th, and the scourging of sin, the strong hand will
have to address itself as long as this wretched little dusty and
volcanic world breeds nettles, and spits fire. The soldier's office at
present is indeed supposed to be the defense of his country against
other countries; but that is an office which--Utopian as you may think
the saying--will soon now be extinct. I say so fearlessly, though I
say it with wide war threatened, at this moment, in the East and West.
For observe what the standing of nations on their defense really
means. It means that, but for such armed attitude, each of them would
go and rob the other; that is to say, that the majority of active
persons in every nation are at present--thieves. I am very sorry that
this should still be so; but it will not be so long. National
exhibitions, indeed, will not bring peace; but national education
will, and that is soon coming. I can judge of this by my own mind, for
I am myself naturally as covetous a person as lives in this world, and
am as eagerly-minded to go and steal some things the French have got,
as any housebreaker could be, having clue to attractive spoons. If I
could by military incursion carry off Paul Veronese's "Marriage in
Cana," and the "Venus Victrix," and the "Hours of St. Louis," it
would give me the profoundest satisfaction to accomplish the foray
successfully; nevertheless, being a comparatively educated person, I
should most assuredly not give myself that satisfaction, though there
were not an ounce of gunpowder, nor a bayonet, in all France. I have
not the least mind to rob anybody, however much I may covet what they
have got; and I know that the French and British public may and will,
with many other publics, be at last brought to be of this mind also;
and to see farther that a nation's real strength and happiness do not
depend on properties and territories, nor on machinery for their
defense; but on their getting such territory as they _have_, well
filled with none but respectable persons. Which is a way of
_infinitely_ enlarging one's territory, feasible to every potentate;
and dependent no wise on getting Trent turned, or Rhine-edge reached.

161. Not but that, in the present state of things, it may often be
soldiers' duty to seize territory, and hold it strongly; but only from
banditti, or savage and idle persons.

Thus, both Calabria and Greece ought to have been irresistibly
occupied long ago. Instead of quarreling with Austria about