UNIVERSAL PEACE.
IT is odd, that while all the wise men of Europe are anxiously casting about for devices to secure or restore peace, that should be precisely the easiest task in the world : at least so it should seem from the letter which Mr. Cobden has recently published. A con- gress has been sitting at Brussels to establish universal peace; in this mode—by introducing an arbitration clause into international treaties, by establishing a congress of nations for the construc- tion of an international code, and by the mutual disarmament of nations. Mr. Cobden is invited to attend; but he scarcely thinks it worth while. He adopts two of the propositions, leaving the middle one in doubt ; only he suggests separate treaties for per- petual peace instead of the arbitration clause. As to the mutual disarmament, you would suppose that it might be accomplished by the simple publication of his letter. You have only "to open the eyes of all the nations of Europe to the enormous expense and waste occasioned by their standing armaments : to accomplish this object; you need only publish in the different Continental lan- guages a.ferv simple facts"; and then he has a long paragraph of statistical details, showing that throughout Europe there are four millions of men in arms, and that the cost of those armies, forts, &c., is 200,000,000/. sterling per annum. It would be interesting to see the vouchers for these calculations ; but, however cogent they may be, we suspect it needs something more than "only to publish" statistical details in order to abolish the apparatus of war. The time particularly chosen by Mr. Cobden has not escaped the ridicule to which it is obviously liable. The thirty-three years' duration of peace shows the desire of nations to avoid the inflictions of war ; the very, efforts now made in the universal confusion attest the sincerity and endurance of that wish, but also display the difficulties of continuing to satisfy it. For thirty-three years the nations have been striving, with enormous expense of mutual negotiation, compromise, and toleration, to postpone armed discord ; and Mr. Cobden steps forth in the year 1848 to suggest peace as a bright idea that has just occurred to lum: A still more summary plan might be suggested for curing the ills arising from the errors and crimes of mankind : why does not Mr. Cobden write a letter propounding the advantages and economy of virtue ? It is only "to open the eyes of men to the enormous expense and waste" occasioned by wickedness, and "to accomplish this object you need only publish in the different Con- tinental languages a few simple facts" ; for indeed, the advan- tages of virtue, social and economical, might be made apparent in a single one of Mr. Cobden's paragraphs. Unfortunately, however, he has omitted almost every element of the calcu- lation, excepting the most superficial and least powerful—the one of economical advantage. Although so matter-of-fact a man, he has overlooked almost every fact in history ; which would show him, that nations as well as men are very partially governed by mere questions of economical interests ; that they are governed much more powerfully by their desires, their passions, mutual sympathies and antipa thies, spirit of contest, and a thousand other influences, to which the consideration of profit is universally and peremptorily sacrificed. From the Spanish Abd-er-Rahman, who walled up his contumacious mistress in uncemented ingots of gold, which she was to appropriate on consenting to be kind, down to the last scapegrace who has had his fling at Newmarket or in Jermyn Street, all classes of men have been willing to sacrifice profit for any favourite object. Nations are composed of men, and have their hobbies as well ; witness Algeria and Mexico. Every volume of history is a review of the incessant sacrifices made by nations of their sober interests to their passions and prejudices. In the exclusive contemplation of his fixed idea_, the matter-of- fact Cobden chooses so completely to ignore the facts, that he be- comes what Charles Lamb called a matter-of-lie man ";_ for does he not go so far as to assert, that "to open the eyes" of Europe to his philosophy, you have "only to publish," &c.?
The project is essentially unsound, since it can only rest for en- forcement on the very measure which it prohibits. Perpetual peace has been the professed object of repeated treaties on the close of war ; and there always has been peace—till the next war. Whether you stipulate it by arbitration clauses" or by separate treaties, you can do no more than secure for it the same contin- gent duration namely, a duration till the next war. What appeal in the fast resort would there be in case the compact were broken ? None, except to war. You would therefore have the absurdity of a peace ratified with extraordinary solemnity, pur- porting to be universal and perpetual, yet resting on the guarantee of war.
As to the congress of nations to form an international code, Mr. Cobden very justly doubts its feasibility ; though it would in fact form the only court of appeal for the peaceable enforcement of his peace treaties - so that we do not see why he can object. We have indeed, as it has been observed, books and precedents, which somewhat supply the place of an international code. And there is no present hope of obtaining greater perfection under that head. The reason why international jurisdiction remains vague and imperfect is, not only that there exists no higher power capa- ble of adjudicating and enforcing its judgment, but also that the nations are not really agreed upon the bases or conclusions for an international jurisdiction or code. You cannot, for example, per- suade the Mussulman to abandon conversion by the sabre,- the Roman Catholic, to waive the spiritual infallibility of the Pope ; you will not make France condemn political propagandism ; nor Russia abandon the divine right of kings. Without a guarantee for the duration of peace, or a court of appeal for the settlement of international disputes, anything ap- proaching what is indicated by the terms mutual disarma- ment" must be impossible. Mutual diminutions of armies and fortifications have not been uncommon on the conclusion of war ; but such partial abandonment of warlike apparatus cannot be what is meant by the new Cobdenite invention—the general dis- armament of nations, in order to save the money expended on the maintenance of standing armies; at which he sneers as a modern innovation. Now he should be too good an economist not to know that standing armies are a product of the modern economical improvement called "division of employments " ; and that the distinct payment of a standing army is in reality a far less cost to the nation than the incalculable waste of labour which occurred when the lords and their peasantry were sum- moned from their homesteads and fields to perform military ser- vice. We cannot discontinue standing armies without rearming the good men and true throughout each country : a plan perhaps not altogether without its advantages, but certainly not recom- mended by greater thrift in the money way.
As to the notion of simply disarming nations, it is the folly of monomania. Perhaps no nation is prepared for such a step ; but certainly Europe, with its mixed population, its Babel of tongues, its contemporaneous existence of social conditions belonging to different ages, cannot in safety be disarmed. And when we re- member that the proposal really is to disarm those nations which are the pioneers of civilization, it looks like a suggestion of the Arch Enemy to betray the whole of what mankind has gained since the middle ages. Preach as we may, there are some nations to whom such a precept would be an unknown tongue, or, if un- derstood, ridiculous. Russia, whose Autocrat we this week see speaking as the interpreter of Divine authority and receiving the prostrate submission of superstitious slaves will hardly abandon the army of bean-eating barbarians which is to him so cheap and so convenient for keeping his nobles in order. The remoter provinces of Eastern Europe—Hungary, for instance—are lite- rally in a social condition not unlike that of Europe when it emerged from the dark ages, and as little likely to comprehend the virtue or the policy of forgetting the sword. To disarm Western Europe, therefore, would be deliberately to place that region in the position of degenerate Rome, before the Goths and Huns of the nineteenth century.
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