The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
EUROPEAN WARS
To turn to the news of the day, it seems that the cannibals of Europe
are going to eating one another again. A war between Russia and Turkey
is like the battle of the kite and snake. Whichever destroys the
other, leaves a destroyer the less for the world. This pugnacious
humor of mankind seems to be the law of his nature, one of the
obstacles to too great multiplication provided in the mechanism of the
universe. The cocks of the henyard kill one another. Bears, bulls,
rams, do the same. And the horse, in his wild state, kills all the
young males, until worn down with age and war, some vigorous youth
kills him, and takes to himself the harem of females. I hope we shall
prove how much happier for man the Quaker policy is, and tha the life
of the feeder is better than that of the fighter; and it is some
consolation that the desolation by these maniacs of one part of the
earth is the means of improving it in other parts. Let the latter be
our office, and let us milk the cow, while the Russian holds her by
the horns, and the Turk by the tail.
to John Adams, 1 June 1822
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