It is larger, by a hundred millions, than the value of all the exports sent forth by all the nations of the earth.
It is larger, by more than five hundred millions, than the value of all the shipping belonging to the civilized world.
It is larger, by nine hundred and ninety-seven millions, than the annual combined charities of Europe and America for preaching the Gospel to the Heathen.
Yes! the Commonwealth of Christian Nations, including our own country, appropriates, without hesitation, as a matter of course, upwards of a thousand millions of dollars annually to the maintenance of the War System, and vaunts its three millions of dollars, laboriously collected, for diffusing the light of the Gospel in foreign lands! With untold prodigality of cost, it perpetuates the worst Heathenism of War, while, by charities insignificant in comparison, it doles to the Heathen a message of Peace. At home it breeds and fattens a cloud of eagles and vultures, trained to swoop upon the land; to all the Gentiles across the sea it dismisses a solitary dove.
Still further: every ship-of-war that floats costs more than a well-endowed college.
Every sloop-of-war that floats costs more than the largest public library in our country.
It is sometimes said, by persons yet in leading-strings of inherited prejudice, and with little appreciation of the true safety afforded by the principles of Peace, that all these comprehensive preparations are needed for protection against enemies from abroad. Wishing to present the cause without any superfluous question on what are called, apologetically, "defensive wars," let me say, in reply,—and here all can unite,—that, if these preparations are needed at any time, according to the aggressive martial interpretation of self-defence in its exigencies, there is much reason to believe it is because the unchristian spirit in which they have their birth, lowering and scowling in the very names of the ships, provokes the danger,—as the presence of a bravo might challenge the attack he was hired to resist.
Frederick of Prussia, sometimes called the Great, in a singular spirit of mingled openness and effrontery, deliberately left on record, most instructively prominent among the real reasons for his war upon Maria Theresa, that he had troops always ready to act. Thus did these Preparations unhappily become, as they too often show themselves, incentives to War. Lord Brougham justly dwells on this confession as a lesson of history. Human nature, as manifest in the conduct of individuals or communities, has its lesson also. The fatal War Spirit is born of these preparations, out of which it springs full-armed. Here also is its great aliment; here are the seeds of the very evil it is sometimes vainly supposed to avert. Let it never be forgotten, let it be treasured as a solemn warning, that, by the confession of Frederick himself, it was the possession of troops always ready to act that helped to inspire that succession of bloody wars, which, first pouncing upon Silesia, mingled at last with the strifes of England and France, even in distant colonies across the Atlantic, ranging the savages of the forest under hostile European banners.[314]
But I deny that these preparations are needed for just self-defence. It is difficult, if not impossible, to suppose any such occasion in the Fraternity of Christian Nations, if War ceases to be an established Arbitrament, or if any state is so truly great as to decline its umpirage. There is no such occasion among the towns, counties, or states of our extended country; nor is there any such occasion among the counties of Great Britain, or among the provinces of France; but the same good-will, the same fellowship, and the same ties of commerce, which unite towns, counties, states, and provinces, are fast drawing the whole Commonwealth of Nations into similar communion. France and England, so long regarded as natural enemies, are now better known to each other than only a short time ago were different provinces of the former kingdom. And there is now a closer intimacy in business and social intercourse between Great Britain and our own country than there was at the beginning of the century between Massachusetts and Virginia.