human nature, is more practised by men than by any sort of beasts. They,
in opposition to the sentiments of almost all other nations, think that
there is nothing more inglorious than that glory that is gained by war;
and therefore, though they accustom themselves daily to military
exercises and the discipline of war, in which not only their men, but
their women likewise, are trained up, that, in cases of necessity, they
may not be quite useless, yet they do not rashly engage in war, unless it
be either to defend themselves or their friends from any unjust
aggressors, or, out of good nature or in compassion, assist an oppressed
nation in shaking off the yoke of tyranny. They, indeed, help their
friends not only in defensive but also in offensive wars; but they never
do that unless they had been consulted before the breach was made, and,
being satisfied with the grounds on which they went, they had found that
all demands of reparation were rejected, so that a war was unavoidable.
This they think to be not only just when one neighbour makes an inroad on
another by public order, and carries away the spoils, but when the
merchants of one country are oppressed in another, either under pretence
of some unjust laws, or by the perverse wresting of good ones. This they
count a juster cause of war than the other, because those injuries are
done under some colour of laws. This was the only ground of that war in
which they engaged with the Nephelogetes against the Aleopolitanes, a
little before our time; for the merchants of the former having, as they
thought, met with great injustice among the latter, which (whether it was
in itself right or wrong) drew on a terrible war, in which many of their
neighbours were engaged; and their keenness in carrying it on being
supported by their strength in maintaining it, it not only shook some
very flourishing states and very much afflicted others, but, after a
series of much mischief ended in the entire conquest and slavery of the
Aleopolitanes, who, though before the war they were in all respects much
superior to the Nephelogetes, were yet subdued; but, though the Utopians