F. D. MAURICE ON WAR.
[To TIIR EDITOR OF TUS "SPECTATOR."] Sia.,—The enclosed extract from a letter of F. D. Maurice to Kingsley (dated January 3rd, 1855) may seem to some of your readers apposite at the present d'ay.—I am, Sir, 8Lc., L. J.
"I cannot see my way about the future of the war more than you can, but I think the pi.esent of it has brought us more good, with all its misery, than I could have dreamt of. I am sure there is some- thing more like a national heart and godliness amongst us than I . have had any experience of in my day. The papers are doing their best to kill the good ; the Times seems to me horribly wicked. Dut God is stronger than they are, and I ,do not think they have succeeded in making the working people discontented. They cared nothing for them while they were eaten up by the , Mammon worshippers, and now they affect sympathy with them when they are beginning to feel that all are working and suffering together. I do not make out that the ministers have blundered more than any other Mell with their inexperience would have done, and I would not throw a steno at them for the world. I do not the least enter into the Kossuth notion about our duty to the 'Nationalities '; if there is any good in them, if they are nations, and not nationalities, they, will help themselves. Our business, so far as I can gather from history, has never been to make a crusade for them, but to resist whatever power in Spain, France, Russia, set .itself up to break down national boundaries and establish a universal empire. It has been no choice with us, whether we would do this or not ; we have been forced to do it, when we were most reasonably and remarkably reluctant. God has sent us upon the errand, if we wore ever so inclined to escape in a ship of Tarshish and look after our commercial prosperity."
Previous page
