Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/208

 184 SINLO. movement, the number could not be less than that of the Coreans. The private misery endured over all Chma would not, perhaps, at any one point of time be equal to, or be so keenly felt as the sufferings caused by the Swi expeditions; but it was in the aggregate much greater. And after the lost lives and wretched existence of countless numbers of men, women, and children ; after the infinite cost in money, labour, and grain ; the rich fields unploughed, the happy homes burnt down, the peaceful com- munities extinguished, the flourishing cities razed to the ground, — what was the grand gain secured? It was only, — ^it was neither more nor less than every vain, shallow, and selfish so-called conqueror has attained in all ages and countries. It is the "glory" of having destroyed the liberties of another people; the " renown " of doing to others what the conqueror would not wish done to himself. This wicked war of aggression is always carried on by abilities which, properly directed, would benefit mankind. This war, so  glorious " in the eyes of the thoughtless and cruel mind, of the nature pertaining to the savage bull, or rather to the vain and conceited dunghill cock ; — ^this war will cease only when men shall learn, as first, private individuals and then castle-building barons had to learn, — that the taking of what belongs to another individual, society, or state, is robbery, and a breach of the fundamental laws God has given to man, whether the culprit be an individual or a nation. The principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number,"' which is a fair aim of all government, may demand that a people rise against their oppressors with arms in their hands ; or may even justify anned interference by a foreign nation, when such interference is for the welfare of the people against whose rulers it is directed. For there have been, and are, people to whom victory proved a curse, and defeat would have been a blessing ; for whom national independence means the baneful blight of absolutism, or the devastations of civil strife, and to whom conquest by a foreign power might secure national peace and true liberty. But all war is indefensible, when it has for its object the annexation of the territory, the destruction of the liberties, or the humiliation