Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 424, February 1851Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 424, February 1851
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
Turn to distant parts of the world, and is the prospect more indicative
of the advent of a pacific millennium? Is it to be found among the
English colonists in India, or the energetic republicans of America?
Have not the English, for the last twenty years, been engaged in almost
ceaseless hostilities in Hindostan or China, during which ultimately
our victorious standards have been advanced to Cabul and Nankin; and
we have seen our empire shaken to its very foundation by the disasters
of the Coord Cabul Pass, and the frightful contest on the banks of the
Sutlej? Is America more peaceful, and is the advent of the reign of
peace foreshadowed by the entire abstinence from ambitious and angry
passions in the republicans of its southern or northern hemisphere?
Has not the former, since the disastrous era when its revolution
began, been the theatre of convulsions so frequent, and bloodshed so
incessant, that history, in despair, has ceased to record the names
of these conflicts, and points with horror only to their woeful
consequences? And has not Northern America, during the last twenty
years, exhibited the most unequivocal evidence of the lust of conquest
having gained possession of the most influential portions of her
inhabitants? Were they not actually at war with us in 1837 to support
the Canadian revolutionists; did they not cheat us out of three-fourths
of Maine, and bully us out of half of Oregon; and have they not
squatted down, without the vestige of a title, on Texas; and when the
Mexicans resented the aggression, invaded their territory and wrested
from them the half of it, including the whole auriferous region of
California? In short, war surrounds us on all sides; its passions are
raging throughout the world; an era of such hostile prognostications is
scarcely to be found in the annals of mankind. And yet Mr Cobden and Mr
Bright declare, to admiring and assenting audiences in Manchester, that
the era of war is past, and that we should disband our troops and sell
our ships of the line! They are like an insane patient in a distant
wing of a building which is wrapped in flames, who positively refuses
to do anything to save himself, saying, "They will never reach me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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