JAY'S WAR AND PEACE.
Tuts is the best argument upon the subject of abolishing war that we have seen ; close, practical, and even interesting. Mr. JAY argues the question like a man of this world, who must deal with things as he finds them, and who knows he is most likely to gain a willing audience when he can make his reasoning worth their while. After a reasonable introduction, Mr. JAY shows the costs of preparing for war; which in America, in 1838, amounted to 78 per cent of the whole public revenue, independent of the state charges for the respective militias and the private expenses and loss of time of the militiamen. If it be said that in 1838 the United States was at war, on account of the contests with the Florida Indians, then, taking 1833, when the peace was perfectly unbroken, we have 40 per cent for pure preparation, and 78 per cent for a little war. In Great Britain, in 1836, the expense was For the Army and Navy 24 per cent
For the Debt, the produce of former wars 58 Total 82 per cent of the whole expenditure.
Our author then proceeds to the enormous cost of war when actually waged ; besides the evils which humanity suffers, and the waste both of property and life. The uncertainty of success is next handled; with the entire change of circumstances that war often produces, and the certainty that even if victory be achieved the apparent gain is not equal to the real loss. And as these topics are enforced by a vigorous resume of the different wars that have been waged since the American War of Independence, the argument possesses a broad historical interest, with little or nothing of a sec- tarian taint. The scheme Mr. JAY eventually aims at realizing is a National Congress to settle national disputes : but this, he admits, is at present chimerical. What he now proposes, is a clause in all treaties of alliance between really friendly states, promising to sub- mit any future differences to arbitrators, whose decision should be final.
This book is an importation ; being published at New York, though no doubt procurable through the American booksellers in London. We think, however, that both its subject and its treat- ment render it worth reprinting in this country for cheap circula- tion; as it unquestionably sets the evils and uselessness of war in rather a new light ; while there is nothing in the style or matter of the treatise liable to excite ridicule, or even capable of a very ready answer, as limited to our times at all events. For an example of the manner of War and _Mace, we will take the author's judgment upon the last American War ; not as the best in itself, but as the shortest.
"A later period of our history furnishes a still more striking illustration of the imprudence of resorting to war as a mode of redressing injuries. In 1812, the United States declared war against Great Britain, on account of certain orders in Council destructive of neutral commerce; and also on account of the right claimed and exercised by Great Britain of impressing her native subjects from the merchant-vessels of other nations when on the high seas. The ob- noxious orders were revoked before the news of the war reached England ; and the contest was continued solely on account of impressment.
'The greatest number of American seamen ever officially alleged to have been compulsorily serving in the British Navy was about eight hundred. To suppress this abuse, the United States drew the sword and formally threw awe, the scabbard ; and the honour of the Republic was pledged again and main to rescue her seamen from this oppressive claim on the part of Great Britain.
'To secure our seamen from impressment, the whole country was subjected for about three years to the burdens, hazards, and vicissitudes of war. Our com- merce was swept from the ocean, our citizens oppressed with taxes, the villages on the Canadian frontier were laid in ashes, and the very metropolis of the Re- public captured, and its public edifices fired by foreign troops. "Great Britain, who, at the same time we declared war against her, was en- gaged in a mighty struggle with the colossal power of France, found herself, by the overthrow of Napoleon, at liberty to direct her fleets and armies exclu- sively against the United States. Our Government, despairing of extorting from Great Britain a relinquishment of the obnoxious claim, and foreseeing only an accumulation of calamities from an obstinate prosecution of the war, wisely directed their negotiators, in concluding a treaty of peace, to 'omit any stipulation on the subject of impressment.' The instruction was obeyed; and the treaty, which once more restored to us the blessings of peace which we had rashly cast away, contained not the most distant allusion to the subject of im- pressment, nor did it provide for the surrender of a single American sailor de- tained in the service of the British Navy ; and thus, by the confession of the Federal Goverement, 'The United States had appealed to arms in vain.' "But was the conduct of Great Britain more consistent with true wisdom than that of her assailants? Although she must be regarded in this war as the victorious party, not having surrendered the claim on account of which it was waged, yet at what an immense cost did she avoid the surrender! To retain the privilege of taking from American merchant-vessels a few straggling seamen she encountered a three-years' war, in which 2,422 of her vessels were captured by the Americans,—more vessels, probably, than all the seamen she had over recovered by impressment 1 In return for these losses, and for the cost of the war, and the consequent additions to her debt and taxes, she re- tained a claim, which for the last twenty-six years she has not found it ne- cessary to enforce."
And a claim, it may be added, which some day or other is likely to involve her in another war.
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