Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/25

Rh the war which makes him poor and keeps him poor. I think your captains and colonels, those sons of thunder and heirs of glory, will not tell you so. They tell you so! They know it! Poor brothers, how could they? I think your party newspapers, penny or pound, will not tell you so; nor the demagogues, all covered with glory and all forlorn, who tell the people when to hurrah, and for what! But if you cipher the matter out for yourself you will find it so, and not otherwise. Tell the demagogues, whig or democrat, that. It was an old Roman maxim, "The people wished to be deceived; let them." Now it is only practised on; not repeated—in public.

Let us deal justly even with war, giving that its due. There is one class of men who find their pecuniary advantage in it. I mean army contractors, when they chance to be favourites of the party in power ; men who let steamboats to lie idle at $500 a-day. This class of men rejoice in a war. The country may become poor, they are sure to be rich. Yet another class turn war to account, get the "glory," and become important in song and sermon. I see it stated in a newspaper that the Duke of Wellington has received, as gratuities for his military services, $5,400,000, and $40,000 a-year in pensions!

But the waste of property is the smallest part of the evil. The waste of life in war is yet more terrible. Human life is a sacred thing. Go out into the lowest street of Boston; take the vilest and most squalid man in that miserable lane, and he is dear to some one. He is called brother; perhaps husband; it may be, father; at least, son. A human heart, sadly joyful, beat over him before he was born. He has been pressed fondly to his mother's arms. Her tears and her smiles have been for him; perhaps also her prayers. His blood may be counted mean and vile by the great men of the earth, who love nothing so well as the dear people, for he has no " coat of arms," no liveried servant to attend him, but it has run down from the same first man. His family is ancient as that of the most long- descended king. God made him; made this splendid universe to wait on him and teach him; sent His Christ to save him. He is an immortal soul. Needlessly to spill that man's blood is an awful sin. It