Page:OntheConductofMantoInferiorAnimals.pdf/70

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WAR.
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of the violated. Contemplate, I conjure you, these horrible circumstances, and, if ye have not lost the feelings of nature, ye will lift up your hands and hearts in agonized petition to the Most High, to remove from weeping Christendom a monster bringing in it's train such unspeakable horrors.

"Let it not be forgotten, however, that the influence of war is equally fatal to the morality, as to the happiness, of a country. The habits which a state of warfare necessarily introduces, into a nation, are every way unfavouable to virtue, and encouraging to vice. The authority of the laws, and the sanctions of equity, which peaceful times and a quiet order of things preserve in their strength and purity, are weakened, loosened, and too often overturned, when the military spirit has once seized upon the national character. The restraints which virtue and decency impose upon the conduct, it then becomes fashionable to neglect and despise. A large part Of the community are necessarily withdrawn from their accustomed habits of industry, and their natural domestic relations, and transplanted into a new line of life, and a different set of connections; a life, whose tenour and leisure quickly sow in them the seeds of debauchery and vice; and connections, whose society as rapidly unfolds, matures, and brings these seeds to perfection. People of this description, mingling with the other classes of their fellow citizens, impart to them also the blemishes which they themselves have acquired. Increasing communication produces wider contagion; immorality gradually enlarges her borders, till she obtains, at length, undivided dominion, and entirely obliterates from the national character all the becoming features of order, decency, «nd virtue. So much for the consequences produced