The Sun.
London, England, 1854-07-03 00:00:00

We sometimes have felt exceeding provocation
at the quarrelsome spirit of the United States.
They are always ready to fight—to seek an occa-
sion for fighting. They would at any time rather
go to war than not. They are perpetually seeking
satisfaction. Now, it is of ourselvbs ; again, it is
of France, or Spain, or Austria, or Japan. Their
very ambassadors make pretexts for duels if they
cannot find them ; their consuls demand compen-
sation for injured citizens ; their captains of the
navy are ever on the brink of a broadside in foreign
ports, either with the State in whose harbour they
aro at anchor, or with some rival navy or com-
peting traders. Yet they are at peace with all the
world—have no national debt—their surplus
revenue is a nuisance—every body is civil to them
—every body concedes to them more than is their
due. To make war in words is enough ; to be
" sudden and quick in quarrel, seeking the bubble
reputation even at the cannon's mouth," turns out
to be the best way of superseding the necessity of
an appeal to the cannon. To a man bristling with
spikes, all are ready to give "a wide berth." So
it was with us in the days of the Protector. Old
Noll had enough on his hands at home ; but that
did not prevent him from keeping foreigners in
order. Being always ready to fight with every
body, nobody was willing to fight with him. He
had " enough of the Devil in him to keep the
Devil off him." He made England's rights to be
respected and her name to be feared. We our-
selves were at war with France for 30 years. We
fought to the last—lavished with our wealth upon
it—pawned our credit for it. We would never
give in. Often we rejected terms of peace. The conse-
quence is, we have had no war for 40 years. We
arc not sure that it is not to our peace principles we
are to attribute thefact that we are at warnow. Had we
shown our teeth sooner, and threatened to use them
earlier, the general impression appears to be that
we should have had no occasion for their use.
Armies and navies are, indeed, expensive ; but
it is no bad economy which spends ten millions to
be prepared for war, to save a hundred millions in
the war itself. We would not seek to argue a jus-
tification of the maxim of doing evil that good may
come. God forbid we should advocate war for
war's sake ; or make war deliberately without
cause or provocation, merely from a politic con-
sideration of its material profits or moral advan-
tages. "It is impossible," says Luke, " but that
effences will come, but woe be unto him through
whom they come." An aggressor, an invader, a
general bully of mankind, an intriguer, a hatcher
of treason among subjects, and rebellion against
rival authorities—such require suppression as a
general nuisance to the world. Their organisation
should be abolished and their rule erased and
blotted out, by the common consent of nations.
Doubtless' we must look at the spirit and motives
which dictate hostilities. Even a war which in its
results may be beneficial to the world is not on that
account to be palliated, even although it should
have been caused by ample provocation. It is in-
deed true.that God makes even the wrath of man
to praise him ; but that does not excuse man's

wrath—it does no more than show that Providence
extracts good for the human race, even out of their
own tendencies to evil. But a mere indiscriminate
condemnation of war, without reference to its
causes or its end, is as absurd as a censure of that
form of destructiveness which razes hovels to
build palaces, or which pulls down good houses
on each side of tenements in flames, to cut off
the communication of the raging and devouring
element through a street or a city. We demur
entirely to the Quaker philosophy. We think
the broad-brimmed ethics of the Peace Society to
betray very feeble powers of analysis. They fasten
not upon the general principle of antagonism—on
the theory of strife—on the abstract hypothesis of
resistance or aggression. They know, indeed, they
cannot do so with truth or consistency, seeing that
life itself is a battle—that Christ " came, not to
bring peace, but a sword "—that the whole history
of the Society of Friends has been that of a warfare
against the " world and the world's law "—a re-
sistance to authority where it was wrong—an am-
bitious nonconformity—a pertinacious defiance of
custom—a resolute refusal "to follow the multitude
to do evil." No. They make war against the
Slave Trade by differential duties and twenty gun
frigates—they would pass a liquor-law suppressing
publicans, and abolishing the use of intoxicating
drinks—they bolt their doors against thieves, im-
prison burglars and transport footpads—they em-
body and call out an army of constables with
truncheons to take the field against crime. They
patronise the Mendicity Society—the Society for
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Protection
to Females' Society ; with almost every form of
aggression upon the rights, or temptation to the
weaknesses of mankind, they raise the standard of
a resolute opposition—but there they stop short.
The collision of swords, the concussion of gun-
powder, the array of troops, the repulsion of broad-
sides—these they seem to regard as unmitigated
evil and mortal sin, not to be justified or excus d
by any demur of provocation, or plea of necessity.
Nay, with the most egregious inconsistency, they
actually sent a deputation to the Emperor of Russia
to assure him that they had no sympathy with
those who were interfering to prevent him from
carrying war into Turkey I and that they -call
carrying out peace principles ! In fact their
ideal of social and civil perfectibility appears to
be a dispensation in which men save their
bacon and save their money. Slaughter and
debt seem to them the greatest of all evils. It is
high time this nonsense were exposed, and its tra-
ditional sapience exploded. It is not in the inte-
rests of morality, but in these of mere selfishness.
It is a. creature-comfort, body-coddling, purse-
hoarding rule of ethics. Carried to its conclusion,
it would rob us of our manhood, and so confirm
self-vindication
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and painted our ships of war, that we cannot find
it in our hearts to see shot and shell doing their
office either in going to or coming from them. We
have been so frightened by our load of debt—so
accustomed to talk of dollars—so eager to reduce
taxes and nurse a surplus—so generally inocu-
lated with the mania for stock and share-monger-
ing, and; therefore, so accustomed to the idea of
postponing every consideration to that of keeping
the money market easy, North-Westerns up and divi-
dends progressive, that the very thought of war
makes us tremble for our solvency ; and when it is
threatened we feel, some of us at least, inclined to
make a debtor and creditor account of it, and to
see whether we will save most by giving in or going
through with it. Misers have been known to die
of starvation while they had half a million in the
bank—thus losing both life and money, that money
might be saved. So it will be with a people who
think of their pocket when they should look to their
duty—who would let their honour go, so that they
might retain their cash—who would for ever go on
compounding of felonies, so that thieves would but
always give them back a reasonable proportion of
the property of which they had plundered them.
It is high time we were roused out of these per-
nicious delusions. The world must be made to
know that in a just quarrel we are aiway ready
with men and money, be the results what they
may. Why should the mere preservation of bare
life be reckoned by either Christians or bravo men
as paramount to the cause of justice or the claims
of humanity ? What is there in bare property,
" in vile trash wrung from the hard hands of star-
ving peasants," that'to keep it, hoard it, increase it,
we should be ready to be spit upon, and should be
known for its sake to submit to any degradation which
pride mayinflict or meanness endure ? This extreme
tenderness for bare life, this dastard " horror of
falling into nought and startling at destruction,"
this craven sensitiveness at pain and groans and
blood, may draw the manhood from our souls, may
unsex us, may turn us into cowards, and render us
ultimately incapable of facing the real dangers of
life, or braving the necessities of our fate. And
this nervous clutch of our money bags, too, when-
ever wo are told that a tyrant would invade or
despotism insult ; let us but think of it often
enough, and dwell upon it long enough, and the
time may come when all energy of self-help may
leave us, and when, like the Jews of the middle
ages, we may sink under any oppression which
gives us leave to gather and to hoard. It were
better that we had nothing to lose than that we
should part with our character and manhood, to
keep what we have scraped together. Better have
no life, than waste away in the terrors of the peril
of dying. Has it been by mere buying and selling,
by weaving cloth and spinning cotton, that we
have become great ? Is is by these that we teach
the nations how to live, and set our broad mark
over the world, and make our voice heard above
the din of the strife of peoples F Irt all ages the