is empire had the first place in
Europe. The government would have prevented that war from breaking out
if it could, but popular pressure was too strong for it, and it had to
give way. The event has proved that the English government was wiser
than were the English people, France alone having gained anything from
the departure from what had become the policy of Europe; and for France
to gain is not altogether for the benefit of England.

Of the motives of the philanthropists, we have little to say. They are
always respectable, and it is a pity that the world should be too wicked
to appreciate them. But those of the economists are open to remark, and
the more so because there has been so much claimed for them. They
reduced everything to a matter of interest. Peace, they reasoned, is for
the welfare of all men; and, if an enlightened self-interest could be
made to prevail the world over, war would be rendered an impossibility.
Wars between civilized countries have mostly grown out of mistaken views
of interest on the part of governments and peoples. Once enlighten both
rulers and ruled, and make them understand that war can not pay, and
selfishness will accomplish what religion, and morality, and
benevolence, and common sense have failed to accomplish. Cutting throats
may be a very agreeable pastime; but no man ever yet paid for anything
more than it was worth, with his eyes wide open to the fact that he was
not buying a bargain, but selling himself. Nations would be as wise as
individuals, unless it be true that the sum of intelligence is not so
great as the items that compose it; and when it should have been made
indisputably clear that to make war was to make losses, while peace
should be as indisputably profitable, there would be no further occasion
to expend, annually, immense sums upon the support of great armaments,
such as were not kept up, even in times of war, by the potentates of
earlier days. The reason of mankind was to be appealed to, and they were
to be made saints through the use of practical logic. Neighborhood,
instead of being regarded as cause for enmity, was to be held as ground
for good feeling and liberal intercourse. Under the old system it had
been the custom to call France and England 'natural enemies,' words that
attributed to the Creator the origin of discord. Under the new system,
those great countries were to become the best of friends, as well as the
closest of neighbors; and one generation o