Omniana/Volume 2/Opinions of the Edinburgh Review concerning War

by Robert Southey

231. Opinions of the Edinburgh Review concerning War.

During the Peace of Amiens the world was favoured with a new and pleasant description of war, by one of the Wise Men of the North. A Species of pecuniary commutation, he told us, had been contrived, by which it's operations were rendered very harmless; they were performed by 'some hundreds of sailors fighting harmlessly on the barren plains of the ocean, and some thousands of soldiers carrying on a scientific and regular and quiet system of warfare, in countries set apart for the purpose, and resorted to as the arena where the disputes of nations may be determined. The prudent policy had been adopted of purchasing defeat at a distance rather than victory at home: in this manner we paid our allies for being vanquished; a few useless millions, and a few still more useless lives were sacrificed, and the result was, that we were amply rewarded by safety, increased resources, and real addition of power^[1],—These opinions were delivered by the Caledonian Oracle during the breathing time which Mr. Addington's experimental truce afforded to Europe. When it is remembered how shortly afterwards that war recommenced, to which no human wisdom can foresee a termination, the sagacity of the writer will be sufficiently apparent; the pert nonsense of his phraseology, the shallowness of understanding which it evinces, and the hardness of heart from which it must have proceeded, may be left without a comment. In the victory of the first of June, there was a monkey on board the Royal Sovereign, who making his appearance while preparations were going on, was chained in the launch on the main deck, that he might be out of the way; and there he was, to the great amusement of all who saw him, 'jumping mad,' as it is expressively called, with fear, during the whole engagement. If the gentleman who talks so pleasantly of the harmlessness of these affairs had been stationed at Pug's quarters, he might hive acquired more correct notions, . . in fit company. I doubt not he would have agreed with the Irish Major, who went a cruise in hopes of seeing what kind of business a naval action was, and when his curiosity came to be gratified, declared with an oath, that a sea-fight was a mighty sairious sort of a thing.

 

1. Edinburgh review, No. II, Politique de tous les Cabinets de l'Europe, p. 359 and 348. The reader who may entertain a reasonable doubt whether any man can have been at once foolish enough and brutal enough to have written seriously in such language, is requested to verify the quotation. And if he wishes to see in what manner an impure mind can find food for its obscene imaginations in any subject, he is referred to pp. 452 and 498 of the same number, first edition.