The same would have been said of the Seine, the Loire
and every other dividing line between their petty communities. It would
have been insisted on that such rivers were the natural boundaries of
states and never could be otherwise.
But now since the people of those districts find themselves no longer
on the frontiers of little warlike states, but in the centre of great
industrious nations, they have lost their relish for war, and consider it
as a terrible calamity; they cherish the minister who gives them peace, and
abhor the one who drives them into unnecessary wars. Their local disputes,
which used to be settled by the sword, are now referred to the tribunals of
the country. They have substituted a moral to a physical force. They
have changed the habits of plunder for those of industry; and they find
themselves richer and happier for the change.
Who will say that the progress of society will stop short in the present
stage of its career? that great communities will not discover a mode of
arbitrating their disputes, as little ones have done? that nations will
not lay aside their present ideas of independence and rivalship, and find
themselves more happy and more secure in one great universal society,
which shall contain within itself its own principles of defence, its own
permanent security? It is evident that national security, in order to be
permanent, must be founded on the moral force of society at large, and not
on the physical force of each nation independently exerted.
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