University of Virginia Library

UNIVERSAL PEACE.[50]

Among the various reforms which have been offered to the
world, the projects for universal peace have done the greatest
honor to the hearts, though they seem to have done very little
to the heads of their authors. Rousseau, the most distinguished
of these philanthropists, has recommended a confederation
of sovereigns, under a council of deputies, for the
double purpose of arbitrating external controversies among
nations, and of guaranteeing their respective governments
against internal revolutions. He was aware, neither of the
impossibility of executing his pacific plan among governments
which feel so many allurements to war, nor, what is more
extraordinary, of the tendency of his plan to perpetuate arbitrary
power wherever it existed; and, by extinguishing the
hope of one day seeing an end of oppression, to cut off the
only source of consolation remaining to the oppressed.

A universal and perpetual peace, it is to be feared, is in
the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the
imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of
benevolent enthusiasts. It is still however true, that war

contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to
be hoped from the progress of reason; and if any thing is to
be hoped, every thing ought to be tried.

Wars may be divided into two classes: one flowing from
the mere will of the government, the other according with
the will of the society itself.

Those of the first class can no otherwise be prevented than
by such a reformation of the government, as may identify its
will with the will of the society. The project of Rousseau,
was, consequently, as preposterous as it was impotent. Instead
of beginning with an external application, and even
precluding internal remedies, he ought to have commenced
with, and chiefly relied on, the latter prescription.

He should have said, whilst war is to depend on those
whose ambition, whose revenge, whose avidity, or whose caprice
may contradict the sentiment of the community, and yet
be uncontrolled by it; whilst war is to be declared by those
who are to spend the public money, not by those who are to
pay it; by those who are to direct the public forces, not by
those who are to support them; by those whose power is to
be raised, not by those whose chains may be riveted, the
disease must continue to be hereditary like the government
of which it is the offspring. As the first step towards a cure,
the government itself must be regenerated. Its will must be
made subordinate to, or rather the same with, the will of the
community.

Had Rousseau lived to see the constitution of the United
States and of France, his judgment might have escaped the
censure to which his project has exposed it.

The other class of wars, corresponding with the public will,
are less susceptible of remedy. There are antidotes, nevertheless,
which may not be without their efficacy. As wars
of the first class were to be prevented by subjecting the will
of the government to the will of the society, those of the
second class can only be controlled by subjecting the will of
the society to the reason of the society; by establishing

permanent and constitutional maxims of conduct, which
may prevail over occasional impressions and inconsiderate
pursuits.

Here our republican philosopher might have proposed as a
model to lawgivers, that war should not only be declared by
the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are
to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to
reap its fruits: but that each generation should be made to
bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on,
at the expence of other generations. And to give the fullest
energy to his plan, he might have added, that each generation
should not only bear its own burdens, but that the taxes composing
them, should include a due proportion of such as by
their direct operation keep the people awake, along with those,
which being Wrapped up in other payments, may leave them
asleep, to misapplications of their money.

To the objection, if started, that where the benefits of war
descend to succeeding generations, the burdens ought also to
descend, he might have answered; that the exceptions could
not be easily made; that, if attempted, they must be made
by one only of the parties interested; that in the alternative
of sacrificing exceptions to general rules, or of converting exceptions
into general rules, the former is the lesser evil; that
the expense of necessary wars, will never exceed the resources
of an entire generation; that, in fine the objection vanishes
before the fact, that in every nation which has drawn on posterity
for the support of its wars, the accumulated interest of
its perpetual debts, has soon become more than a sufficient
principal for all its exigencies.

Were a nation to impose such restraints on itself, avarice
would be sure to calculate the expences of ambition; in the
equipoise of these passions, reason would be free to decide for
the public good; and an ample reward would accrue to the
state, first, from the avoidance of all its wars of folly, secondly,
from the vigor of its unwasted resources for wars of necessity
and defence. Were all nations to follow the example, the

reward would be doubled to each; and the temple of Janus
might be shut, never to be opened more.

Had Rousseau lived to see the rapid progress of reason
and reformation, which the present day exhibits, the philanthropy
which dictated his project would find a rich enjoyment
in the scene before him. And after tracing the past
frequency of wars to a will in the government independent
of the will of the people; to the practice by each generation
of taxing the principal of its debts on future generations;
and to the facility with which each generation is seduced
into assumption of the interest, by the deceptive species of
taxes which pay it; he would contemplate, in a reform of
every government subjecting its will to that of the people,
in a subjection of each generation to the payment of its own
debts, and in a substitution of a more palpable, in place of
an imperceptible mode of paying them, the only hope of
Universal and Perpetual Peace.