Now all these sums are to be paid by the people, "the dear people," whom our republican demagogues love so well, and for whom they spend their lives, rising early, toiling late, those self-denying heroes, those sainted martyrs of the republic, eating the bread of carefulness for them alone! But how are they to be paid? By a direct tax levied on all the property of the nation, so that the poor man pays according to his little, and the rich man in proportion to his much, each knowing when he pays and what he pays for? No such thing; nothing like it. The people must pay and not know it; must be deceived a little, or they would not pay after this fashion! You pay for it in every pound of sugar, copper, coal, in every yard of cloth; and if the counsel of some lovers of the people be followed, you will soon pay for it in each pound of coffee and tea. In this way the rich man always pays relatively less than the poor; often a positively smaller sum. Even here I think that three-fourths of all the property is owned by one-fourth of the people, yet that three-fourths by no means pays a third of the national revenue. The tax is laid on things men cannot do without,—sugar, cloth, and the like. The consumption of these articles is not in proportion to wealth but persons. Now the poor man, as a general rule, has more children than the rich, and the tax being more in proportion to persons than property, the poor man pays more than the rich. So a tax is really laid on the poor man's children to pay for the war which makes him poor and keeps him poor. I think your captains and colonels, those sons of thunder and heirs of glory, will not tell you so. They tell you so! They know it! Poor brothers, how could they? I think your party newspapers, penny or pound, will not tell you so; nor the demagogues, all covered with glory and all forlorn, who tell the people when to hurrah and for what! But if you cipher the matter out for yourself you will find it so, and not otherwise. Tell the demagogues, whig or democrat, that. It was an old Roman maxim, "The people wished to be deceived; let them." Now it is only practised on; not repeated—in public.
Let us deal justly even with war, giving that its due. There is one class of men who find their pecuniary advantage in it. I mean army contractors, when they chance to be favorites of the party in power; men who let steamboats to lie idle at $500 a day. This class of men rejoice in a war. The country may become poor, they are sure to be rich. Yet another class turn war to account, get the "glory," and become important in song and sermon. I see it stated in a newspaper that the Duke of Wellington has received, as gratuities for his military services, $5,400,000, and $40,000 a year in pensions!
But the waste of property is the smallest part of the evil. The waste of life in war is yet more terrible. Human life is a sacred thing. Go out into the lowest street of Boston; take the vilest and most squalid man in that miserable lane, and he is dear to some one. He is called brother; perhaps husband; it may be father; at least, son. A human heart, sadly joyful, beat over him before he was born. He has been pressed fondly to his mother's arms. Her tears and her smiles have been for him; perhaps also her prayers. His blood may be counted mean and vile by the great men of the earth who love nothing so well as the dear people, for he has no "coat of arms," no liveried servant to attend him, but it has run down from the same first man. His family is ancient as that of the most long descended king. God made him; made this splendid universe to wait on him and teach him; sent his Christ to save him. He is an immortal soul. Needlessly to spill that man's blood is an awful sin. It will cry against you out of the ground—Cain! where is thy brother? Now in war you bring together 50,000 men like him on one side, and 50,000 of a different nation on the other. They have no natural quarrel with one another. The earth is wide enough for both; neither hinders the sun from the other. Many come unwillingly; many not knowing what they fight for. It is but accident that determines on which side the man shall fight. The cannons pour their shot—round, grape, canister; the howitzers scatter their bursting shells; the muskets rain their leaden death; the sword, the bayonet, the horses' iron hoof, the wheels of the artillery, grind the men down into trodden dust. There they lie, the two masses of burning valor, extinguished, quenched, and grimly dead, each covering with his body the spot he defended with his arms. They had no quarrel; yet they lie there, slain by a brother's hand. It is not old and decrepid men, but men of the productive age, full of lusty life.
But it is only the smallest part that perish in battle. Exposure to cold, wet, heat; unhealthy climates, unwholesome food, rum, and forced marches, bring on diseases which mow down the poor soldiers worse than musketry and grape. Others languish of wounds, and slowly procrastinate a dreadful and a tenfold death. Far away, there are widows, orphans, childless old fathers, who pore over the daily news to learn at random the fate of a son, a father, or a husband! They crowd disconsolate into the churches, seeking of God the comfort men took from them, praying in the bitterness of a broken heart, while the priest gives thanks for "a famous victory," and hangs up the bloody standard over his pulpit!
When ordinary disease cuts off a man, when he dies at his duty, there is some comfort in that loss. "It was the ordinance of God," you say. You minister to his wants; you smoothe down the pillow for the aching head; your love beguiles the torment of disease, and your own bosom gathers half the darts of death. He goes in his time and God takes him. But when he dies in such a war, in battle, it is man who has robbed him of life. It is a murderer that is butchered. Nothing alleviates that bitter, burning smart!
Others not slain are maimed for life. This has no eyes; that no hands; another no feet nor legs. This has been pierced by lances, and torn with the shot, till scarce any thing human is left. The wreck of a body is crazed with pains God never meant for man. The mother that bore him would not know her child. Count the orphan asylums in Germany and Holland; go into the hospital at Greenwich, that of the invalids in Paris, you see the "trophies" of Napoleon and Wellington. Go to the arsenal at Toulon, see the wooden legs piled up there for men now active and whole, and you will think a little of the physical horrors of war.
In Boston there are perhaps about 25,000 able-bodied men between 18 and 45. Suppose them all slain in battle, or mortally hurt, or mown down by the camp-fever, vomito, or other diseases of war, and then fancy the distress, the heart-sickness amid wives, mothers, daughters, sons and fathers, here! Yet 25,000 is a small number to be murdered in "a famous victory;" a trifle for a whole "glorious campaign" in a great war. The men of Boston are no better loved than the men of Tamaulipas. There is scarce an old family, of the middle class, in all New England, which did not thus smart in the Revolution; many, which have not, to this day, recovered from the bloody blow then falling on them. Think, wives, of the butchery of your husbands; think, mothers, of the murder of your sons!
Here, too, the burden of battle falls mainly on the humble class. They pay the great tribute of money; they pay also the horrid tax of blood. It was not your rich men who fought even the Revolution; not they. Your men of property and standing were leaguing with the British, or fitting out privateers when that offered a good investment, or buying up the estates of more consistent tories; making money out of the nation's dire distress! True, there were most honorable exceptions; but such, I think, was the general rule. Let this be distinctly remembered, that the burden of battle is borne by the humble classes of men; they pay the vast tribute of money; the awful tax of blood! The "glory" is got by a few; poverty, wounds, death, are for the people!
Military glory is the poorest kind of distinction, but the most dangerous passion. It is an honor to man to be able to mould iron; to be skilful at working in cloth, wood, clay, leather. It is man's vocation to raise corn, to subdue the rebellious fibre of cotton and convert it into beautiful robes, full of comfort for the body. They are the heroes of the race who abridge the time of human toil and multiply its results; they who win great truths from God, and send them to a people's heart; they who balance the many and the one into harmonious action, so that all are united and yet each left free. But the glory which comes of epaulets and feathers; that strutting glory which is dyed in blood—what shall we say of it? In this day it is not heroism; it is an imitation of barbarism long ago passed by. Yet it is marvellous how many men are taken with a red coat! You expect it in Europe, a land of soldiers and blood. You are disappointed to find that here the champions of force should be held in honor, and that even the lowest should voluntarily enroll themselves as butchers of men!