LETTER LXX.

TO THE SAME.

Valenciennes.

How often in furveying these horrible

wrecks of human affairs, have I reiterated that apoftrophe, which you did me the honour fo much to approve on the first publication of a work, whofe chief defign was to paint the miseries of war in general, and of civil war in particular. You will accept one paffage, which came to my mind many times in the courfe of these military ruminations amongst furrounding fcenes of death, of havock, and of ruin.

* Ah earth, thou common parent-thou whofe nourishing bofom furnishes to all the children of content that will cultivate thy kindnefs; how art thou made the object of fanguinary ambition! Into what ridiculous portions of ideal property art thou cut out, quarrelled and contended for! How often does the bounteous fun, that fhines upon thy furface to expand the grain and to cherish thy various productions, leave thy verdant mantle dipt

in gore.

Emma Corbett.

"O peace,

"O peace, thou image of divinity itselfdescend upon that earth from whence the miftakes of altercating relations have fo long affrighted thee. Subdue, gentle power, the fierce foul of rebellion. I call upon thee in the names of nature, reafon, humanity, and juftice. -I call upon thee in the name of nature's God!"

1

But left, my loved friend, you should deem this in fome measure the rhapfody of a poetical mind, ftrongly moved by the fad scenery that environs it at this moment, when I am in the midst of the horrors that have been produced by conflagration, famine, forrow, defolation, defpair, and all the evils of war; fuffer me to call in the fupport of one, who, though he was writing in a well-fecured city, in times of profound peace and public profperity, at least when the rumours of war could reach him, but by a medium long after the mischief apprehended, and who, though he reafoned as a politician and philofopher, felt as a man. "War," fays he, " is the laft of all remedies, cuncta prius tentanda: all lawful expedients must be used to avoid it. 'Tis wonderful with what coolnefs and indifference the greater part of mankind fee war commenced. Those that hear of it at a distance or read of it in books, but have never prefented its evils to their

minds"

minds" (much more thofe, let me add, that write as I do now on the polluted fpots where thofe evils have just happened) "confider it as little more than a fplendid game, a proclamation, an army, a battle, and a triumph. Some, indeed, they allow muft perish, perhaps, fome of their dearest friends, in the most fuccefsful field; but then they died upon the bed of honour, refign their lives amidst the joys of conquefts, and, filled with glory, fmile

in death.

"But war has means of destruction more formidable than the cannon and the fword. Of. the thousands and tens of thousands that have perifhed in the late contests a very small part ever felt the stroke of the enemy; the rest languished in tents and towns, or places of refuge, amidst damps and putrefaction: pale, torpid, fpiritlefs, and helpless; gasping and groaning; unpitied, amongst men, made obdurate by the continuance of hopeless mifery, and many of which muft, at laft, die without notice and without remembrance. Of that number are multitudes now lingering or agonizing in the hofpitals which I have vifited with a very aching heart. If he that fhared the danger enjoyed the profit, and after bleeding in the battle grew rich by the victory, he might fhew even his gains without envy; but at the con

clufion

clufion of a ten years' war how are we recompensed for the death of multitudes, and the expence of millions, but by contemplating the fudden glories of paymafters and agents, contractors and commiffaries, whofe equipages fhine like meteors, and whofe palaces rife like exhala

tions."

All this is unquestionably true of war in general, and no lefs certainly founded in fact is the exception which has been made; that as there are diseases in animal nature which nothing but amputation can remove, fo there is, by the depravation of human paffions, fometimes a gangrene in human focieties for which fire and fword are the neceffary remedies. That the force collected against France is of this fort, I think there are few, even of those who wished a reform, and filently approved the primary meafures taken towards it, but muft acknowledge; at the fame time that they muft applaud the caution that withheld the British empire from joining in the dreadful operations while there were yet room for gentler methods. Never, perhaps, in the annals of history was there a crifis at which Bolingbroke's remark could be fo appofite, as that at which we have now arrived; "If ever," fays he, "a teft for the trial of spirits can be neceffary, it is now: if ever thofe of real liberty

liberty and clamorous faction ought to be diftinguifhed from each other, it is now if ever it is incumbent on nations to know what truth is, and to follow it, it is now. If we do not take advantage of the ftanding water of faction, the tide will foon turn one way or the other, and carry all before it. A people," fays his lordfhip, who will maintain their liberties, far from jogging on filently and tamely like the ass between two burthens, muft preferve fome of the fierceness of the lion, and even make their roar to be heard like his, whenever they are injured, or fo much as threatened;" but to fhew that he does not in this obferyation mean to recommend that difloyal feditious spirit which creates a perpetual scene of tumult and diforder, and exposes the ftate to dangerous and often fatal convulfions, he confeffes that a fpirit of faction may destroy a free conftitution, though founded

on

"The nobleft bafis,

"Our rights, our natural inheritance."

But that a spirit of real liberty never can; and left we should imagine that fuch a fpirit is inconfistent with the loyalty we owe our fovereign, or chief ruler, by whatever name his fupremacy is diftinguished, he remarks," that in every kind of government some powers must be lodged in particular men, for the good order and prefervation of the whole community. Nothing can be