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CHAPTER XXII.
WHY DEMOCRATIC NATIONS ARE NATURALLY DESIROUS OF PEACE, AND
DEMOCRATIC ARMIES OF WAR.
The same interests, the same fears, the same passions which
deter democratic nations from revolutions, deter them also from
war; the spirit of military glory and the spirit of revolution are
weakened at the same time and by the same causes. The
ever-increasing numbers of men of property—lovers of peace, the growth
of personal wealth which war so rapidly consumes, the mildness of
manners, the gentleness of heart, those tendencies to pity which
are engendered by the equality of conditions, that coolness of
understanding which renders men comparatively insensible to the violent
and poetical excitement of arms—all these causes concur to
quench the military spirit. I think it may be admitted as a general
and constant rule, that, among civilized nations, the warlike
passions will become more rare and less intense in proportion as social
conditions shall be more equal.
War is nevertheless an occurrence to which all nations are subject, democratic nations as well as others. Whatever taste they may have for peace, they must hold themselves in readiness to repel aggression, or in other words they must have an army.
Fortune, which has conferred so many peculiar benefits upon the inhabitants of the United States, has placed them in the midst of a wilderness, where they have, so to speak, no neighbours: a few thousand soldiers are sufficient for their wants; but this is peculiar to America, not to democracy.
The equality of conditions, and the manners as well as the institutions resulting from it, do not exempt a democratic people from the necessity of standing armies, and their armies always exercise a powerful influence over their fate. It is therefore of singular im-