In that great war carried on against Louis the Fourteenth for near eighteen years, government spared no pains to satisfy the nation, that, though they were to be animated by a desire of glory, glory was not their ultimate object; but that everything dear to them, in religion, in law, in liberty, everything which as freemen, as Englishmen, and as citizens of the great commonwealth of Christendom, they had at heart, was then at stake.  This was to know the true art of gaining the affections and confidence of an high-minded people; this was to understand human nature.  A danger to avert a danger, a present inconvenience and suffering to prevent a foreseen future and a worse calamity,—­these are the motives that belong to an animal who in his constitution is at once adventurous and provident, circumspect and daring,—­whom his Creator has made, as the poet says, “of large discourse, looking before and after.”  But never can a vehement and sustained spirit of fortitude be kindled in a people by a war of calculation.  It has nothing that can keep the mind erect under the gusts of adversity.  Even where men are willing, as sometimes they are, to barter their blood for lucre, to hazard their safety for the gratification of their avarice, the passion which animates them to that sort of conflict, like all the shortsighted passions, must see its objects distinct and near at hand.  The passions of the lower order are hungry and impatient.  Speculative plunder,—­contingent spoil,—­future, long adjourned, uncertain booty,—­pillage which must enrich a late posterity, and which possibly may not reach to posterity at all,—­these, for any length of time, will never support a mercenary war.  The people are in the right.  The calculation of profit in all such wars is false.  On balancing the account of such wars, ten thousand hogsheads of sugar are purchased at ten thousand times their price.  The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man.  It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind.  The rest is vanity; the rest is crime.

In the war of the Grand Alliance most of these considerations voluntarily and naturally had their part.  Some were pressed into the service.  The political interest easily went in the track of the natural sentiment.  In the reverse course the carriage does not follow freely.  I am sure the natural feeling, as I have just said, is a far more predominant ingredient in this war than in that of any other that ever was waged by this kingdom.

If the war made to prevent the union of two crowns upon one head was a just war, this, which is made to prevent the tearing all crowns from all heads which ought to wear them, and with the crowns to smite off the sacred heads themselves, this is a just war.

If a war to prevent Louis the Fourteenth from imposing his religion was just, a war to prevent the murderers of Louis the Sixteenth from imposing their irreligion upon us is just:  a war to prevent the operation of a system which makes life without dignity and death without hope is a just war.