bruifes; undoubtedly would be received upon all hands; but only a Few a very few deaths. Society and politics, which have given us these destructive views, have given us also the means of satisfying them. From the earliest dawnings of policy to this day, the invention of men has been fharpening and improving the myflery of murder, from the firft rule ejays of clubs and flaves, to the prefent perfection of gunnery, cannoneering, bombarding, mining, and all these species of artificial, learned, and refined cruelty, which make a principal part of what politicians have taught us to believe is our principal glory.. How far mere nature would have carried us, we may judge by the example of those animals, who still follow her laws, and even of those to whom she has given dispositions more fierce, and arms more terrible than ever she intended we should use. It is an incontestible truth that there is more havock made in one year by men, than has been made by all the Lions, Tygers, Panthers, Ounces, Leopards, Hyenas, Rhinoce*roses Elephants, Bears, and Wolves, upon their several species, since the beginning of the world; though these agree ill enough with each other, and have a much greater proportion of rage and fury in their composition than we have. But with respect to you ye legislators, ye civilizers of mankind! with respect to you be it spoken, your regulations have done more mischief in cold blood, than all the rage of the fierceft animals in their greatest terrors, or furies, has ever done, or ever could do! Vindication of Natural Society.", GLASS DR. JONATHAN SWIFT THE CELEBRATED DEAN OF ST. PATRICK'S DUBLIN. WAS] asked, what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another? I answered, they were innumerable; but I should only mention a few of the chief. Sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern. Sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a war in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil adminstration. Difference in opinions hath cost many millions of lives: for instance whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh;* whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post or throw it into the fire; what is the best colour for a coat, whether black, white, red, or grey; and whether it should be long or short, narrow or wide, dirty or clean, with many more.§ Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long continuance, as those occasioned by differences in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent. Sometimes the quarrel between two princes * Transubstantiation. + Church-music. The colour and make of facred veftments, and different orders of popish ecclefiaftics. is is to decide which of them shall disposses a third of his dominions, where neither of them pretend to any right. Sometimes one prince quarrelleth with another, for fear the other should quarrel with him. Sometimes a war is entered upon because the enemy is too strong; and sometimes because he is too weak. Sometimes our neighbours want the things which we have, or have the things which we want ; and we both fight till they take ours, or give us theirs. It is a very justifiable cause of war, to invade a country after the people have been wasted by famine, destroyed by pestilence, or embroiled by factions among themselves. It is justifiable to enter into a war against our nearest ally, when one of his towns lie convenient for us or a territory of land, that would render our dominions round and compact. If a prince sends forces into a nation, where the people are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put half of them to death, and make slaves of the rest, in order to civilize and reduce them from their, barbarous way of living. It is a very kingly, honourable, and frequent practice, when one prince desires the assistance of another to secure him against an invasion, that the assistant, when he hath driven out the invader, should seize on the dominions himself, and kill, imprison or banish the prince he came to relieve. Alliance by blood or marriage is a frequent cause of war between princes; and the nearer the kindred is, the greater is their disposition to quarrel. There There are likewise a kind of beggarly princes in Europe, not able to make war by themselves, who hire out their troops to richer nations, for so much a day to each man, of which they keep three fourths to themselves, and it is the best part of their mamtenance. I RELATED the revolution under the prince of Orange; the long war with France entered into by the said prince and renewed by his successor, wherein the greatest powers of Christendom were engaged, and which still continued: I computed, at his request, that about a million of men might have been killed in the whole progress of it; and perhaps a hundred or more cities taken, and five times as many ships burnt or sunk. What you have told me (said my master) upon the subject of war, does indeed discover most admirably the effect of that reafon you pretend to: however it is happy, that the shame is greater than the danger; and that nature has left you utterly incapable of doing much mischief. For, your mouths, lying flat with your faces, you can hardly bite each other to any purpose, unless by consent. Then as to the claws upon your feet before and behind, they are so short and tender, that one of our yahoos would drive a dozen of yours before him. And therefore in recounting the numbers of those who had been killed in battle, I cannot but think you have said the thing which is not. I I could not forbear shaking my head, and smiling a little at his ignorance. And being no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a description of cannons, culverins, musquets, carbines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, bombardments, sea-fights, ships sunk with a thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side, dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses feet; flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed with carcases, left for food to dogs and wolves, and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning, and destroying. And to set forth the valour of my own dear countrymen, I assured him that I had seen them blow up an hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship; and beheld the dead bodies drop down in pieces from the clouds to the great diversion of the spectators. Gulliver's Travels, part iv. ch. v. F. S. DE LA MOTTE FENELON ARCHBISHOP OF CAMBRAY. ALL the human kind is but one family, dispersed over the face of the whole earth; all men are brothers, and ought to love each other as such. Curse on those impious wretches who seek a cruel glory in the blood of their bro thers |