Nat. et Gent_, lib. ii., ch. v., Sec.1. This same course of
reasoning is also applied to the duties of a nation towards its enemy in
respect to war.

"3d. But suppose this method fail. Why, then, let us suffer the evil."

This principle, if applied to its full extent, would, we believe, be
subversive of all right, and soon place all power in the hands of the
most evil and wicked men in the community. Reason with the nation that
invades our soil, and tramples under foot our rights and liberties, and
should it not desist, why, then, suffer the evil! Reason with the
murderer, and if he do not desist, why, then, suffer him to murder our
wives and our children! Reason with the robber and the defaulter, and if
they will not listen, why, then, let them take our property! We cannot
appeal to the courts, for if their decisions be not respected, they
employ _force_ to _compel_ obedience to their mandates. But Dr. Wayland
considers the law of benevolence to forbid the use of force between men.
He forgets this, it is true, in speaking of our duties towards our
fellow-men of the same _society_, and even allows us to punish the
murderer with death; but towards the foreigner he requires a greater
forbearance and benevolence than towards our neighbor; for if another
nation send its armies to oppress, and rob, and murder us by the
thousand, we have no right to employ physical force either to prevent or
to punish them, though we may do so to prevent or punish a neighbor for
an individual act of the same character. The greater the scale of crime,
then, the less the necessity of resorting to physical force to prevent
it!

"4th. But it may be asked, what is to prevent repeated and continued
aggression? I answer, first, not instruments of destruction, but the
moral principle which God has placed in the bosom of every man. I think
that obedience to the law of God, on the part of the injured, is the
surest preventive against the repetition of injury. I answer, secondly,
suppose that acting in obedience to the law of benevolence will not
prevent the repetition of injury, will acting on the principle of
retaliation prevent it?" Again; "I believe aggression from a foreign
nation to be the intimation from God that we are disobeying the law of
benevolence, and that this is his mode of teaching nations their duty,
in this respect, to each other. So that aggression seems to me in no
manner to call for retaliation and injury, but rather to call for