The Fall of the Stuarts

Wars destroy the morals of mankind by habituating them to refer everything to force, and by necessitating them so often to dispense with the ordinary suggestions of sympathy and justice. This is true of wars in general; but the demoralizing effect is much greater if wars are civil wars; or religious wars--wars, that is, between fellow-citizens to serve the ends of some political party, or to enforce the observance of some political truth; or wars between fellow-Christians to force all to follow some religious creed. Moral virtues are in these cases uprooted; military virtues, which may exist in the most depraved man or state, flourish.  Nevertheless it is only through the fire of religious and civil wars, and of religious persecutions, that the cause of religious and civil liberty comes out triumphant. The fall of the Stuarts, of which we shall treat, is an event in the successful struggle for civil and religious liberty. The latter half of the seventeenth century was occupied by wars of a less demoralizing character than civil and religious wars; by wars undertaken by one man, Louis XIV., to obtain certain personal ends, These ends were the supremacy of Western Europe, the Imperial crown, and the succession to the throne of Spain. Of what befell Louis in his attempts to secure the supremacy of Western Europe, and how the “balance of power” was eventually righted, we shall also treat…