Under a
democratic government the most serious embarrassment to the state
is its gentlemen, or persons not disposed or not fitted to
support themselves by their own hands, more necessary in a
democratic government than in any other. The civil service,
divinity, law, and medicine, together with literature, science,
and art, cannot absorb the whole of this ever-increasing class,
and the army and navy would be an economy and a real service to
the state were they maintained only for the sake of the rank and
position they give to their officers, and the wholesome influence
these officers would exert on society and the politics of the
country--this even in case there were no wars or apprehension of
wars. They supply an element needed in all society, to sustain
in it the chivalric and heroic spirit, perpetually endangered by
the mercantile and political spirit, which has in it always
something low and sordid.
But wars are inevitable, and when a nation has no surrounding
nations to fight, it will, as we have just proved, fight itself.
When it can have no foreign war, it will get up a domestic war;
for the human animal, like all animals, must work off in some way
its fighting humor, and the only sure way of maintaining peace is
always to be prepared for war. A regular standing army of forty
thousand men would have prevented the Mexican war, and an army of
fifty thousand well-disciplined and efficient troops at the
command of the President on his inauguration in March, 1861,
would have prevented the rebellion, or have instantly suppressed
it.
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