Admitting that we ought to try the novel and absurd experiment in
politics of tying up the hands of government from offensive war founded
upon reasons of state, yet certainly we ought not to disable it from
guarding the community against the ambition or enmity of other nations.
A cloud has been for some time hanging over the European world. If it
should break forth into a storm, who can insure us that in its progress
a part of its fury would not be spent upon us? No reasonable man would
hastily pronounce that we are entirely out of its reach. Or if the
combustible materials that now seem to be collecting should be
dissipated without coming to maturity, or if a flame should be kindled
without extending to us, what security can we have that our tranquillity
will long remain undisturbed from some other cause or from some other
quarter? Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to
our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot
count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.
Who could have imagined at the conclusion of the last war that France
and Britain, wearied and exhausted as they both were, would so soon have
looked with so hostile an aspect upon each other? To judge from the
history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that the fiery and
destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more
powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace; and that
to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting
tranquillity, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human
character.
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