IS DEBT THE BEST SECURITY FOR PEACE?

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 161, 6 May 1859, Page 4

IS DEBT THE BEST SECURITY FOR PEACE?

England has been said to be" bound over" in a sum of eight hundred millions to keep the peace. Other nations^ whose debts are proportionately greater, while their resources are immeasurably less than those of the British Empire, are in like manner often supposed to lack the power, even if they had the will, to embark in hostilities. But this connection between poverty and peace has far more plausibility than truth. As an historical fact we find that the poorest nations and most embarressed sovereigns have evinced the greatest readiness for war. Not seldom, vast military operations have, been undertaken on the impulse of sheer destitution. The hordes of northern barbarians which submerged, wave after wave, the fairest provinces of Europe, in the decadence of the Roman Empire, were propelled as much by hunger at home as the lust of plunder or power abroad. In later eras feudal monarchs found no process so easy for obtaining subsidies or cancelling obligations as going to war. Corrupt and prodigal Ministers in yet more recent periods have resorted to the same expedient to divert attention from their misdeeds, or conceal-their depredations upon the public exchequer, just as a dishonest captain, who has sold his vessel, stores, and rigging, escapes detection by " expending" them in a storm. The condition of the people, also, in an impoverised country, renders them much more available for warlike enterprises. Soldiers can be far more easily recruited among a population when employment is scanty and the general condition of life more hard. When Frederick of Prussia fought his " Seven, Years' War" against half Europe, he was able to employ three fourths of the adult males throughout his dominions in carrying muskets, because other industries were almost unknown, and his kingdom, therefore, desperately poor. The Emperor of Russia, in like manner, now monopolises the services of a million men as soldiers out of a gross population of sixty millions. The inference, in these modern days, may be altogether reversed. Nations now are inclined to peace in proportion, not to their poverty and debt, but to their wealth and prosperity. This happy consequence we owe, among many other blessings, to the inventors of paper money and national debts. Among the peoples of antiquity a different order of things prevailed, j with the inevitable result that every empire or community, as they successively rose into pre-eminence, was destroyed by their own prosperity. As they grew rich they grew quarrelsome, and their quarrels entailed wars in which they perished one after another. The despot, or the State in whose coffers an extensive hoard of treasure had accumulated, were tempted to employ their wealth in trying to conquer some neighbouring country. The money, as we say, ' burnt' in • their pockets,' and war was the form of extravagance most easy and fashionable at the time. When the enterprise failed, as it generally did, the aggressors too often lost not only their treasure and the army which it had equipped, but their own liberties and status among the Powers of the earth. This vice infected Commonwealths as well as Kings, and resulted in equal ruin to republics and despotisms. It was an accumulation of 10,000 talents in gold in the Athenian treasury, for which no pacific employment could be found, which really prompted the disastrous expedition to Syracuse, and paved the way for the thirty tyrants. Modern nations are happily exempt from these temptations. The probability that any power will observe treaties, abstain from aggressive enterprises, and generally maintain a pacific policy towards other countries, is estimated now much more by its wealth than by its debts or financial embarrassment. England is beyond comparison the richest country in the world, and is also in almost equal superiority the most peaceable. She has shown in successive wars—and repeated the proof very recently—that military efforts which ex^haust other States are almost unfelt by herself, and that, if"called upon, she can endure the drain of men, of money, and supplies of every sort required for the prosecution of one campaign after another, while Allies and enemies alike are reduced to the last stage of exhaustion. But this wealth of resources is accompanied, and probably caused, by a national predisposition to peace, which renders England at once the most formidable, and the least dreaded of all civilised powers. Nothing shows the full; and general recognition of this pacific character so much as the liberties which it allows any English Government to take, without challenging opposition, or even remonstrance from other States: England may invade an empire, or annex.vast territories in Asia, she may occupy islands commanding the most important channels of: commerce, without eliciting the slightest apprehension among her Allies. Her policy is no doubt ambitious-—as the creation of an Empire on which for a century past ' the sun has' never set'—may attest; but it is not an aggresssive ambition. So perpectly free from any such crime is the national conscience, that tW British public would be really astonished if any foreigner were even to suggest that because England has

annexed Oude, or invaded Burmah, or occupied Perim,, she is thereby guilty of any desire for territorial aggrandisement, or placed in a position which renders her dangerous to the peace of the world. At a moment when the possibilities of war are so deeply agitating the European mind, we may not unreasonably derive some consolation from the hope that the same, growth in material prosperity which has eliminated all aggressive impulse from the policy of England may prove not less effectual with other Powers. In this hope we revert with much gratification to the report published in' our columns yesterday, exhibiting the increase of revenue as derived from the extension of commerce and industry in France. The maintenance of peace at this crisis may be said to depend upon the single fiat of, the Emperor Napoleon the Third. If the condition of France had given way, if her revenues had declined, her industry collapsed, and her population become pauperised, for want of employment, there might have been some cause for alarm. As it is, we have no fear.; As tested by the returns to the imperial revenue, the commercial transactions which contribute to branches of receipt analogous to the English Customs and Excise have augmented during the past year so as to furnish an enhanced income of not less than 562,000,000 to the exchequer. The revenue from these sources in 1857 was 1,052,000,000 francs, or 42 millions, sterling, and last year it rose to nearly 44 millions.. The increase on these departments of the national income since 1852 approaches fifteen millions per annum, and has accrued upon almost every branch of commerce and manufacture. Appeals founded upon this growing prosperity are the most effective reasons for preserving peace which subjects can urge upon a government. Such have already been transmitted to the Emperor from very influential quarters. Among others, we ; are told that Count de Germiny, Governor of the Bank of France, M. C. Pereire, and other of the leading financiers of Paris, have made strong representations of the shock to commerce, the stagnation of industry, and financial diasters which must ensue if the peace of Europe were disturbed even for a moment. The influence of these representations depends entirely upon the general state of the country; and our confidence that they will prevail is increased in the exact proportion that we find France, by her increasing prosperity, winning a position where she has more to risk and lose, and less to gain, by challenging the terrible hazards of vox.—-Morning Chronicle, January 18.