EDWARD HYDE

FIRST EARL OF CLARENDON

1609-1674

OF WAR

Montpellier, 1670.

As the plague in the body drives all persons away but such who live by it, searchers, and those who are to bury the corpse, who are as ready to strangle those who do not die soon enough, as to bury them; and they who recover are very long tried with the malignity, and remain longer deserted by their neighbours and friends out of fear of infection; so war in a state makes all men abandon it but those who are to live by the blood of it, and who have the pillaging of the living as well as of the dead; and if it recover, and the war be extinguished, there remains such a weakness and paleness, so many ghastly marks of the distemper, that men remain long frighted from their old familiarity, from the confidence they formerly had of their own security, and of the justice of that state, the war leaving still an ill odour behind it, and much infection in the nature and manners of those who are delighted with it. Of all the punishments and judgements that the provoked anger of the Divine Providence can pour out upon a nation full of transgressions, there is none so terrible and destroying as that of war. David knew he did wisely when he preferred and chose the plague before either of the other judgements

that he was to undergo for numbering the people, though it cost him no less than seventy thousand subjects; so vast a number that three months' progress of the most victorious and triumphant enemy could hardly have consumed; and the one had been as much the hand of the Lord as the other, and could as easily have been restrained, or bound by his power: the arrow of pestilence was shot out of his own bow, and did all its execution without making the pride or malice of man instrumental in it; the insolence whereof is a great aggravation of any judgement that is laid upon us, and health is restored in the same moment the contagion ceaseth; whereas in war, the confidence and the courage which a victorious army contracts by notable successes, and the dejection of spirit and the consternation which a subdued party undergoes by frequent defeats, is not at an end when the war is determined, but hath its effects very long after; and the tenderness of nature, and the integrity of manners, which are driven away, or powerfully discountenanced by the corruption of war, are not quickly recovered; but instead thereof a roughness, jealousy, and distrust introduced, that makes conversation unpleasant and uneasy, and the weeds which grow up in the shortest war can hardly be pulled up and extirpated without a long and unsuspected peace. When God pleases to send this heavy calamity upon us, we cannot avoid it; but why we should be solicitous to embark ourselves in this leaky vessel, why our own anger, and ambition, and emulation, should engage us in unreasonable and unjust wars, nay, why, without any of these provocations, we should be disposed to run to war, and periclitari

periculi causa, will require better reason to justify us, than most that are concerned in it are furnished with. Iugulantur homines ne nihil agatur, was the complaint and amazement of a philosopher, who knew of none of those restraints which Christianity hath laid upon mankind. That men should kill one another for want of something else to do (which is the case of all volunteers in war) seems to be so horrible to humanity, that there needs no divinity to control it. It was a divine contemplation of the same philosopher, that when Providence had so well provided for, and secured the peace between nations, by putting the sea between, that it might not be in their power to be ill neighbours, mankind should be so mad as to devise shipping, to affect death so much sine spe sepulturae; and when they are safe on land, to commit themselves to the waves and the fierce winds, quorum felicitas est ad bella perferri; and that those winds which God had created, ad custodiendam cœli terrarumque temperiem, and to cherish the fruits and trees of the earth, should be made use of so contrary to his intentions, ut legiones, equitemque gestarent, and bring people (whom he had placed at that distance) together, to imbrue their hands in each other's blood; indeed it must be a very savage appetite, that engages men to take so much pains, and to run so many and great hazards, only to be cruel to those whom they are able to oppress.

They who allow no war at all to be lawful, have consulted both nature and religion much better than they who think it may be entered into to comply with the ambition, covetousness, or revenge of the greatest princes and monarchs upon earth :

as if God had only inhibited single murders, and left mankind to be massacred according to the humour and appetite of unjust and unreasonable men, of what degree or quality soever. They who think it most unlawful, know well that force may be repelled with force; and that no man makes war who doth only defend what is his own from an attempt of violence; he who kills another that he may not be killed himself by him who attempts it, is not guilty of murder by the law of God or man. And truly, they who are the cause and authors of any war that can justly and safely be avoided, have great reason to fear that they shall be accountable before the Supreme Judge for all the rapine and devastation, all the ruin and damage, as well as the blood, that is the consequence of that war. War is a licence to kill and slay all those who inhabit that land, which is therefore called the enemy's, because he who makes the war hath a mind to possess it; and must there not many of the laws of God, as well as of man, be cancelled and abolished, before a man can honestly execute or take such a licence? What have the poor inhabitants of that land done that they must be destroyed for cultivating their own land, in the country where they were born? and can any king believe that the names of those are left out of the records of God's creation, and that the injuries done to them shall not be considered? War is a depopulation, defaces all that art and industry hath produced, destroys all plantations, burns churches and palaces, and mingles them in the same ashes with the cottages of the peasant and the labourer; it distinguishes not of age, or sex, or dignity, but exposes all things and persons,

sacred and profane, to the same contempt and confusion; and reduces all that blessed order and harmony, which hath been the product of peace and religion, into the chaos it was first in; as if it would contend with the Almighty in uncreating what He so wonderfully created, and since polished. And is it not a most detestable thing to open a gap to let this wild boar enter into the garden of Christians, and to make all this havoc and devastation in countries planted and watered by the equal Redeemer of mankind, and whose ears are open to the complaints of the meanest person who is oppressed? It is no answer to say that this universal suffering, and even the desolation that attends it, are the inevitable consequences and events of war, how warrantably soever entered into, but rather an argument, that no war can be warrantably entered into, that may produce such intolerable mischiefs; at least if the ground be not notoriously just and necessary, and like to introduce as much benefit to the world as damage and inconvenience to a part of it; and as much care taken as is possible to suppress that rage and licence, which is the wanton cause of half the destruction.

It may be, upon a strict survey and disquisition into the elements and injunctions of Christian religion, no war will be found justifiable, but as it is the process that the law of nature allows and prescribes for justice sake, to compel those to abstain from doing wrong, or to repair the wrong they have done, who can by no other way be induced to do either; as when one sovereign prince doth an injury to another, or suffers his subjects to do it without control or punishment; in either