Memorials and Other Papers, vol 1 | Page 3

foot--champions of such interests, men first of all descry, as from a
summit suddenly revealed, the possible grandeur of bloodshed suffered
or inflicted. Judas and Simon Maccabæus in days of old, Gustavus

Adolphus [Footnote: The Thirty Years' War, from 1618 to the Peace of
Westphalia in 1648, was notoriously the last and the decisive conflict
between Popery and Protestantism; the result of that war it was which
finally enlightened all the Popish princes of Christendom as to the
impossibility of ever suppressing the antagonist party by mere force of
arms. I am not meaning, however, to utter any opinion whatever on the
religious position of the two great parties. It is sufficient for entire
sympathy with the royal Swede, that he fought for the freedom of
conscience. Many an enlightened Roman Catholic, supposing only that
he were not a Papist, would have given his hopes and his confidence to
the Protestant king.] in modern days, fighting for the violated rights of
conscience against perfidious despots and murdering oppressors,
exhibit to us the incarnations of Wordsworth's principle. Such wars are
of rare occurrence. Fortunately they are so; since, under the possible
contingencies of human strength and weakness, it might else happen
that the grandeur of the principle should suffer dishonor through the
incommensurate means for maintaining it. But such cases, though
emerging rarely, are always to be reserved in men's minds as ultimate
appeals to what is most divine in man. Happy it is for human welfare
that the blind heart of man is a thousand times wiser than his
understanding. An _arrière pensée_ should lie hidden in all minds--a
holy reserve as to cases which may arise similar to such as HAVE
arisen, where a merciful bloodshed [Footnote: "_Merciful
bloodshed_"--In reading either the later religious wars of the Jewish
people under the Maccabees, or the earlier under Joshua, every
philosophic reader will have felt the true and transcendent spirit of
mercy which resides virtually in such wars, as maintaining the unity of
God against Polytheism and, by trampling on cruel idolatries, as
indirectly opening the channels for benign principles of morality
through endless generations of men. Here especially he will have read
one justification of Wordsworth's bold doctrine upon war. Thus far he
will destroy a wisdom working from afar, but, as regards the immediate
present, he will be apt to adopt the ordinary view, namely, that in the
Old Testament severity prevails approaching to cruelty. Yet, on
consideration, he will be disposed to qualify this opinion. He will have
observed many indications of a relenting kindness and a tenderness of
love in the Mosaical ordinances. And recently there has been suggested

another argument tending to the same conclusion. In the last work of
Mr. Layard ('Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, 1853')
are published some atrocious monuments of the Assyrian cruelty in the
treatment of military captives. In one of the plates of Chap xx., at page
456, is exhibited some unknown torture applied to the head, and in
another, at page 458, is exhibited the abominable process, applied to
two captives, of flaying them alive. One such case had been previously
recorded in human literature, and illustrated by a plate. It occurs in a
Dutch voyage to the islands of the East. The subject of the torment in
that case as a woman who had been charged with some act of infidelity
to her husband. And the local government, being indignantly
summoned to interfere by some Christian strangers, had declined to do
so, on the plea that the man was master within his own house. But the
Assyrian case was worse. This torture was there applied, not upon a
sudden vindictive impulse, but in cold blood, to a simple case
apparently of civil disobedience or revolt. Now, when we consider how
intimate, and how ancient, was the connection between Assyria and
Palestine, how many things (in war especially) were transferred
mediately through the intervening tribes (all habitually cruel), from the
people on the Tigris to those on the Jordan, I feel convinced that Moses
must have interfered most peremptorily and determinately, and not
merely by verbal ordinances, but by establishing counter usages against
this spirit of barbarity, otherwise it would have increased contagiously,
whereas we meet with no such hellish atrocities amongst the children
of Israel. In the case of one memorable outrage by a Hebrew tribe, the
national vengeance which overtook it was complete and tearful beyond
all that history has recorded] has been authorized by the express voice
of God. Such a reserve cannot be dispensed with. It belongs to the
principle of progress in man that he should forever keep open a secret
commerce in the last resort with the spirit of martyrdom on behalf of
man's most saintly interests. In proportion as the instruments