The Press.
London, England, 1856-09-20 00:00:00

SEPT. 20, 1856.

sufficient ground for their conquest, enslave-
ment, or extermination, while the remoteness
of their territories, and the savage character
of their forests and mountains, ettsily gave
rise to the most monstrous rumours concern-
ing their manners and religion. Owing to
these various circumstances, all mankind out•
side his own little world seemed to an inhabi-
tant of the classical States of antiquity to be
formed almost of different materials from him-
self, and to be properly amenable to art entirely
different code of international law.
These remarks apply more particularly to
the military proceedings of the Romans; but
if we turn to the wars waged among the
Grecian republics,und contemplate the ferocity
with which they were pursued, we shall see
that there were also special causes at work,
.over and above the absence of a more merciful
and charitable faith. The fact is, that these
States were constituted on so very small a
scale. that the loss of any great number of
their fighting men was sufficient to turn the
balance, not of a single campaign, but almost
of the whole war. When the Lacedremonians
lost the flower of their army at Sphacteria, had
the Athenians known bow to act with common
prudence and moderation, the Peloponnesian
war was finished. When the Athenians
were cut to pieces at Chseronea, no fur-
ther resistance to Philip of Macedon was pos-
sible. For this reason, it was, of course, a
.great object with belligerents to inflict this
kind of injury on their opponents; and,
though we do not mean to say that this jasti-
ties the cruelty which they too often exer-
cised, it must nevertheless be admitted as an
element in our calculation of their guilt.
The various channels through which Chris-
tianity made its influence felt upon the
heathen world are little more than just
touched upon in the essay before us, the
writer of which seems more anxious to make
at display of his reading than of his thought;
and certainly if in a multitude of references
there were truth, we should have no reason to
complain. He does not seem to us to have
grasped the " marrow of the matter " with
sufficaeat tenacity, nor among a variety of minor
ageraeiee to have sufficiently distinguished the
leading feature of the new faith which pro-
.duced its peculiarly healing influence on the
intercourse of nations. This was, in our
opinion, the great doctrine of the original and
Absolute equality of all mankind, a principle
which secured the gradations of rank in this
world by disclosing more clearly the founda-
tions on which they rest, and gradually intro-
duced more equitable relations between high
and low, by showing that the difference be-
tween them existed but for a special purpose,
and implied no real inferiority of nature. It
is difficult, perhaps, fully to appreciate this
doctrine on the world without having lived in
a period when it was unknown. if we can
•imiipose Englishmen, regarding all the rest of
the human race in the same light as some
few of the South American planters still
regard the Africans, and then that their
eyes were suddenly opened to the truth, we
.shall perhaps approximate to something like
a due sense of the enormous benefit which
was thus wrought by Christianity.
If, however, we regard the conditions of
European warfare at the present day, it is not
-so easy to trace their improvement to the
direct operation of Christianity. Wars of
extermination are no longer waged There is
no longer any necessary hatred between the
actual combatants. The reason of this is,
that Europe is now divided into several great
kingdoms of nearly equal strength, and that
consequently, no one nation standing in perpe-
tual dread of another, there is no longer any
ground for the old national hatreds. At least
they are now the exception and not the rule.
All this is easy enough to understand; but
when we come to explain it by the effect of
any particular religion, our task is by no
means so simple. Of this difficulty Mr.
,Kennedy has not even attempted a solution.
The authority of the Popes in the earlier part
of the mediaeval period was doubtless often
exercised to prevent the oppression or de-
struction of minor States; yet, it we put this
down to the credit aide of Christianity, we
must not in common fairness omit to set
against it the bloody and desolating wars of