to us in the present crisis:
If war is to be made by money and machinery, the nation which is the
largest and most covetous multitude will win. You may be as scientific
as you choose; the mob that can pay more for sulphuric acid and gunpowder
will at last poison its bullets, throw acid in your faces, and make an
end of you; of itself, also, in good time, but of you first. And to the
English people the choice of its fate is very near now. It may
spasmodically defend its property with iron walls a fathom thick, a few
years longer--a very few. No walls will defend either it, or its
havings, against the multitude that is breeding and spreading faster than
the clouds, over the habitable earth. We shall be allowed to live by
small pedler's business, and iron-mongery--since we have chosen those for
our line of life--as long as we are found useful black servants to the
Americans, and are content to dig coals and sit in the cinders; and have
still coals to dig,--they once exhausted, or got cheaper elsewhere, we
shall be abolished. But if we think more wisely, while there is yet
time, and set our minds again on multiplying Englishmen, and not on
cheapening English wares, if we resolve to submit to wholesome laws of
labor and economy, and setting our political squabbles aside, try how
many strong creatures, friendly and faithful to each other, we can crowd
into every spot of English dominion, neither poison nor iron will prevail
against us; nor traffic, nor hatred; the noble nation will yet, by the
grace of heaven, rule over the ignoble, and force of heart hold its own
against fireballs.

117. But there is yet a further reason for the dependence of the arts
on war. The vice and injustice of the world are constantly springing
anew, and are only to be subdued by battle; the keepers of order and law
must always be soldiers. And now, going back to the myth of Athena, we
see that though she is first a warrior maid, she detests war for its own
sake; she arms Achilles and Ulysses in just quarrels, but she disarms
Ares. She contends, herself, continually against disorder and
convulsion, in the earth giants; she stands by Hercules' side in victory
over all monstrous evil; in justice only she judges and makes war. But
in this war of hers she is wholly implacable. She has little notion of
converting criminals. There is no faculty of mercy in her when she has
been resisted. Her word is only, "I will mock when your fear cometh."