XVII.-WAR WITH FRANCE.

[From the Paper dated November 28, 1840.]

SIR,-There seems almost a foolishness in any attempts on the part of obscure individuals to influence the measures of the government of a great nation. Yet it is hardly in human nature to see oneself on the edge of a cataract, and to surrender oneself to destruction without moving a hand or uttering a sound. And though one journal, and certainly a mere correspondent of one journal, can do little or nothing,—yet if the press throughout the kingdom could be roused to the magnitude of the danger, the evil would undoubtedly be averted.

History is full of wars undertaken on slight grounds, and as foolish as they were wicked. But taking all things into the account, the increased sense of the evils of war, now so generally prevalent, the actual difficulties of the country, the object aimed at, and the enemy selected, Lord Palmerston's war with France, should such a calamity unhappily take place, will stand, I verily believe, unmatched in the records of human folly.

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For the last five and twenty years nations have been learning more and more to appreciate the evils of war. They have found out more than they ever did before the blessings of free and friendly intercourse with each other; and they have become aware that the interruption of these by war is mostly a mere evil: that war answers to nobody that with an infinity of crime and suffering during its progress, its results are to all parties unsatisfactory; that they are mostly nothing but a compromise produced by mutual exhaustion; that the object aimed at, utterly unworthy as it was of the sacrifices made to purchase it, is for the most part not purchased after all. Comparing too the progress of mankind during the last twenty-five years, with the twenty years of war which pre

ceded them, men have observed how fatally war checks internal improvement; how all social evils thrive unchecked during its continuance; because the whole energies of the nation are turned to outward objects, she has neither time nor interest to bestow on watching her domestic condition.

A statesman therefore who provokes a war now, is far more inexcusable than he ever could have been before. He is sinning in spite of knowledge; he is gathering a fruit which he and all the world know to be poisonous.

This applies to all statesmen; how much more to those of England? Is it not enough that the last war has mortgaged for ever every acre of land, every house, every article of property, nay, the very bodies and minds, the limbs, the skill, the industry and the genius of every individual in the nation? Do we forget the debt, and the manner in which it was contracted? Do we forget how every question which most embarrasses us derives its peculiar difficulty from this single cause? What is the great defence of the Corn Laws, but that burden of taxation which far more than any inferiority of climate disables the English agriculturist from competing with foreigners? What is the weight which almost crushes the marvellous energy of our manufacturers, but that they are struggling against those of the Continent as men heavily taxed against those lightly taxed; that out of their capital and skill, and out of the ingenuity and labour of their workmen, they have not only to rival the foreign manufacturer, but to pay over and above the dividends of the English fundholder? And what if we follow this a little farther? Is our population perfectly united and tranquil ? Will no favourable opportunity encourage agitation in Ireland? Is Canada pacified? Is India secure? Is Chartism above all so extinct that the confusion and pressure of war would be unable to awaken it? Surely never was any country in the world less in that state of fulness

of bread and exuberance of strength which should seek war as a pastime or an exercise.

Still no doubt there might be a cause so sacred as to force us to forget all the evils of war, general and particular; it is conceivable, that is, the thing is physically possible, that we should be called upon to sacrifice interests so precious as to leave us no choice but to draw the sword. Physically possible it is no doubt, but scarcely morally. No nation in existence would so force this great country into a clearly unavoidable war. But a cause of war so frivolous as that which now threatens us, may be looked for in vain through our annals, except in the case of that scandalous war which Charles II. made upon Holland. Our trade, lawful or contraband, is not interfered with no barren rock of so much as the size of half an acre has been claimed from us; no boundary line involving the acquisition of some square miles of bog or forest is disputed. Lord Chatham, carrying the doctrine of British interference to the greatest possible length, said that not a single shot should ever be fired in Europe without our permission. But no single shot was fired or going to be fired. Here is no disputed Austrian or Spanish succession; no question about the opening of the Scheldt or the obstruction of the Rhine. It is a quarrel between the Sultan of Turkey and one of his overgrown subjects, which is to involve England, Europe, and the world in all the guilt and misery of war.

The parties in this quarrel are remote, but what is geographically remote, may sometimes be politically near. Let us see what in this present case is the nearness and the magnitude of the danger dreaded. If the Pacha of Egypt retains Syria, his power will become highly dangerous to the independence of Turkey; if Turkey's independence be threatened, Turkey will call in Russia to her aid; if Russia protects Turkey, her protection will be soon changed into dominion; and finally, we shall see the

Russians at Constantinople. As if the evil of seeing the Russians at Constantinople, an evil depending on a series of contingencies, were in any degree to be compared to the evil of a war between England and France. What surer way can there be of bringing the Russians, not to Constantinople only, but to Vienna and to Berlin, nay perhaps to Paris and to London, than to involve England and France in war with each other, that when the lion and the tiger have torn each other to pieces, the fox may steal away the prey from both of them. And what surer way of keeping the Russians from Constantinople, than to bind our alliance with France trebly fast, thus keeping for ever before the eyes of Russia a control which she dared not to disregard. What Russian soldier would ever set foot across the Balkan, if England and France, indissolubly joined together as the protectors of the old civilization of Europe, were ready at an instant to pour their fleets into the Black Sea, and without repeating the folly of the march to Moscow, to strike at the life of Russia through her vulnerable heel; to drive her back behind the Pruth, to thrust her away from the shores of the Euxine, and by occupying the Crimea as an impregnable fortress, to seal up the only outlet by which the evil spirit of Russian ambition can issue forth to trouble the world?

But instead of this, we are ready to verify all that Russia's wildest dreams could hope for, and involve ourselves and all Europe in a war with France. For what imaginable end except to smooth the path of Russian ambition? So long as England and France are friends, the peace of Europe cannot be disturbed; their enmity alone can endanger it. We choose for our enemy our nearest neighbour, with whom we have so often tried our strength before that either nation is well taught to respect the other, and to know that their contest can and must entail the greatest evils on both, with no possible advantage to either. We each have our separate course to run, in which we cannot interfere with each other. France has no desire to

interfere with our colonial empire, and what can we wish to take from France? And if the French be burning for war, so that their heroic king can scarcely restrain them, if their press has been madly violent, if the recollections of 1815 are rankling in the hearts of the French people, shall we irritate them still farther by cold and insulting language, shall we encourage them to believe that we too would gladly revive the old quarrel; or shall we meet them in a spirit of frankness and friendliness, going beyond what we are strictly bound to do, to lull their suspicions, and manifesting to them our conviction that in this contest between Turkey and Egypt their interests and ours are identical, and that if we differ as to the means of advancing them, no madness can be so great as to let this difference lead to a quarrel, like two physicians tearing their patient to pieces whilst each was so eager to monopolize his cure?

War is a dreadful evil, war for England at this moment more than ordinarily dreadful, war with France is an evil deeper than all. One thing alone is wanting to the bitterness of this prospect, that it should have been brought on smilingly and complacently, like a child in its simplicity putting a match to a barrel of gunpowder, and thinking that the explosion would be a fine sight to look upon. Ten years ago the Whig ministry came into power with the cry of peace, reform, and retrenchment. Is it from them above all other men that we are to receive the boon of the most unjust, the most insane, and most ruinous war?

Surely Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell do not forget that from them at least better things may be expected; and if some of their colleagues retain the antiGallican feelings of their old political connexions, yet they at any rate must be well aware of the inestimable value of our alliance with France, and that to forsake France for Russia is such utter impolicy in a British minister as to excuse those who not being aware of the de