asked, " Shall we smite with the sword?" and without waiting for an answer, one of them " drew his sword, and smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear." — " Put up again thy sword into his place," said his Divine Master ; "for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."* There is the greater importance in the circumstances of this command, because it prohib- ited the destruction of human life in a cause in which there were the best of possible reasons for destroying it. The question, "shall we smite with the sword," obviously refers to the defence of the Redeemer from his assailants, by force of arms. His followers w T ere ready to fight for him ; and if any reason for fighting could be a good one, they certainly had it. But if, in defence of Himself from the hands of bloody ruffians, his religion did not allow the sword to be drawn, for what reason can it be lawful to draw it ? The advocates of war are at least bound to show a better reason for destroying mankind, than is contained in this instance in which it was forbidden. It will, perhaps, be said, that the reason why Christ did not suffer himself to be defended by arms, was, that such a defence would have defeated the purpose for which he came into the world, namely, to offer up his life ; and that he himself assigns this reason in the context. — He does indeed assign it ; but the primary reason, the immediate context is, — "for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." The reference to the destined sacrifice of his life is an after reference. This destined sacrifice might, perhaps, have formed a reason why his followers should not * Matt. xxvi. 52. 432 1,AWFUI,NKSS OF WAR. [ESSAY III. fight then, but the first, the principal reason which he assigned, was the reason why they should not fight at all. — Nor is it necessary to define the precise import of the words, ' ' for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword ; " since it is sufficient for us all, that they imply reprobation. It is with the apostles as with Christ himself. The incessant object of their discourses and writings is the inculcation of peace, of mildness, of placability. It might be supposed that they continually retained in prospect the reward which would attach to ' ' peace- makers. ' ' We ask the advocate of war, whether he discovers in the writings of the apostles or of the evangelists, any thing that indicates they approved of war. Do the tenor and spirit of their writings bear any congruity with it ? Are not their spirit and tenor entirely discordant with it ? We are entitled to renew the observation, that the pacific nature of the apostolic writings, proves, presumptively, that the writers dis- allowed war. That could not be allowed by them as sanctioned by Christianity, which outraged all the principles that they inculcated. ' ' Whence come wars and fightings among you ? " is the interrogation of one of the apostles, to some whom he was reproving for their unchristian conduct : and he answers himself by asking them, " Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members ? "* This accords precisely with the argument that we urge. Christ forbade the passions which lead to war ; and now, when these passions had broken out into actual fighting, his apostle, in condemning war, refers it back to their passions. We have been saying that the passions are condemned, and therefore war ; and now, again, the apostle James thinks, like his master, that * James iv. I. CHAP. X.] LAWFULNESS OF WAR. 433 the most effectual way of eradicating war, is to eradi- cate the passions which produce it. In the following quotation we are told, not only what the arms of the apostles w r ere not, but what they were. " The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong- holds ; and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ."* I quote this, not only because it assures us that the apostles had nothing to do with military weapons, but because it tells us the object of their warfare — the bringing every thought to the obe- dience of Christ ; and this object I would beg the reader to notice, because it accords with the object of Christ himself in his precepts from the Mount — the reduction of the thoughts to obedience. The apostle doubtless knew, that, if he could effect this, there was little reason to fear that his converts w r ould slaughter one another. He followed the example of his master. He attacked wickedness in its root ; and inculcated those general principles of purity and forbearance, which, in their prevalence, w T ould abolish war, as they would abolish all other crimes. The teachers of Chris- tianity -addressed themselves not to communities but to men. They enforced the regulation of the passions and the rectification of the heart, and it was probably clear to the perceptions of apostles, although it is not clear to some species of philosophy, that whatever duties were binding upon one man, were binding upon ten, upon a hundred, and upon the state. War is not often directly noticed in the writings of the apostles. When it is noticed, it is condemned, just in that way in which we should suppose any thing would be condemned that was notoriously opposed to the whole system — just as murder is condemned at the present day. Who can find, in modern books, that * 2 Cor. x. 4. 434 LAWFULNESS OE WAR. [ESSAY III. murder is formally censured ? We may find censures of its motives, of its circumstances, of its degrees of atrocity ; but the act itself no one thinks of censuring, because every one knows that it is wicked. Setting statutes aside, I doubt whether, if an Otaheitan should choose to argue that Christians allow murder because he cannot find it formally prohibited in their writings, we should not be at a loss to find direct evidence against him. And it arises, perhaps, from the same causes, that a formal prohibition of war is not to be found in the writ- ings of the apostles. I do not believe they imagincdW\2X Christianity would ever be charged with allowing it. They write, as if the idea of such a charge never occurred to them. They did, nevertheless, virtually forbid it ; unless any one shall say that they disallowed the pas- sions which occasion war, but did not allow war itself : that Christianity prohibits the cause but permits the effect ; which is much the same as to say, that a law which forbade the administering arsenic did not forbid poisoning. But although the general tenor of Christianity and some of its particular precepts appear distinctly to con- demn and disallow war, it is certain that different con- clusions have been formed ; and many, who are un- doubtedly desirous of performing the duties of Chris- tianity, have failed to perceive that war is unlawful to them. In examining the arguments by which war is de- fended, two important considerations should be borne in mind — first, that those who urge them are not simply defending war, they are also defending them- selves. If war be wrong, their conduct is wrong ; and the desire of self -justification prompts them to give im- portance to whatever arguments they can advance in its favor. Their decisions may, therefore, with reason, be regarded as in some degree the decisions of a party CHAP. X.] I,AWFUI,NESS OF WAR. 435 in the cause. The other consideration is, that the de- fenders of war come to the discussion prepossessed in its favor. They are -attached to -it by their earliest habits. They do not examine the question as a philosopher would examine it, to whom the subject was new. Their opinions had been already formed. They are discussing a question which they had already determined : and every man, who is acquainted with the effects of evidence on the mind, knows that under these circumstances a very slender argument in favor of the previous opinions, possesses more influence than many great ones against it. Now all this cannot be predicated of the advocates of peace, they are opposing the influence of habit ; they are contending against the general prejudice ; they are, perhaps, dismissing their own previous opinions : and I would submit it to the candor of the reader, that these circumstances ought to attach, in his mind, suspicion to the validity of the arguments against us. The narrative of the centurion who came to Jesus at Capernaum to solicit him to heal his servant, furnishes one of these arguments. It is said that Christ found no fault with the centurion's profession ; that if he had disallowed the military character, he would have taken this opportunity of censuring it ; and that, instead of such censure he highly commended the officer, and said of him, "I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel."* An obvious weakness in this argument is this ; that it is founded not upon an approval, but upon silence. Approbation is indeed expressed, but it is directed, not to his arms, but to his " faith ; " and those who will read the narrative, will find that no occasion was given for noticing his profession. He came to Christ, not as a military officer, but simply as a deserving man. A * Matt. viiL 10. 43 6 LAWFULNESS OF WAR. [FSSAY III. censure of his profession might undoubtedly have been pronounced, but it would have been a gratuitous cen- sure, a censure that did not naturally arise out of the case. The objection is, in its greatest weight, pre- sumptive only ; for none can be supposed to counte- nance every thing that he does not condemn . To observe silence * in such cases, was indeed the ordinary practice of Christ. He very seldom interfered with the civil or political institutions of the world. In these institutions there was sufficient wickedness around him ; but some of them flagitious as they were, he never, on any oc- casion, even noticed. His mode of condemning and extirpating political vices, was, by the inculcation of general rules of purity, which, in their eventual and uni- versal application, would reform them all. But how happens it that Christ did not notice the centurion's religioyi ? He surely was an idolater. And is there not as good reason for maintaining that Christ approved idolatry because he did not condemn it, as that he approved war because he did not con- demn it? Reasoning from analogy, we should con- clude that idolatry was likely to have been noticed rather than war ; and it is therefore peculiarly and singularly unapt to bring forward the silence respecting war, as an evidence of its lawfulness. A similar argument is advanced from the case of Cornelius, to whom Peter was sent from Joppa, of which it is said, that although the gospel was imparted to Cornelius by the especial direction of heaven, yet we do not find that he therefore quitted his profession, or * "Christianity, soliciting admission into all nations of the world, abstained, as behoved it, from intermeddling with the civil institutions of any. But does it follow, from the silence of Scripture concerning them, that all the civil institutions which then prevailed were right, or that the bad should not be ex- changed for better ? " — Paley. CHAP. X.] I,AWFUI,NESS OF WAR. 437 that it was considered inconsistent with his new char- acter. The objection applies to this argument as to the last — that it is built upon silence, that it is simply negative. We do not find that he quitted the service : I might answer, neither do we find that he continued in it. We only know nothing of the matter ; and the evidence is therefore so much less than proof, as silence is less than approbation. Yet that the account is silent respecting any disapprobation of war, might have been a reasonable ground of argument under different circumstances. It might have been a reasonable ground of argument, if the primary object of Christianity had been the re- formation of political institutions, or, perhaps, even if her primary object had been the regulation of the ex- ternal conduct ; but her primary object was neither of these. She directed herself to the reformation of the heart, knowing that all other reformation would follow. She embraced, indeed, both morality and policy, and has reformed, or will reform, both — not so much im- mediately as consequently — not so much by filtering the current, as by purifying the spring. The silence of Peter, therefore, in the case of Cornelius, will serve the cause of war but little : that little is diminished when urged against the positive evidence of commands and prohibitions, and it is reduced to nothingness when it is opposed to the universal tendency and object of the revelation. It has sometimes been urged that Christ paid taxes to the Roman government at a time when it was en- gaged in war, and when, therefore, the money that he paid would be employed in its prosecution. This we shall readily grant ; but it appears to be forgotten by our opponents, that if this proves war to be lawful, they are proving too much. These taxes were thrown into the exchequer of the state, and a part of the 438 LAWFULNESS OF WAR. [ESSAY III. money was applied to purposes of a most iniquitous and shocking nature — sometimes, probably, to the gratification of the emperor's personal vices, and to his gladiatorial exhibitions, &c. , and certainly to the sup- port of a miserable idolatry. If, therefore, the payment of taxes to such a government proves an approbation of war, it proves an approbation of many other enormities. Moreover, the argument goes too far in relation even to war ; for it must necessarily make Christ approve of all the Roman wars, without distinction of their justice or injustice — of the most ambitious, the most atrocious, and the most aggressive — and these, even our objectors will not defend. The payment of tribute by our Lord, was accordant with his usual system of avoiding to inter- fere in the civil or political institutions of the world. 1 ■ He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. ' ' * This is another passage that is brought against us. ' ' For what purpose, " it is asked, ' 'were they to buy swords, if swords might not be used ?" It may be doubted whether with some of those who advance this objection, it is not an objection of words rather than of opinion. It may be doubted whether they themselves think there is any weight in it. To those, however, who may be influenced by it, I would observe * Luke xxii. 36. Upon the interpretation of this passage of Scripture, I would subjoin the sentiments of two or three authors. Bishop Pearce says, " It is plain that Jesus never in- tended to make any resistance, or suffer a sword to be used on this occasion. ' ' And Campbell says, ' ' We are sure that he did not intend to be understood literally, but as speaking of the weapons of their spiritual warfare. ' ' And Beza : ' ! This whole speech is allegorical. My fellow soldiers, you have hitherto lived in peace, but now a dreadful war is at hand ; so that omit- ting all other things, you must think only of arms. But when he prayed in the garden, and reproved Peter for smiting with the sword, he himself showed what these arms were." — See Peace and War, an essay. Hatchard, 1824. CHAP. X.] I,AWFUI,NESS OF WAR. 439 that, as it appears to me, a sufficient answer to the objec- tion may be found in the immediate context : ' ' Lord, behold here are two swords," said they, and he immedi- ately answered, "It is enough." How could two be enough when eleven were to be supplied with them ? That swords in the sense, and for the purpose, of mili- tary weapons, were even intended in this passage, there appears much reason for doubting. This reason will be discovered by examining and connecting such expressions as these : ' ' The Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them," said our Lord. Yet, on another occasion, he says, " I came not to send peace on earth, but a sword." How are we to explain the meaning of the latter declaration? Ob- viously, by understanding "sword" to mean some- thing far other than steel. There appears little reason for supposing that physical weapons were intended in the instruction of Christ. I believe they were not in- tended, partly because no one can imagine his apostles were in the habit of using such arms, partly because they declared that the weapons of their warfare were not carnal, and partly because the word ' ' sword ' ' is often usen to imply "dissension," or the religious warfare of the Christian. Such an use of language is found in the last quotation ; and it is found also in such expressions as these : ' ' shield of faith , " — " helmet of salvation, " — " sword oi the spirit, " — " I have: fought the good 'fight of faith." But it will be said that the apostles did provide them- selves with swords, for that on the same evening they asked, "Shall we smite with the sword?" This is true, and it may probably be true also, that some of them provided themselves with swords in consequence of the injunction of their Master. But what then? It appears to me that the apostles acted on this occasion upon the principles on which they had wished to act on 440 LAWFULNESS OF WAR. [ESSAY III. another, when they asked, "Wilt thou that we com- mand fire to come down from heaven, and consume them?" And that their Master's principles of action were also the same in both — "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of ; for the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." This is the language of Christianity ; and I would seriously invite him who now justifies M destroying men's lives," to consider what manner of spirit he is of. I think then, that no argument arising from the in- struction to buy swords can be maintained. This, at least, we know, that when the apostles were completely commissioned, they neither used nor possessed them. An extraordinary imagination he must have, who con- ceives of an apostle, preaching peace and reconciliation, crying ''forgive injuries," — "love your enemies," — " render not evil for evil ;" and at the conclusion of the discourse, if he chanced to meet violence or insult, promptly drawing his sword and maiming or murder- ing the offender. We insist upon this consideration. If swords were to be worn, swords were to be used ; and there is no rational way in which they could have been used, but some such as that which we have been supposing. If, therefore, the words, "He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one," do not mean to authorize such an use of the sword, they do not mean to authorize its use at all : and those who adduce the passage, must allow its application in such a sense, or they must exclude it from any application to their purpose. It has been said again, that when soldiers came to John the Baptist to enquire of him what they should do, he did not direct them to leave the service, but to be content with their wages. This, also, is at best but a negative evidence. It does not prove that the mili- tary profession was wrong, and it certainly does not CHAP. X.] I,AWFUI,NESS OF WAR. 441 prove that it was right. But in truth, if it asserted the latter, Christians have, as I conceive, nothing to do with it : for I think that we need not enquire what John allowed, or what he forbade. He, confessedly, belonged to that system which required ' ' an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth;" and the observations which we shall by and by make on the authority of the law of Moses, apply, therefore, to that of John the Baptist. Although it could be proved (which it cannot be) that he allowed wars, he acted not incon- sistently with his own dispensation ; and with that dis- pensation we have no business. Yet, if any one still insists upon the authority of John, I would refer him for an answer to Jesus Christ himself. What authority He attached to John on questions relating to His own dispensation, may be learnt from this — M The least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. ' ' It is perhaps no trifling indication of the difficulty which writers have found in discovering in the Chris- tian Scriptures arguments in support of war, that they have had recourse to such equivocal and far-fetched arguments. Grotius adduces a passage which he says is " a leading point of evidence, to show that the right of war is not taken away by the law of the gospel. ' ' And what is this leading evidence ? That Paul, in writing to Timothy, exhorts that prayer should be made ' ' for kings!"* — Another evidence which this great man adduces is, that Paul suffered himself to be protected on his journey by a guard of soldiers, without hinting any disapprobation of repelling force by force. But how does Grotius know that Paul did not hint this ? And who can imagine that to suffer himself to be guarded by a military escort, in the appointment of which he had no control, was to approve war ? But perhaps the real absence of sound Christian * See Rights of War and Peace. 44 2 I,AWFUI,NESS OF WAR. [ESSAY III. arguments in favor of war, is in no circumstance so re- markably intimated as in the citations of Milton in his Christian Doctrine. ' ' With regard to the duties of war," he quotes or refers to thirty-nine passages of Scripture — thirty-eight of which are from the Hebrew Scriptures : and what is the individual one from the Christian ? — ' ' What king going to make war against another king !" &c* Such are the arguments which are adduced from the Christian Scriptures by the advocates of war. In these five passages, the principal of the New Testament evi- dences in its favor, unquestionably consist : they are the passages which men of acute minds, studiously seeking for evidence, have selected. And what are they ? Their evidence is in the majority of instances negative at best. A ' ' not ' ' intervenes. The cen- turion was not found fault with : Cornelius was not told to leave the profession : John did not tell the sol- diers to abandon the army ; Paul did not refuse a mili- tary guard. I cannot forbear to solicit the reader to- compare these objections with the pacific evidence of the gospel which has been laid before him ; I would rather say, to compare it with the gospel itself ; for the sum, the tendency, of the whole revelation is in our favor. In an enquiry whether Christianity allows of war, there is a subject that always appears to me to be of peculiar importance — the prophecies of the Old Testa- ment respecting the arrival of a period of universal peace. The belief is perhaps general amongst Chris- tians, that a time will come when vice shall be eradi- cated from the world, when the violent passions of mankind shall be repressed, and when the pure benignity of Christianity shall be universally diffused. That such a period will come we indeed know as- suredly, for God has promised it. * Iyuke xiv. 31. CHAP. X.] LAWFULNESS OF WAR. 443 Of the many prophecies of the Old Testament re- specting this period, we refer only to a few from the writings of Isaiah. In his predictions respecting the "last times," by which it is not disputed that he re- ferred to the prevalence of the Christian religion, the prophet says — "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks : nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." * Again, referring to the same period, he says — "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain : for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."f And again, respecting the same era — " Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders. ' ' J Two things are to be observed in relation to these prophecies ; ist, that it is the will of God that war should eventually be abolished. This consideration is of importance ; for if war be not accordant with His will, war cannot be accordant with Christianity, which is the revelation of His will. Our business, however, is principally with the second consideration — that Christianity will be the means of introducing this period of peace. From those who say that Qur religion sanctions war, an answer must be expected to ques- tions such as these : — By what instrumentality and by the diffusion of what principles, will the prophecies of Isaiah be fulfilled ? Are we to expect some new sys- tem of religion, by which the imperfections of Chris- tianity shall be removed and its deficiencies supplied ? Are we to believe that God sent his only Son into the world to institute a religion such as this, a religion that, in a few centuries, would require to be altered and amended ? If Christianity allows of war, they must tell us what it is that is to extirpate war. If she * Isa. ii. 4. | Id. xi. 9. % Id. lx. 18. 444 LAWFULNESS OF WAR. [ESSAY III. allows " violence, and wasting, and destruction," they must tell us what are the principles that are to pro- duce gentleness, and benevolence, and forbearance. — I know not what answer such enquiries will receive from the advocate of war, but I know that Isaiah says the change will be effected by Christianity : and if any one still chooses to expect another and a purer system, an apostle may perhaps, repress his hopes ; — " Though we or an angel from heaven," says Paul, "preach any other gospel unto you, than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." * Whatever the principles of Christianity will require hereafter, they require now. Christianity, with its present principles and obligations, is to produce uni- versal peace. It becomes, therefore, an absurdity, a simple contradiction, to maintain that the principles of Christianity allow of war, when they, and they only are to eradicate it. If we have no other guarantee of peace than the existence of our religion, and no other hope of peace than in its diffusion, how can that relig- ion sanction war ? The case is clear. A more perfect obedience to that same gospel, which, we are told, sanctions slaughter, will be the means, and the only means, of exterminat- ing slaughter from the world. It is not from an altera- tion of Christianity, but from an assimilation of Chris- tians to its nature that we are to hope. It is because we violate the principles of our religion, because we are not what they require us to be, that wars are continued. If we will not be peaceable, let us then, at least, be honest, and acknowledge that we continue to slaughter one another, not because Christianity permits it, but because we reject her laws. The opinions of the earliest professors of Christianity upon the lawfulness of war are of importance, because * Gal. i, 8. CHAP. X.] I,AWFUI,NESS OF they who lived nearest to the time of its Founder were the most likely to be informed of his intentions and his will, and to practise them without those adultera- tions which we know have been introduced by the lapse of ages. During a considerable period after the death of Christ, it is certain, then, that his followers believed he had forbidden war, and that, in consequence of this belief, many of them refused to engage in it whatever were the consequence, whether reproach, or imprison- ment, or death. These facts are indisputable. " It is as easy," says a learned writer of the seventeenth cen- tury, " to obscure the sun at mid-day, as to deny that the primitive Christians renounced all revenge and war. ' ' Christ and his apostles delivered general pre- cepts for the regulation of our conduct. It was neces- sary for their successors to apply them to their practice in life. And to what did they apply the pacific pre- cepts which had been delivered ? They applied them to war ; they were assured that the precepts absolutely forbade it. This belief they derived from those very precepts on which we have insisted ; they referred ex- pressly, to the same passages in the New Testament, and from the authority and obligation of those passages, they refuse to bear arms. A few examples from their history will show with what undoubting confidence they believed in the unlawfulness of war, and how much they were willing to suffer in the cause of peace. Maximilian, as it is related in the Acts of Ruin art, was brought before the tribunal to be enrolled as a sol- dier. On the proconsul's asking his name, Maximilian replied, "lama Christian and cannot fight." It was, however, ordered that he should be enrolled, but he refused to serve, still alleging that he was a Christian. He was immediately told that there was no alternative between bearing arms and being put to death. But his 446 tAWFUtNESS OF WAR. [ESSAY III. fidelity was not to be shaken : — >" I cannot fight," said he, "if I die." He continued steadfast to his princi- ples, and was consigned to the executioner. The primitive Christians not only refused to be en- listed in the army, but when they embraced Christian- ity, whilst already enlisted, they abandoned the profession at whatever cost. Marcellus was a centurion in the legion called Trajana. Whilst holding this commission, he became a Christian ; and believing in common with his fellow- Christians, that war was no longer permitted to him, he threw down his belt at the head of the legion, delaring that he had become a Christian, and that he would serve no longer. He was committed to prison ; but he was still faithful to Chris- tianity. " It is not lawful," said he, " for a Christian to bear arms for any earthly consideration ;" and he was, in consequence, put to death. Almost immedi- ately afterwards, Cassian, who was notary to the same legion, gave up his office. He steadfastly maintained the sentiments of Marcellus ; and, like him was con- signed to the executioner. Martin, of whom so much is vSaid by Sulpicius Severus, was bred to the profession of arms, which, on his acceptance of Christianity, he abandoned. To Julian the Apostate, the only reason that we find he gave for his conduct was this : — "I am a Christian, and therefore I cannot fight." These were not the sentiments, and this was not the conduct, of insulated individuals who might be actuated by individual opinion, or by their private interpreta- tions of the duties of Christianity. Their principles were the principles of the body. They were recognized and defended by the Christian writers, their contempo- raries. Justin Martyr and Tatian talk of soldiers and Christians as distinct characters ; and Tatian says that the Christians declined even military commands. Clemens of Alexandria calls his Christian contempora- CHAP. X.] LAWFULNESS OF WAR. 447 ries the " followers of peace," and expressly tells us 1 ' that the followers of peace used none of the imple- ments of war." L,actantius, another early Christian, says expressly, " It can never be lawful for a righteous man to go to war. ' ' About the end of the second cen- tury, Celsus, one of the opponents of Christianity, charged the Christians with refusing to bear arms even in case of necessity . Origen, the defender of the Chris- tians, does not think of denying the fact ; he admits the refusal, and justifies it, becatise war was unlawful. Even after Christianity had spread over almost the whole of the known world, Tertullian, in speaking of a part of the Roman armies, including more than one- third of the standing legions of Rome, distinctly informs us that " not a Christian could be found amongst them." All this is explicit. The evidence of the following facts is, however, yet more determinate and satisfac- tory. Some of the arguments which, at the present day, are brought against the advocates of peace, were then urged against these early Christians : and these arguments they examined and repelled. This indicates investigation and enquiry, and manifests that their be- lief of the unlawfulness of war was not a vague opin- ion, hastily admitted and loosely floating amongst them, but that it was the result of deliberate examina- tion, and a consequent firm conviction that Christ had forbidden it. The very same arguments which are brought in defence of war at the present day, were brought against the Christians sixteen hundred years ago ; and sixteen hundred years ago, they were repelled by these faithful contenders for the purity of our relig- ion. It is remarkable too, that Tertullian appeals to the precepts from the Mount, in proof of those princi- ples on which this chapter has been insisting : — that the dispositions which the precepts i?iculcate are not 448 t,AWFUI,NESS OF WAR. [ESSAY III. compatible with war, and that war, therefore, is irreconcila- ble with Christia?iity . If it be possible, a still stronger evidence of the prim- itive belief, is contained in the circumstance, that some of the Christian authors declared that the refusal of the Christians to bear arms, was a fulfilment of ancient prophecy. The peculiar strength of this evidence con- sists in this — that the fact of a refusal to bear arms is assumed as notorious and unquestioned. Irenseus, who lived about the year 180, affirms that the prophecy of Isaiah, which declared that men should turn their swords into plough-shares and their spears into prun- ing hooks, had been fulfilled in his time ; " for the Christians," says he, " have changed their swords and their lances into instruments of peace, and they know not how to fight." — Justin Martyr, his contemporary, writes — " That the prophecy is fulfilled you have good reason to believe, for we, who in times past killed one another, do not now fight with our enemies." Tertul- lian, who lived later, says, " You must confess that the prophecy has been accomplished, as far as the practice of every i?idividual is co?icerned, to whom it is applica- ble." It has been sometimes said, that the motive which influenced the early Christians to refuse to engage in war, consisted in the idolatry which was connected with the Roman armies. — One motive this idolatry unquestionably afforded ; but it is obvious, from the quotations which we -have given, that their belief of the unlawfulness of fighting, independent of any ques- tion of idolatry, was an insuperable objection to engag- ing in war. Their words are explicit : "I cannot fight, if I die." — " I am a Christian, and therefore I cannot fight." — "Christ," says Tertullian, " by dis- arming Peter, disarmed every soldier;" and Peter was not about to fight in the armies of idolatry. So CHAP. X.J LAWFULNESS OF WAR. 449 entire was their conviction of the incompatibility of war with our religion, that they would not even be present at the gladiatorial rights, ''lest," says Theo- philus, " we should become partakers of the murders committed there." Can any one believe that they, who would not even witness a battle between two men, would themselves fight in a battle between armies? And the destruction of a gladiator, it should be re- membered, was authorized by the state, as much as the destruction of enemies in war. It is therefore indisputable, that the Christians who lived nearest to the time of our Saviour, believed, with undoubting confidence, that he had unequivocally for- bidden war ; — that they openly avowed this belief ; and that, in support of it they were willing to sacrifice, and did sacrifice, their fortunes and their lives. Christians, however, afterwards became soldiers : and when ? — When their general fidelity to Christianity be- came relaxed ; — when, in other respects, they violated its principles ; — when they had begun ' ' to dissemble ' ' and "to falsify their word," and "to cheat ; " — when 1 ' Christian casuists ' ' had persuaded them that they might u sit at meat in the idol's temple;'" — when Christians accepted even the priesthoods of idolatry. In a word, they became soldiers when they had ceased to be Christians. The departure from the original faithfulness, was, however, not suddenly general. Like every other cor- ruption, war obtained by degrees. During the first two hundred years, not a Christian soldier is upon record. In the third century, when Christianity be- came partially corrupted, Christian soldiers were com- mon. The number increased with the increase of the general profligacy ; until at last, in the fourth century, Christians became soldiers without hesitation, and per- haps without remorse. Here and there, however, an 450 I,AWFUI,NESS OE WAR. [ESSAY III. ancient father still lifted up his voice for peace ; but these, one after another, dropping from the world, the tenet that war is unlawful, ceased at length to be a tenet of the church. Ivet it always be borne in mind, by those who are advocating war, that they are contending for a corrup- tion which their forefathers abhorred ; and that they are making Jesus Christ the sanctioner of crimes, which his purest followers offered up their lives be- cause they would not commit. An argument has sometimes been advanced in favor of war, from the Divine communications to the Jews under the administration of Moses. It has been said, that as wars were allowed and enjoined to that people, they cannot be inconsistent with the will of God. The reader, who has perused the first essay of this work, will be aware that to the present argument our answer is short : — If Christianity prohibits war, there is, to Christians, an end of the controversy. War can- not then be justified by the referring to any antecedent dispensation. One brief observation may, however, be offered, that those who refer, in justification of our present practice, to the authority by which the Jews prosecuted their wars, must be expected to produce the same authority for our own. Wars were com- manded to the Jews, but are they commanded to us ? War, in the abstract, was never commanded : and surely those specific wars which were enjoined upon the Jews for an express purpose, are neither authority nor example for us, who have received no such injunc- tion, and can plead no such purpose. It will, perhaps, be said, that the commands to pros- ecute wars, even to extermination, are so positive, and so often repeated, that it is not probable, if they were inconsistent with the will of heaven, that they would have been thus peremptorily enjoined. We answer, CHAP. X.] LAWFULNESS OF WAR. 451 that they were not inconsistent with the will of heaven then. But even then, the prophets foresaw that they were not accordant with the universal will of God, since they predicted, that when that will should be ful- filled, war should be eradicated from the world. And by what dispensation was this will to be fulfilled ? By that of the "Rod out of the stem of Jesse." It is worthy of recollection, too, that David was forbidden to build the temple because he had shed blood. ' ' As for me it was in my mind to build an house unto the name of the Lord my God : but the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Thou hast shed blood abundantly, and hast made great wars ; thou shall not build an house unto my name, because thou hast shed much blood upon the earth in my sight."* So little ac- cordancy did war possess with the purer offices even of the Jewish dispensation. Perhaps the argument to which the greatest import- ance is attached by the advocates of war, and by which thinking men are chiefly induced to acquiesce in its lawfulness is this — That a distinction is to be made be- tween rules which apply to us as i?idividuals, and rules which apply to us as subjects of the state ; and that the pacific injunctions of Christ from the Mount, and all the other kindred commands a7id prohibitions of the Christian Scriptures, have ?io reference to our conduct as members of the political body. If there be soundness in the doctrines which have been delivered at the commencement of the essay upon the "elements of political rectitude," this argument possesses no force or application. When persons make such broad distinctions between the obligations of Christianity on private and on public affairs, the proof of the rectitude of the distinction must be expected of those who make it. General rules * i Chron. xxii. 7, 8. 45 2 LAWFULNESS OF WAR. [ESSAY III. are laid down by Christianity, of which, in some cases, the advocate of war denies the applicability. He, therefore, is to produce the reason and the authority for the exception. And that authority must be a com- petent authority — the authority mediately or immedi- ately of God. It is to no purpose for such a person to tell us of the magnitude of political affairs — of the greatness of the interests which they involve — of "necessity," or of expediency. All these are very proper considerations in subordiiiation to the moral law : — otherwise they are wholly nugatory and irrele- vant. Let the reader observe the manner in which the argument is supported. — If an individual suffers ag- gression there is a power to which he can apply that is above himself and above the aggressor ; a power by which the bad passions of those around him are re- strained, or by which their aggressions are punished. But amongst nations there is no acknowledged superior or common arbitrator. Even if there were, there is no way in which its decisions could be enforced, but by the sword. War, therefore, is the only means which one nation possesses of protecting itself from the ag- gression of another. The reader will observe the fun- damental fallacy upon which the argument proceeds. — It assumes, that the reason why an individual is not permitted to use violence is, that the laws will use it for him. Here is the error ; for the foundation of the duty of forbearance in private life, is not that the laws will punish aggression, but that Christianity requires for- bearance. Undoubtedly, if the existence of a common arbitrator were the. foundation of the duty, the duty would not be binding upon nations. But that which we require to be proved is this — that Christianity exonerates nations from those duties which she has imposed upon individuals. This, the present argument does not CHAP. X.] I,AWFUI,NKSS OF WAR. 453 prove : and, in truth, with a singular unhappiness in its application, it assumes, in effect, that she has im- posed these duties upon neither the one nor the other. If it be said, that Christianity allows to individuals some degree and kind of resistance, and that some re- sistance is therefore lawful to states, we do not deny it. But if it be said, that the degree of lawful resistance extends to the slaughter of our fellow Christians — that it extends to war — we do deny it : we say that the rules of Christianity cannot, by any possible latitude of interpretation, be made to extend to it. The duty of forbearance, then, is antecedeiit to all considerations re- specting the condition of man ; and whether he be under the protection of laws or not, the duty of for- bearance is imposed. The only truth which appears to be elicited by the present argument is, that the difficulty of obeying the forbearing rules of Christianity is greater in the case of nations then in the case of individuals : The obligation to obey them is the same in both. Nor let any one urge the difficulty of obedience in opposition to the duty ; for he who does this, has yet to learn one of the most awful rules of his religion — a rule that was enforced by the precepts, and more especially by the final example, of Christ, of apostles and of martyrs — the rule which requires that we should be "obedient even unto death." Let it not, however, be supposed that we believe the difficulty of forbearance would be great in practice as it is great in theory. Our interests are commonly pro- moted by the fulfilment of our duties ; and we hope hereafter to show, that the fulfilment of the duty of forbearance forms no exception to the applicability of the rule. The intelligent reader will have perceived that the "war" of which we speak is all war, without refer- ence to its objects, whether offensive or defensive. In 454 IvAWFUI^NESS OF WAR. [ESSAY m. truth, respecting any other than defensive war, it is scarcely worth while to entertain a question, since no one with whom we are concerned to reason will advo- cate its opposite. Some persons indeed talk with much complacency of their reprobation of offensive war. Yet to reprobate no more than this, is only to condemn that which wickedness itself is not wont to justify. Even those who practise offensive war, affect to veil its nature by calling it by another name. In conformity with this, we find that it is to defence that the peaceable precepts of Christianity are directed. Offence appears not to have even suggested itself. It is, "Resist not evil?" it is, "Overcome evil with good :" it is, " Do good to them that hate you :" it is, "Love your enemies:" it is, "Render not evil for evil:''' it is, " Unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek" All this supposes previous offence, or injury, or violence ; and it is then that forbearance is enjoined. It is common with those who justify defensive war, to identify the question with that of individual self- defence ; and although the questions are in practice sufficiently dissimilar, it has been seen that we object not to their being regarded as identical. The rights of self-defence have already been discussed, and the conclusions to which the moral law appears to lead, afford no support to the advocate of war. We say the questions are practically dissimilar ; so that if we had a right to kill a man in self-defence, very few wars would be shown to be lawful. Of the wars which are prosecuted, some are simply wars of aggres- sion ; some are for the maintenance of a balance of power ; some are in assertion of technical rights ; and some, undoubtedly, to repel invasion. The last are perhaps the fewest ; and of these only it can be said that they bear any analogy whatever to the case which is supposed ; and even in these, the analogy is seldom CHAP. X.] LAWFULNESS OF WAR. 455 complete. It has rarely indeed happened that wars have been undertaken simply for the preservation of life, and that no other alternative has remained to a people than to kill, or to be killed. And let it be re- membered, that unless this alternative alone remai?is, the case of individual self-defence is irrelevant : it ap- plies not, practically, to the subject. But indeed you cannot in practice make distinctions, even moderately accurate, between defensive war and war for other purposes. Supposing, the Christian Scriptures had said, An army ?nay fight in its own defence \ but not for any other pur- pose. — Whoever will attempt to apply this rule in prac- tice, will find that he has a very wide range of justifiable warfare : a range that will embrace many more wars, than moralists, laxer than we shall suppose them to be, are willing to defend. If an army may fight in de- fence of their own lives, they may, and they must fight in defence of the lives of others : if they may fight in the defence of the lives of others, they will fight in defence of their property : if in defence of property, they will fight in defence of political rights : if in de- fence of rights, they will fight in promotion of inter- ests : if in promotion of interests, they will fight in promotion of their glory and their crimes. Now let any man of honesty look over the gradations by which we arrive at this climax, and I believe he will find that, in practice, no curb can be placed upon the con- duct of an army until they reach that climax. There is, indeed, a wide distance between fighting in defence of life, and fighting in furtherance of our crimes ; but the steps which lead from one to the other will follow in inevitable succession. I know that the letter of our rule excludes it, but I know that the rule will be a letter only. It is very easy for us to sit in our studies, and to point the commas, and semicolons, and periods 456 LAWFULNESS OF WAR. [ESSAY III. of the soldier's career : it is very easy for us to say, he shall stop at defence of life, or at protection of prop- erty, or at the support of rights ; but armies will never listen to us : we shall be only the Xerxes of morality, throwing out idle chains into the tempestuous ocean of slaughter. What is the testimony of experience? When nations are mutually exasperated, and armies are levied, and battles are fought, does not every one know that with whatever motives of defence one party may have begun the contest, both, in turn, become aggressors? In the fury of slaughter, soldiers do not attend, they cannot attend, to questions of aggression. Their business is destruction, and their business they will perform. If the army of defence obtains success, it soon becomes an army of aggression. Having repelled the invader, it begins to punish him. If a war has once begun, it is vain to think of distinctions of aggression and defence. Moralists may talk of distinctions, but soldiers will make none ; and none can be made ; it is without the limits of possibility. Indeed, some of the definitions of defensive or of just war which are proposed by moralists, indicate how im- possible it is to confine warfare within any assignable limits. " The objects of just war," says Paley, " are precaution, defence, or reparation." — " Every just war supposes an injury perpetrated, attempted, or feared." I shall acknowledge, that if these be justifying mo- tives to war, I see very little purpose in talking of morality upon the subject. It is in vain to expatiate on moral obligations, if we are at liberty to declare war whenever an " injury is feared:" — an injury, without limit to its insignifi- cance ! a fear, without stipulation for its reasonable- ness ! The judges, also, of the reasonableness of fear, are to be they who are under its influence ; and who CHAP. X.] LAWFULNESS OF WAR. 457 so likely to judge ainiss as those who are afraid? Sounder philosophy than this has told us, that ' ' he who has to reason upon his duty when the temptation to transgress it is before him, is almost sure to reason himself into an error. ' ' Violence, and rapine, and ambition, are not to be restrained by morality like this. It may serve for the speculations of a study ; but we will venture to affirm that mankind will never be controlled by it. Moral rules are useless, if, from their own nature they cannot be, or will not be applied. Who believes that if kings and conquerors may fight when they have fears, they will not fight when they have them not ? The morality allows too much latitude to the passions, to retain any practical restraint upon them. And a morality that will not be. practised, I had almost said, that cannot be practised, is an useless morality. It is a theory of morals. We want clearer and more exclu- sive rules ; we want more obvious and immediate sanctions. It were in vain for a philosopher to say to a general who wjas burning for glory, ' ! You are at liberty to engage in the war provided you have suf- fered, or fear you will suffer an injury — otherwise Christianity prohibits it. ' ' He will tell him of twenty injuries that have been suffered, of a hundred that have been attempted, and of a thousand that he fears. And what answer can the philosopher make to him? If these are the proper standards of just war, there will be little difficulty in proving any war to be just, except, indeed, that of simple aggression ; and by the rules of this morality, the aggressor is difficult of dis- covery, for he whom we choose to "fear," may say that he had previous "fear" of us, and that his 1 ' fear, ' ' prompted the hostile symptoms which made us "fear" again. The truth is, that to attempt to make any distinctions upon the subject is vain. War 45§ PROBABLE PRACTICAL EFFECTS OF [ESSAY III. must be wholly forbidden, or allowed without restric- tion to defence ; for no definitions of lawful and un- lawful war, will be, or can be, attended to. If the prin- ciples of Christianity, in any case, or for any purpose, allow armies to meet and to slaughter one another, her principles will never conduct us to the period which prophecy has assured us they shall produce. There is no hope of an eradication of war, but by an absolute and total abandonment of it. OF THE PROBABLE PRACTICAL EFFECTS OF ADHE- RING TO THE MORAL LAW IN RESPECT TO WAR. We have seen that the duties of the religion which God has imparted to mankind require irresistance ; and surely it is reasonable to hope, even without a refer- ence to experience, that he will make our irresistance subservient to our interests : that if, for the purpose of conforming to his will, we subject ourselves to diffi- culty or danger, he will protect us in our obedience, and direct it to our benefit : that if he requires us not to be concerned in war, he will preserve us in peace : that he will not desert those who have no other protec- tion, and who have abandoned all other protection be- cause they confide in His alone. This we may reverently hope ; yet it is never to be forgotten that our apparent interests in the present life are sometimes, in the economy of God, made subordi- nate to our interests in futurity. Yet, even in reference only to the present state of existence, I believe that we shall find that the testi- mony of experience is, that forbearance is most con- ducive to our interests. There is practical truth in the position, that " When a man's ways please the Lord," he " maketh even his enemies to be at peace zvith him.''' The reader of American history will recollect, that in the beginning of the last century a desultory and CHAP. X.] ADHERING TO THE MORAI, UW, ETC. 459 most dreadful warfare was carried on by the natives against the European settlers ; a warfare that was pro- voked — as such warfare has almost always originally been — by the injuries and violence of the Christians. The mode of destruction was secret and sudden. The barbarians sometimes lay in wait for those who might come within their reach, on the highway or in the field, and shot them without warning : and sometimes they attacked the Europeans in their houses, "scalp- ing some, and knocking out the brains of others." From this horrible warfare the inhabitants sought safety by abandoning their homes, and retiring to fortified places, or to the neighborhood of garrisons ; and those whom necessity still compelled to pass be- yond the limits of such protection, provided themselves with arms for their defence. But amidst this dreadful desolation and universal terror, the Society of Friends, who were a considerable portion of the whole popula- lation, were steadfast to their principles. They would neither retire to garrisons nor provide themselves with arms. They remained openly in the country, whilst the rest were flying to the forts. They still pursued their occupations in the fields or at their homes, with- out a weapon either for annoyance or defence. And what was their fate ? They lived in security and quiet. The habitation which, to his armed neighbor, was the scene of murder and of the scalping-knife, was to the unarmed Quaker a place of safety and of peace. Three of the Society were however killed. And who were they? They were three who abandoned their principles. Two of these victims were men who, in the simple language of the narrator, " used to go to their labor without any weapons, and trusted to the Al- mighty, and depended on his providence to protect them (it being their principle not to use weapons of war to offend others, or to defend themselves ;) but a 460 PROBABLE PRACTICAL EFFECTS OF [ESSAY III. spirit of distrust taking place in their minds, they took weapons of war to defend themselves, and the Indians who had seen them several times without them and let them alone, saying they were peaceable men and hurt nobody, therefore they would not hurt them — now see- ing them have guns, and supposing they designed to kill the Indians, they therefore shot the men dead." The third w r hose life was sacrificed was a woman, "who had remained in her habitation," not thinking herself warranted in going "to a fortified place for preservation, neither she, her son, nor daughter, nor to take thither the little ones ; but the poor woman after some time began to let in a slavish fear, and ad- vised her children to go with her to a fort not far from, their dwelling. ' ' She went ;— and shortly afterwards 1 ' the bloody, cruel Indians, lay by the way, and killed her."* The fate of the Quakers during the Rebellion in Ire- land was nearly similar. It is well known that the Rebellion was a time not only of open war but of cold-blooded murder ; of the utmost fury of bigotry, and the utmost exasperation of revenge. Yet the Quakers were preserved even to a proverb ; and when strangers passed through streets of ruin and observed a house standing uninjured and alone, they would some- times point, and say, — "That, doubtless, is the house of a Quaker, "f So complete indeed was the preserva- tion which these people experienced, that in an official document of the Society they say, — ' ' no member of our Society fell a sacrifice but one young man ;" — and that young man had assumed regimentals and arms. J * See Select Anecdotes, &c. by John Barclay, pages 71, 79. f The Moravians, whose principles upon the subject of war are similar to those of the Quakers, experienced also similar preservation. % See Hancock's Principles of Peace Exemplified. CHAY X.] ADHERING TO THE MORAI, I