Leigh Hunt

“ The true autocrat, or Pope, is that man, the real or seeming wisest of the last age; crowned after death; who finds his hierarchy of gifted authors, his clergy of assiduous journalists: whose decretals, written, not on parchment, but on the living souls of men, it were an inversion of the laws of nature to disobey. In these times of ours, all intellect has fused itself into literature; literature—printed thought, is the molten sea and wonder-bearing chaos, in which mind after mind casts forth its opinion, its feeling, to be molten into the general mass, and to be worked there ”

“ Circumstances, especially the participation of dangers and vicissitude, often conspire with naturally good qualities to render soldiers the most amiable of men; and nothing is more delightful to contemplate than an old military veteran, whose tenderness of heart has survived the shocks of the rough work it has been tried in, till twenty miserable sights of war and horror start up to the imagination as a set-off against its attractiveness. ”

“ It is glad of the doubtful amount of intellect in military genius, and knows it to be a good ally in the preservation of power, and in the substitution of noise and show for qualities fearless of inspection. Is it an ascendancy of this kind which the present age requires, or will permit? Do we want a soldier at the head of us, when there is nobody abroad to fight with? ”

“ Even if nothing else were to come of inquiries into the horrors of war, surely they would cry aloud for some better provision against their extremity after battle,—for some regulated and certain assistance to the wounded and agonized,—so that we might hear no longer of men left in cold and misery all night, writhing with torture,—of bodies stripped by prowlers, perhaps murderers,—and of frenzied men, the other day the darlings of their friends, dying, two and even several days after the battle, of famine! ”

“ But as an individual who am nothing, except in connexion with what I humanly feel, I dare to affirm, that I have not only the consideration that becomes [91] me for all human beings, but a flesh and blood regard for every body; and that I as truly respect in the Noble Duke the possession of military science, of a straight-forward sincerity, and a valour of which no circumstances or years can diminish the ready firmness, as I doubt the fitness of a man of his education, habits, and political principles, for the guidance of an intellectual age. ”

“ That "good" may come! nay, that evil may be perpetuated; for what good, superior to the alternatives denounced, is achieved by this eternal round of war and its causes? Let us do good in a good and kind manner, and trust to the co-operation of Providence for the result. It seems the only real way of attaining to the very best of which our earth is capable; and at the very worst, necessity, like the waters, will find its level, and the equity of things be justified. ”

“ But, publicly speaking, the more a soldier succeeds, the more he looks upon soldiership as something superior to all other kinds of ascendancy, and qualified to dispense with them. He always ends in considering the flower of the art of government as consisting in issuing "orders," and that of popular duty as comprised in "obedience." Cities with him are barracks, and the nation a conquered country. He is at best but a pioneer of civilization. When he undertakes to be the civilizer himself, he makes [84] mistakes that betray him to others, even supposing him self-deceived. ”

“ And, above all, it is idle to affirm what he intends to do for ever, and to have us eternally venerate and abstain from questioning an evil. All good and evil, and vice and virtue themselves, might become confounded in the human mind by a like daring; and humanity sit down under every buffet of misfortune, without attempting to resist it: which, fortunately, is impossible. ”

“ May princes and people alike find it out by the kindliest means, and without further violence. May they discover that no one set of human beings, perhaps no single individual, can be thoroughly secure and content, or enabled to work out his case with equal reasonableness, till all are so,—a subject for reflection, which contains, we hope, the beneficent reason why all are restless. The solution of the problem is co-operation—the means of solving it is the Press. ”

“ Now, there is nothing that irritates a just cause so much as a threatening of force; and all impositions of a military chief on a state, where civil directors will, at least, do as well, is a threatening of force, disguise it, or pretend to laugh at it, as its imposers may. This irritation in England will not produce violence. Public opinion is too strong, and the future too secure. But deeply and daily will increase the disgust and the ridicule ”

“ I would exhort the lovers of feudal splendour to be the last men to think so; for a thousand times more impossible will they find its retention under any other circumstances. Their royalties, their educations, their accomplishments of all sorts, must go along with the Press and its irresistible consequences, or they will be set aside like a child in a corner, who has insisted on keeping the toys and books of his brothers to himself. ”

“ But, on the same principle, I feel it my duty to look evil in the face, in order to discover if it be capable of amendment; and I do not see why the miseries of war are to be spared this interrogation, simply because they are frightful and enormous. Men [63] get rid of smaller evils which lie in their way—nay, of great ones; and there appears to be no reason why they should not get rid of the greatest, if they will but have the courage. ”

“ As a sovereign remedy for this lamentable political disorder, many very sensible people in England prescribe, I know, that we ought to have resource to arms. I must confess, however, it seems to me that one of the greatest political errors England could commit would be to declare, or to join in declaring, war with Russia; in short, that an appeal to brute force would, at this moment, be at once most unscientifically to stop an immense [108] moral engine, which, if left to its work, is quite powerful enough, without bloodshed, to gain for humanity, at no expense at all, its object. ”

“ The Inquisition, as War may be hereafter, is no more. Daughter if it was of the Supreme Good, it was no immortal daughter. Why should "Carnage" be,—especially as God has put it in our heads to get rid of it?
I am aware of what may be said on these occasions, to "puzzle the will;" and I concede of course, that mankind may entertain false views of their power to change anything for the better. I concede, that all change may be only in appearance, and not make any real difference in the general amount of good and evil ”

“ Is a murder in the streets worth attending to,—a single wounded man worth carrying to the hospital,—and are all the murders, and massacres, and fields of wounded, and the madness, the conflagrations, the famines, the miseries of families, and the rickety frames and melancholy bloods of posterity, only fit to have an embroidered handkerchief thrown over them? Must "ladies and gentlemen" be called off, that they may not "look that way," the "sight is so shocking"? Does it become [52] us to let others endure, what we cannot bear even to think of? ”

“ Although the petty rule of my life has been never to trouble myself about what the world calls 'politics'— (a fine word, by the by, much easier expressed than understood) —yet, I must own, I am always happy when I see a nation enjoying itself, and melancholy when I observe any large body of people suffering pain or imprisonment. ”

“ Let us draw forth one individual from those thousands, or tens of thousands,—his leg has been shivered by one ball, his jaw broken by another—he is bathed in his own blood, and that of his fellows—yet he lives, tortured by thirst, fainting, famishing. He is but one of the twenty thousand—one of the actors and sufferers in the scene of the hero's glory—and of the twenty thousand there is scarcely one whose suffering or death will not be the centre of a circle of misery. ”

“ And for this enmity, even if no other reason existed,—even [88] if his new light were sincere,—the Duke of Wellington ought not to have the honour of leading reform. It is just as if a man had been doing all he could to prevent another from entering his own house, and then, when he found that the by-standers would insist on his having free passage, were to turn to them, smiling, and say, "Well, since it must be so, allow me to do the honours of the mansion." Everybody knows what this proposal would be called by the by-standers. ”

“ I firmly believe, that war, or the sending thousands of our fellow-creatures to cut one another to bits, often for what they have no concern in, nor understand, will one day be reckoned far more absurd than if people were to settle an argument over the dinner-table with their knives,—a logic indeed, which was once fashionable in some places during the "good old times." ”

“ If the Greeks had had a press, we should probably have heard nothing of the inconsiderate question, which demands, why they, with all their philosophy, did not alter the world. They had not the means. They could not command a general [112] hearing. Neither had Christianity come up, to make men think of one another's wants, as well as of their own accomplishments. Modern times possess those means, and inherit that divine incitement. May every man exert himself accordingly, and show himself a worthy inhabitant of this beautiful and most capable world! ”

“ Late in man's history, yet clearly, at length, it becomes manifest to the dullest, that mind is stronger than matter—that mind is the creator and shaper of matter—that not brute force, but only persuasion and faith, is the King of this world. ”

“ And, still more will it shock their sensibilities to learn, that such men, such men-destroyers, were marked out as the eminent and the illustrious—as the worthy of laurels and monuments—of eloquence and poetry. In that better and happier epoch, the wise and the good will be busied in hurling into oblivion, or dragging forth for exposure to universal ignominy and obloquy, [98] many of the heads we deem heroic; while the true fame and the perdurable glories will be gathered around the creators and diffusers of happiness."—Deontology. ”

“ Surely large companies of men should be organized for the sole purpose of assisting and clearing away the field after battle. They should be steady men, [53] not lightly admitted, nor unpossessed of some knowledge of surgery, and they should be attached to the surgeon's staff. Both sides would respect them for their office, and keep them sacred from violence. Their duties would be too painful and useful to get them disrespected for not joining in the fight—and possibly, before long, they would help to do away their own necessity, by detailing what they beheld. ”

“ Much good is there in that people—I would not be thought to undervalue it—much bonhommie—and in the most despotic districts, as much sensual comfort as can make any people happy who know no other happiness. But England and France, the leaders of Europe, the peregrinators of the world, cannot be confined to those lazy and prospectless paths. ”

“ I heartily grant to the privileged classes, that, enjoying in many respects the best educations, they have been conservators of polished manners, and of the other graces of intercourse. My quarrel with them is, that the inferior part of their education induces them to wish to keep these manners and graces to themselves, together with a superabundance, good for nobody, of all other advantages ”

“ Public principles are sometimes incarnate in individual shapes; and, in attacking them, the individual may be seemingly attacked, where, to eyes which look a little closer, there is evidently no such intention. I have been obliged to identify, in some measure, the Power of the Sword with several successive individuals, and with the Duke of Wellington most, because he is the reigning shape, and includes all its pretensions. ”

“ Woe to him whose edifice is not built of true asbest, and on the everlasting rock, but on the false sand and the drift-wood of accident, and the paper and parchment of antiquated habit! For the power or powers exist not on our earth that can say to that sea—roll back, or bid its proud waves be still. ”

“ But there is one prose specimen of these details, which I will give, because it made so great an impression on me in my youth, that I never afterwards could help calling it to mind when war was spoken of; and as I had a good deal to say on that subject, having been a public journalist during one of the most interesting periods of modern history, and never having been blinded into an admiration of war by the dazzle of victory, the circumstance may help to show how salutary a record of this kind may be, and what an impression the subject might be brought to make on [55] society. ”

“ This child, then,—'this sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,'—is the only army that an enlightened country like ours should, I humbly think, deign to oppose to one who reigns in darkness—who trembles at day-light, and whose throne rests upon ignorance and despotism. ”