_Nutts._ Don’t talk of it. Shall I ever forget when Mrs Nutts and me crossed to Calais to see France? Shall I ever forget how fellows in blue uniforms, with swords by their sides, searched us over and over, as if we’d brought a cutler’s shop and a cotton-mill in every one of our pockets? Isn’t it dreadful to think that men should be such fools to themselves as to pay soldiers and customhouse officers to prevent one country bringing its blessings to another, as if heaven only intended the best iron for England, and the best claret wines for France? Well, isn’t it a comfortable thing to think of, that Mr Cobden has spoken the dying speech of all them customhouse officers? They mayn’t believe it just yet, but it’s sure to come. They’ve got consumption in ’em, and sooner or later they must go. Only I _do_ hope that on both sides they’ll save one or two specimens for their museums, just to show the children that come arter us what fools their fathers was afore ’em. _Slowgoe._ Well, there’s one comfort left for me, I shan’t live to see it. You’re for universal peace, and all that sort of stuff. Very well in story-books, but never was intended. War and all _that_ was meant from the first. War runs through our nature. Everything wars upon everything. There’s nothing so little as doesn’t eat up something as is smaller than itself. Look here now; here’s a paragraph from an Injy paper, the _Agra Chronicle_, about the battle-field in the Sutlej. It says: “We came _viâ_ Loodianah and Firozepore, and on our way encamped on the fields of Alrival and Ferozeshah. Alrival was a beautiful green plain, the only one I saw between Meerut and this, _and seemed intended by nature for a battle-field_. A few skeletons were strewed over it, and of the wells one was just drinkable, and the other was so impregnated with gunpowder as to be wholly unfit for use.” _Tickle._ I can’t have that. “Intended by nature for a battle-field.” And do you think when nature made this beautiful world, and filled it with fruits and flowers, and sent down blessed light upon it--made it, as I may say, a paradise for folks to live in--do you for a moment think that nature made certain “beautiful green plains” for slaughterhouses? You might as well say that when nature made iron, she made it not for carpenters’ tools, but a-purpose for swords and bayonets; and that the sea would have all been fresh water only that we wanted the salt for gunpowder. That’s the shabby part of man. Whenever he does wickedness upon a large scale, he always lays it upon nature. If Cain had been a general, he’d have put all his bloodshed upon nature.