Page:Sphere and Duties of Government.djvu/79

59 considerable portion of the nation is condemned to this machine-like existence—not for a few years only, but often throughout life—merely in the prospect of a possible war! Perhaps it is in nothing so strikingly manifest as in the institutions to which we now refer, that with the progressive development of the theory of human enterprises, their utility declines as regards the immediate agents concerned. It cannot be questioned that the art of war has made incredible strides in advance in modern times, but it is equally unquestionable that the nobler characteristics of the warrior have proportionately disappeared, and that it is only in antiquity that we find them flourishing in graceful and consummate beauty; or, at least, if this seems exaggerated, that the warlike spirit appears now to bring little but injurious consequences in its train for the nations which entertain it, while in the ancient world we see it so commonly productive of beneficial results. Our standing armies carry war, so to speak, into the very bosom of peace. Now, a warlike spirit is only honourable in union with the fairest virtues which bloom out from peace, and military discipline, only when allied with the highest feeling of freedom; if these are severed,—and it is needless to show how such a disunion is promoted by the existence of marshalled armies in the midst of peace,—the former rapidly degenerates into wild and lawless ferocity, and the latter into the abject submission of slavery.

Still, although I would condemn the maintenance of standing armies, it may be well to observe that I only introduce the subject in this place, in so far as it accords with the immediate scope I have in view. I am far from overlooking their great and undoubted usefulness, which checks and counterbalances the headlong tendency to ruin, towards which their faults and disadvantages would inevitably hurry them like everything else on earth. They are a significant