116.  And further, note this, which is vital to us in the present crisis:  If war is to be made by money and machinery, the nation which is the largest and most covetous multitude will win.  You may be as scientific as you choose; the mob that can pay more for sulphuric acid and gunpowder will at last poison its bullets, throw acid in your faces, and make an end of you; of itself, also, in good time, but of you first.  And to the English people the choice of its fate is very near now.  It may spasmodically defend its property with iron walls a fathom thick, a few years longer—­a very few.  No walls will defend either it, or its havings, against the multitude that is breeding and spreading faster than the clouds, over the habitable earth.  We shall be allowed to live by small pedler’s business, and iron-mongery—­since we have chosen those for our line of life—­as long as we are found useful black servants to the Americans, and are content to dig coals and sit in the cinders; and have still coals to dig,—­they once exhausted, or got cheaper elsewhere, we shall be abolished.  But if we think more wisely, while there is yet time, and set our minds again on multiplying Englishmen, and not on cheapening English wares, if we resolve to submit to wholesome laws of labor and economy, and setting our political squabbles aside, try how many strong creatures, friendly and faithful to each other, we can crowd into every spot of English dominion, neither poison nor iron will prevail against us; nor traffic, nor hatred; the noble nation will yet, by the grace of heaven, rule over the ignoble, and force of heart hold its own against fireballs.

117.  But there is yet a further reason for the dependence of the arts on war.  The vice and injustice of the world are constantly springing anew, and are only to be subdued by battle; the keepers of order and law must always be soldiers.  And now, going back to the myth of Athena, we see that though she is first a warrior maid, she detests war for its own sake; she arms Achilles and Ulysses in just quarrels, but she disarms Ares.  She contends, herself, continually against disorder and convulsion, in the earth giants; she stands by Hercules’ side in victory over all monstrous evil; in justice only she judges and makes war.  But in this war of hers she is wholly implacable.  She has little notion of converting criminals.  There is no faculty of mercy in her when she has been resisted.  Her word is only, “I will mock when your fear cometh.”  Note the words that follow:  “when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction as a whirlwind;” for her wrath is of irresistible tempest:  once roused, it is blind and deaf,—­rabies—­madness of anger—­ darkness of the Dies Irae.

And that is, indeed, the sorrowfullest fact we have to know about our own several lives.  Wisdom never forgives.  Whatever resistance we have offered to her loaw, she avenges forever; the lost hour can never be redeemed, and the accomplished wrong never atoned for.  The best that can be done afterwards, but for that, had been better; the falsest of all the cries of peace, where there is no peace, is that of the pardon of sin, as the mob expect it.  Wisdom can “put away” sin, but she cannot pardon it; and she is apt, in her haste, to put away the sinner as well, when the black aegis is on her breast.