REFUTATION OF OBJECTIONS TO THE PEACE MOVEMENT. [From the Herald of Peace, January 1852.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 730, 31 July 1852, Page 4

REFUTATION OF OBJECTIONS TO THE PEACE MOVEMENT. [From the Herald of Peace, January 1852.]

Of another class of objections it may be said that the arbitration and peace principles are very good in themselves, but they cannot be carrjed out. Now, no one can, at least in civilised Europe, assert that war is a good thing. The Duke of Wellington himself condemned it in the House of Lords. Some high-blooded young peers were talking very big about going to war when there was some difference between this country and France, when the Duke of vVellington got up and said that, "if the noble lords who talked with so much facility of going to war, had seen as much of it as he had, they would not speak so lightly of it." The noble lords in question felt the implied rebuke, and said no more about it. But if we are told that the Peace Society cannot carry out- its piojects, on what ground is it so stated ? It is said that a people cannot obtain* their liberties except by means of war ; that, when an oppressed people rises up in resistance to tyranny, that res stance must be carried on by war, and it never can be effected in any other way. ' It is, moreover, asserted that, although the principles of the Peace Society are good in themselves, and applicable to ordinary questions of war, yet that, when tyranny is rampant and the people are pressed down and crushed to the earth by the iron band of despotism, the only means of their deliverance is waT. Now, let us look at facts. The sweeping assertion is made that no nation ever attained liberty but by the sword. We deny it, and say that it is not a historical fact. We find that the efforts to obtain liberty and deliver countries from oppression by an appeal to arms have invariably failed. We deny that any nations ever achieved their liberties by a resort to arms. We meet the assertion which is made with so much energy by as energetic a denial, and we will go further, and follow it up by proofs. Look to history, and we shall find that all nations have failed in their efforts to shake off oppression when war has been the incitement they have used. Take the Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar was a tyrant and an oppressor ; he oppressed the children of Israel, and made them tributary to him, and made Zedekiah, their King, his vassal. Zedekiah appealed to arms though he was desired by the prophet of God not to do so 5 and the result was the loss of his kingdom, of his children, and of his eyes, and he laid the foundation for a seventy years' captivity of his nation. Again, in a latter period of the Jewish history there were many similar instances, but at the last they were oppressed and ground down by the Romans; they appealed to arms and rose against their tyrants ; and the result was the destruction of their capital and their nation, and the scattering of their population, uor have they ever been collected together as a nation to this day. Again let us look at the history, firstly, of the Roman kingdom. Are we to understand that Junius Brutus, when he threw off the mask of his pretended idiotcy, and leading the people on against the tyraut who reigned over them, dethroned Tarquin, destroyed despotism ? — By no means. Public opinion had been working its way against the system which was keeping it down, and Brutus interfered too early with the progress of human reason, which was silently going on to the attainment of its end, by calling on the people to take up arms, and causing a war in which he himself afterwards fell. His call on the people could never have been met as it was if public opinion had not been making its way. At the termination of the Roman Republic, when Caesar was dictator, another Brutus arose to put down tyranny. A large portion of the Roman Republic sympathized with Brutus and bis associates, and again they were called on to resort to an appeal to arras. The result was that again .there was too .early an interference with the tide-of public opinion as it rolled on, and Augustus stepped on to the throne, from which it was thought Caesar had been driven ; the empire commenced and the tyranny of the emperor, superseded the growth of that public opinion which would have flourished to fruition if there had been no appeal to arms. The whole history of the Roman Empire affords an ample illustration of the truth of this assertion. Then looking at Greece we shall find illustrations of the same principle. The different states of Greece frequently appealed to arms, instead of allowing public opinion to grow and to progress. Their habitual appeal to arms led them to make Alexander their generalissimo, and in the end he lorded it over Greece. But to come nearer to our own times, we shall still find revolutions and rebellions. I will not give the struggles in which our forefathers were involved that name. I admire the men who acted great parts in those struggles ; many of them were heroic men, great men, pillars of freedom, ready to shed their blood and to lay down their lives — and many of them did lay down their lives for the cause of liberty. I am not, however, speaking of the rneri7 but of the public opinion which will often live when men are no more, and which is ever working though it may not be perceived. It is of this public spirit lam speaking, and not of the men who stood like rocks in the ocean of- despotism, but who were rather instrumental in dividing than in calming its surges as

they b.roke upon them. Bui let as look to our own country. It is said, Where should we be but for wars and rebellions ? It may be said that publip spirit was crushed under the Stuarts, and still more heavily manacled under the Tudors. . But public spirit was making its way, literature was becoming more diffused, thought was becoming more explicitly defined, and in the times of Charles I. there began to be a sense of their own importance developed in the minds of the people, and there followed a rising which was quite in keeping with the war system. That rising, it is said, put down depotism, and that it did its work in the bands of the iron-hearted Cromwell. — Did it? — We deny it. Let us go further, and we shall find that this intermeddling with public opinion produced the restoration of Charles 11. and the re-imposition of a despotism far worse than that which was wielded by the hands of Charles I. It may be said, If this is so, how are we to understand the mode in which we obtained the liberties we now enjoy ? Why during the convulsions attendant on the putting down of monarchy, public opinion went on, and in the times of Charles 11. it went on — those times when men were executed and banished for their opinions — still it went on did this public opinion', until it reached a point which the resistance it met with under the commonwealthdid notallow it to arrive at then. Lookto what a heightitiadattained in the reign of James 11. He was, a despot. Public opinion was ever work- . ing on, but there was no rising, no rebellion, no appeal to arms. James issued a proclamation granting toleration to all religious sectsj which j was not the law at that time, and which was to be read in all the churches. Seven of the bishops refused to do this because it was against the law. Legally they were right, but as a Dissenter I cannot be expected to say that they were morally right. They were right in refusing to do that which was contrary to law, but wrong in re/using to grant toleration to all sects. James's object was to favour the Roman Catholics, to whom he was attached, and to that I have no objection, for I would grant perfect religious liberty to Jew, Turk, or heretic. The poor dissenters .of that day thought it a grand thing to stand against the king and the Papists, thinking that, although they gained toleration as well as the Roman Catholics, yet that, if the Papists got toleration, they would aim at something more, and so they lent themselves to the bishops in their opposition to the King. Afterwards they justly suffered for it. Well, the bishops were tried and acquitted. The king was at Hounslow with the army, when he heard a universal cheer, and got for answer to his inquiry as to the cause that it was because of the acquittal of the bishops. Public opinion, therefore, was doing its business, and by-and-by James found he had gone so far, that without waiting for a rising of the people, he went on his travels, and escaped to France. William 111. then came over, and we may be told that he came in arms, and that he fought battles in Ireland. He did so, but it would have been better if he had not; for, although James landed in that country with an army, public opinion would have done its business, and it would have been wiser if its progress bad not Leen disturbed by war. From the time of William 111. it conlinued to make-its way amidst all the efforts that were made to arrest it unti-1 the time of George 111., who, by nature, education, and tradition, was as much of a despot as any monarch that ever lived. Well, public opinion worked its way under George 111. Then came the reign of George IV., and by the force of public opinion the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act was passed, the Test and Corporation Acts were repealed, and there was no rising or rebellion ; and the reign of William IV. began. The people required reform in Parliament, and it was refused by the Crown ; but public opinion was determined to have it, and it got it ; and so it ha« gone on until the present day, and now it is not satisfled with the Reform Bill, and Lord John Russell has promised it another. Away, then, with the notion that a people can get nothing except by the sword. It is not true in fact, and it is not true in history, and no one would assert it but for special reasons, and to support a particular state of things. But public opinion has gone further. Take the neighbouring nations of the Continent. Public opinion is at work in Germany — German students, German philosophers, German statesmen are attentively examining public opinion, and expanding it and giving effect to it. But in 1848 there was another interference with it by an appeal to arms, and public opinion was" almost crushed — the King of Prussia crushing the constitution he had sworn to maintain — the Emperor of Austria destroying the constitution of his coantry altogether, and again, as King of Hungary, swearing and forswearing himself, and, when arms were appealed to, calling in the power of Russia, and treading down liberty to the dust. They would not have dared so to act bad public opinion been allowed free' scope. - But it is said, What is the use of public opinion if a monarch is a sheer despot, and bis cabinet go along with him ? Why, in such a case, men are but men, and they have consciences, which, however seared, are still ever working within them, and it will be found that, whenever 'trie -rrrass *f the community entertain I certain opinions, cabinets.havejsbanged, do change, and will change theirs. Let the masses of the' i people, then, be instructed with regard to the force of public opinion. But it is said that their rulers will not permit.them to gain this knowledge. I say that it has been shown that they will have it in spite of them. In . the schools, nay, in tbe gaols, they will learn. Where was it that Kossuth acquired our language, by the use of which he has so electrified his admiring audiences ! Why, it was in a gaol that he acquired that faculty ; and even he, if he bad trusted less to the sword, would have been more likely to obtain his objects. If, then, we find that so many nations have exhibited the- power of public opinion, and show what it can do for the oppressed — We have proved that it is like some volcanic agency, which lies hid and silent till tbe moment of its sudden bursting forth with «n energy which nothing can resist — should we not pay greater deference to that public opinion, and believe that "arms .ire only^ instruments devised by tbe ingenuity of man for carrying out certain objects Hy violence and passion which would have been.better attained by the exercise of reason and by arbitration ?