1827.] [ 369 ] 



WAR: ITS USES. 



No. II. 



MR. EDITOR: I told you, in my former paper, that honour was tho 

 breath of a soldier's nostrils. I would much rather it was a pipe of port 

 a-year than such an empty substance as breath particularly when one is 

 on half-pay. But, Sir, I gave you my honour to furnish you with reasons 

 for going to war, and, therefore, I shall perform ; particularly as, I hope, 

 that his Majesty's Cabinet will find a few which they had overlooked, and 

 that I shall soon get some other occupation than that of hunting rats with 

 Teazer, and wishing for dinner-time. 



I told you that the noble old Romans never wanted any other reason 

 for going to war than that delightfullest, charm ingest, dearest best, of 

 reasons, the reason of the dear, delightful, charming sex " because" (they 

 chose it.) 



Now, forsooth, one king declares war against another king, lest the 

 other king should declare war against him : which is a good reason enough, 

 certainly, because it is always easy to find. Sometimes one nation makes 

 war against another, because that other nation has desired it to christen 

 one of its children Shadrach, Meshach, and x\bednego : a very justifiable 

 reason. Now and then, it is because a drunken captain in the navy mis- 

 takes one ship for another : an admirable reason. On another occasion, 

 it is because a strumpet finds it convenient, or is jealous of another strum- 

 pet : a delectable reason as strumpets are much given to quarrelling 

 and, therefore, it is an easy reason. Or, in the matter of strumpets, it is 

 proper and just to declare war, should any of your neighbours draw your 

 picture leading one in each hand. 



Sometimes a nation makes war because it has too much money, and 

 sometimes because it has not enough : one or other of these reasons need 

 never fail. Occasionally, it makes war about cod-fish, that being so rare 

 and valuable an animal; or about beavers, for fear it should be obliged to 

 wear silk hats ; or for otters, that it may send Lord Amherst a-Kotaoing 

 to Pekin, to serve his apprenticeship against Rangoon ; against which it 

 makes war, for a far better reason than any of those, since it is one that 

 nobody can discover. 



Nations, very commendably, war in their own kitchens, and about their 

 own fire-sides, to settle whether, out of two knaves or two fools, which 

 knave or fool it is to be fool enough to invest with a crown. 



Sometimes it is a little modification of this which produces a great 

 delectability in war ; namely, whether it is best to have a fool or a rogue 

 whether the old fool or the old rogue shall be put down, and a new fool or 

 a new rogue put up. This is sometimes called the question of legitimacy. 



Sometimes, too, a higher interference orders the nations to receive a 

 king says that his claim is divine that his right is registered above : and 

 this produces mutiny in tho people, who are seldom backward in disobey- 

 ing most of the orders that are promulgated from that quarter. 



It was not uncommon, in former days, to make war to determine whe- 

 ther bread was flesh, or not ; whether it required one parson to teach every 

 ten men ; and whether, there being only ten loaves, the parson had a right 

 to one ; whether a man prayed best in a black gown or in a white one ; 

 what was the difference between consubstantiation and transubstantiation ; 

 whether a civil sort of Italian gentleman in a scarlet cloak was the Supreme 

 Being, or quasi Deus; whether some people had a right to burn a maa 



M.M. Net* Series. VoL.Hl. No.16. 3 B 



