Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/27

Rh that no hands; another no feet nor legs. This has been pierced by lances, and torn with the shot, till scarce anything human is left. The wreck of a body is crazed with pains God never meant for man. The mother that bore him would not know her child. Count the orphan asylums in Germany and Holland; go into the hospital at Greenwich, that of the invalids in Paris, you see the "trophies" of Napoleon and Wellington. Go to the arsenal at Toulon, see the wooden legs piled up there for men now active and whole, and you will think a little of the physical horrors of war.

In Boston there are perhaps about 25,000 able-bodied men between eighteen and forty-five. Suppose them aU slain in battle, or mortally hurt, or mown down by the camp-fever, vomito, or other diseases of war ; and then fancy the distress, the heart-sickness, amid wives, mothers, daughters, sons, and fathers, here ! Yet 25,000 is a small number to be murdered in " a famous victory ;" a trifle for a whole. "glorious campaign" in a great war. The men of Boston are no better loved than the men of Tamaulipas. There is scarce an old family, of the middle class, in all New England, which did not thus smart in the Revolution; many, which have not, to this day, recovered from the bloody blow then falling on them. Think, wives, of the butchery of your husbands; think, mothers, of the murder of your sons!

Here, too, the burden of battle falls mainly on the humble class. They pay the great tribute of money; they pay also the horrid tax of blood. It was not your rich men who fought even the Revolution; not they. Your men of property and standing were leaguing with the British, or fitting out privateers when that ofiered a good investment, or buying up the estates of more consistent tories; making money out of the nation's dire distress. True, there were most honourable exceptions; but such, I think, was the general rule. Let this be distinctly remembered, that the burden of battle is borne by the humble classes of men ; they pay the vast tribute of money; the awful tax of blood ! The " glory" is got by a few; poverty, wounds, death, are for the people! Military glory is the poorest kind of distinction, but he most dangerous passion. It is an honour to man to be