Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/71

 because the nature and essence of war is a trial of strength; and, therefore, to make it as advantageous to ourselves as possible, we ought to exert all the strength that we possess. "The very object," continues Vetus, "that of weakening the enemy, for which we pursue those vigorous measures, and strip him of his possessions, renders it necessary to keep him in that state of weakness by which he will be deterred from repeating his attack; and, therefore, to hold inflexibly what we have acquired." Here again Vetus confounds himself, and, involving a plain principle in the mazes of a period, represents war not as a trial of strength between contending states, each exerting himself to the utmost, but as a voluntary assumption of superiority on the part of one of them. He talks of stripping the enemy of his possessions, and holding them inflexibly—as matters of course, as questions of will, and not of power.

It is neither the actual possession, nor the will to keep certain acquisitions, but the power to keep them, and, at the same time to extort other concessions from an enemy, that must determine the basis of all negociations, that are not founded on verbal chimeras.

"We are taught, indeed, to take for granted, that a peace, whose conditions bear hard on either party, will be the sooner broken by that party; and, therefore, that we have an indirect interest in sacrificing a portion of our conquests." The general principle here stated is self-evident, and one would think indisputable. For the very ground of war is a peace whose conditions are thought to bear hard on one of the parties, and yet, according to Vetus, the only way to make peace durable, to prevent the recurrence of an appeal to force, is to impose such hard conditions on an enemy, as it is his interest, and must be his inclination, to break by force. An opinion of the disproportion between our general strength, and our actual advantages, seems to be the necessary ground of war, but it is here converted into the permanent source of peace. The origin of the common prejudice is, however, very satisfactorily illustrated in the remainder of the