Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/19

Rh here are more than 95,000 persons in this State alone, whose daily bread depends on this business. They can- not fish in troubled waters, for they are fishermen, not politicians. Where could they find bread or cloth in time of war? In Dartmoor prison? Ask that of your demagogues who courted war! Then, too, the positive destruction of property in war is monstrous. A ship of the Kne costs from $500,000 to $1,000,000. The loss of a fleet by capture, by fire, or by decay, is a great loss. You know at what cost a fort is built, if you have counted the sums successively voted for Fort Adams in Rhode Island, or those in our own harbour. The destruction of forts is another item in the cost of war. The capture or destruction of merchant ships with their freight, creates a most formidable loss. In 1812 the whole tonnage of the United States was scarce half what it is now. Yet the loss of ships and their freight, in "the late war," brief as it was, is estimated at $100,000,000. Then the loss by plunder and military occupation is monstrous. The soldier, like the savage, cuts down the tree to gather its fruit. I cannot calcidate the loss by burning towns and cities. But suppose Boston were bombarded and laid in ashes. Calculate the loss if you can. You may say, "This could not be," for it is as easy to say No, as Yes. But remember what befeU us in the last war; remember how recently the best defended capitals of Europe, Vienna, Paris, Antwerp, have fallen into hostile hands. Consider how often a strong place, like Coblentz, Mentz, Malta, Gibraltar, St. Juan d'Ulloa, has been declared impregnable, and then been taken; calculate the force which might be brought against this town, and you will see that in eight and forty hours, or half that time, it might be left nothing but a heap of ruins smoking in the sun! I doubt not the valour of American soldiers, the skill of their engineers, nor the ability of their commanders. I am ready to believe all this is greater than we are told. Still, such are the contingencies of war. If some not very ignorant men had their way, this would be a probability and perhaps a fact. If we should burn every town from the Tweed to the Thames, it would not rebuild our own city.

But, on the supposition that nothing is destroyed, see the loss which comes from the misdirection of productive