The southern aegis, and Harford County intelligencer. (Bel Air, Md.) 1862-1864, 1862-06-07
VOL. VINO. %.
From he Catholic Mirror :,
BELLA HORRIDA.

o. q
1t was Hobbs, we believe, who contend
ed that war was mans natural condition.
And indeed, if we separate nature from
reason, the animal from the rational; if,
as is too often the case, reason is merged
in sensuality and mans duality lost in his
baser instincts, we may find that this
crooked dreamer was right in one, at least,
Of his philosophical vagaries. Atno time
does reason seem SO paralyzed, at no time
do passion and the animal attributes Of
our species seem as predominant, as when
war spreads its grim visage over the face
Of nation. The lines between right and
wrong are no longer traceable by the null
titudes, they are ready to offer before the
altar of human blood, all the denominations
that disgrace our nature. The same SYM
pathies that slumbered in listlessness and
apathy amid the wailings of the sorrow
stricken, amid the horrors of famine and
the terrors of pestilence, wake up with the
first sound of the war trumpet, and are
ready for every sacrifice, blood, treasure,
family, friends, virtue, religion-to crafty
a sentiment Of national glory. He who
had but vords for the the sick, the desti-
tute and the pest-stricken, is ready with
acts to play his part in the bloody drama
Of war, to rehabilitate the reign Of hate,
Of suffering and Of slaughter.
War is sad condition for nation to be
involved in. Hence the disturbance of
the peace Of nations should not be made for
slight causes. And yet, in our generation,
its only justification has been found in the
ideal, in the determination to force one set
Of ideas Of happiness, or fitness, or justice,
upon Others, whose estimate of such things
is in opposition thereto. In this spirit
commenced the Napoleonic idea, which in
defiance Of treaties and at the expense Of
right, cost the world millions of treasure
and rivers of blood. In this spirit COM
menced the anti-slavery agitation, which
is satisfied with no sacrifice short OF daily
holocausts of men and money. But these
are not the only offerings which these
bloody idealists place upon the affairs of
Bellona and the Furies. Under the plea
Of necessity, or in other words, with the
means, we have seen murder, arson, de-
famation, deceit, sacrilege, blasphemy;
nay all the crimes forbidden by the decal-
ogue popularized and passed off for the
genuine coin of virtue.
Should this be SO? Alas how infinite
is the disproportion between those wars Of
ideas and their cost We may imagine
that these consequences could not enter
into the calculations Of wilful tyrant who
stops at no price for the accomplishment
Of his ends; but that American statesmen,
North or South, could not SEQ more value
in compromise and concession than in
blood, and its train of evil consequences, is
to us wonder as great as it is lamenta-
BILE.
Even when war comes, its objects are so
devious, its character SO changeable, that
what we fight for to-day, we may find our
selves compelled to fight against to-mor-
row. And thus it sometimes happens
that those who imagined themselves patri-
OTIS, discover that they have only been
tools.
The broken tools that tyrants cast away
BY myriads, when they dare to pave their way
With human hearts to WHAT dream alonei
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