t everything dear to them, in religion, in
law, in liberty, everything which as freemen, as Englishmen, and as
citizens of the great commonwealth of Christendom, they had at heart,
was then at stake. This was to know the true art of gaining the
affections and confidence of an high-minded people; this was to
understand human nature. A danger to avert a danger, a present
inconvenience and suffering to prevent a foreseen future and a worse
calamity,--these are the motives that belong to an animal who in his
constitution is at once adventurous and provident, circumspect and
daring,--whom his Creator has made, as the poet says, "of large
discourse, looking before and after." But never can a vehement and
sustained spirit of fortitude be kindled in a people by a war of
calculation. It has nothing that can keep the mind erect under the gusts
of adversity. Even where men are willing, as sometimes they are, to
barter their blood for lucre, to hazard their safety for the
gratification of their avarice, the passion which animates them to that
sort of conflict, like all the shortsighted passions, must see its
objects distinct and near at hand. The passions of the lower order are
hungry and impatient. Speculative plunder,--contingent spoil,--future,
long adjourned, uncertain booty,--pillage which must enrich a late
posterity, and which possibly may not reach to posterity at all,--these,
for any length of time, will never support a mercenary war. The people
are in the right. The calculation of profit in all such wars is false.
On balancing the account of such wars, ten thousand hogsheads of sugar
are purchased at ten thousand times their price. The blood of man should
never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our
family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The
rest is vanity; the rest is crime.

In the war of the Grand Alliance most of these considerations
voluntarily and naturally had their part. Some were pressed into the
service. The political interest easily went in the track of the natural
sentiment. In the reverse course the carriage does not follow freely. I
am sure the natural feeling, as I have just said, is a far more
predominant ingredient in this war than in that of any other that ever
was waged by this kingdom.

If the war made to prevent the union of two crowns upon one head was a
just war, this, which is made to prevent the tearing all crowns from all
heads which ought