But in thy country's roll of fame, Thy memory were enshrined. Peace to thine ashes, lady! I would not dim thy name, Nor cast the smallest shade upon The lustre of thy fame. I would that thou hadst slumbered Where England's noblest restI would that thou wert numbered With her loftiest and her best! WAR. In the attempt to form an accurate estimate of the moral character of human actions and opinions, it is often of importance to inquire how they have been produced. There is always great reason to doubt the rectitude of that, of which the causes and motives are impious; and if, therefore, it should appear from the observations which follow, that some of the motives to war, and of its causes, are inconsistent with reason or with virtue, I would invite the reader to pursue the inquiry that succeeds them, with suspicion, at least, of the rectitude of our ordinary opinions. There are some customs which have obtained so generally and so long, that what was originally an effect becomes a cause, and what was a cause becomes an effect, until, by the reciprocal influence of each, the custom is continued by circumstances so multiplied and involved, that it is difficult to detect them in all their ramifications, or to determine those to which it is principally to be referred. What were once the occasions of wars may be easily supposed. Robbery, or the repulsion of robbers, was probably the only motive to hostility, until robbery became refined into ambition, and it was sufficient to produce a war that a chief was not content with the territory of his fathers. But by the gradually increasing complication of society from age to age, and by the multiplication of remote interests and obscure rights, the motives to war have become so numerous and so technical, that ordinary observation often fails to perceive what they are. They are sometimes known only to a cabinet which is influenced in its decision by reasonings of which a nation knows little, or by feelings of which it knows nothing: so that of those who personally engage in hostilities, there is perhaps not often one in ten who can distinctly tell why he is fighting. This refinement in the motives of war, is no trifling evidence that they are insufficient or bad. When it is considered how tremendous a battle is, how many it hurries in a moment from the world, how much wretchedness and how much guilt it produces, it would surely appear that nothing but obvious necessity should induce a resort to it. But when, instead of one battle, we have a war, with many battles, and of course with multiplied suffering and accumulated guilt, the motives to so dreadful a measure, ought to be such as to force themselves upon involuntary observation, and to be written as it were in the skies. If, then, a large proportion of a people are often without any distinct perception of the reasons why they are slaughtering mankind, it implies, I think, prima facia evidence against the adequacy or the justice of the motives to slaughter. It would perhaps not be affectation to say, that of the reasons why war is so readily engaged in, one of the principal is that we do not inquire into the subject. We have been accustomed from earliest life, to a familiarity with all its "pomp and circumstance;" soldiers have passed us at every step, and battles and victories have been the topics of those around us. War, therefore, becomes fami liarised to our thoughts, interwoven with our associations. We have never inquired 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 process of the world. And how are we to feel disapprobation of a system that we do not examine, and of the nature of which we do not think? Want of inquiry has been the means by which long-continued practices, whatever have been their enormity, have obtained the general concurrence of the world, and by which they have continued to pollute or degrade it, long after the few who inquire into their nature have discovered them to be bad. It was by these means that the slavetrade was so long tolerated by this land of humanity. Men did not think of its iniquity. We were induced to think, and we soon abhorred and then abolished it. In the present moral state of the world, therefore, I believe it is the business of him who would perceive pure morality, to question the purity of that which now obtains. When I endeavour to divest myself of the influence of habit, and to contemplate a battle with those |