(ii) The Insanity of War
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till even American slavery, the vilest that ever saw the sun, shall vanish away before it.
'"" Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a Jaw in our colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing.
What villainy is this !
"That He_who has guided you from your youth up, may continue to strengthen you in this and in all things, is the prayer of, Dear Sir, Your affectionate servant, ** Joun WESLEY."'?
The " tract" by "'a poor African," referred to in this letter, was Gustavus Vasa, the "' autobiography of a black slave."
It was the last secular book Wesley read.
And on his death-bed, his own strength failing him, he desired both James Rogers and Elizabeth Ritchie to read aloud to him from this treatise.
Even in his last hours, therefore, the burden of those tortured " black brethren "' pressed heavily on this holy man's heart.
An immortal emancipator was being taught by a slave.?
(ii) The Insanity of War Save for the protests of a handful of Quakers crying in the wilderness, the arbitrament of the sword in Wesley's day was universally accepted as the final court of appeal in all international disputes.
The great English evangelist could never be described as an out-and-out pacifist ; yet war he believed to be the foulest curse men knew—the denial, even the crucifixion, of all the higher attributes of civilisation: it was rebellion against humanity and God.
"' War," says Wesley, " is a horrid reproach to the Christian name, yea, to the name of man, to all reason and humanity.?
In all the judgments of God," he avers, "' the inhabitants of the earth learn righteousness. Famine, plague, earthquake, the people see the hand of God.
But when war breaks out God is forgotten."* '' So long as this monster stalks uncontrolled, where is reason, virtue, humanity?
They are utterly excluded.''® 1 See Professor Coupland's William Wilberforce, p. 141; also Vulliamy's
Wesley, p. 346. hee:
2 See Fournal, Vol. VIII, p. 135 (footnote).
See, too, Elizabeth Ritchie's Account of Wesley's Last Days.
3 See Doctrine of Original Sin (1756).
4 Works of Wesley, Vol. XII, p. 327.
5 Tbid., Vol. IX, p. 221.
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND ART ER W Es ey In 1758, the Seven Years' War being then at full tide, with France and Austria fighting England and Prussia, and with Central Europe, Canada and India a far-flung field of battle, the Wesleys published Hymns of Intercession for all Mankind.
And the tenor of their teaching the following couplets reflect :
Our earth we now lament to see, With floods of wickedness o'erflowed.
'Where men, like fiends, each other tear, In all the hellish rage of war.
Father of everlasting love, To every soul Thy Son reveal.
And bid the fallen race arise, And turn our earth to paradise.''?
As the trouble with the American Colonies began to brew, Wesley wrote to Rankin and other of his preachers in America, imploring them to use their influence "' for peace."
In March, 1775, he wrote to " brother Charles," saying : '"' I am of neither side, and yet of both : on the side of New England and of old.
. We love all and pray for all with a sincere and impartial love."
And he besought Charles to be " like-minded."?
A few weeks later, Wesley penned his famous warning to Lord North, the Premier : "In spite of my long-rooted prejudice,
I cannot avoid thinking, if I think at all, that an oppressed people asked for nothing more than their legal rights, and that in the most modest and inoffensive manner that the nature of the thing would allow.
But waiving all considerations of right and wrong, I ask, is it common sense to use force toward the Americans?
These men will not be frightened ; and it seems they will not be conquered as easily as was first imagined—they will probably dispute every inch of ground; and if they die, die sword in hand.''s Lord Dartmouth, the Colonial Secretary, was a friend of Wesley and a devoted convert of the Revival.
In Wesley's letter to him on 14th June, 1775, he pleaded strongly for pacific and conciliatory efforts ; nor did he shrink from the use of utilitarian as well as spiritual arguments.
The Americans, he insisted, believed they were fighting for their homes—not for pay. France and other European nations, he predicted, would almost certainly
* See Henry Carter, The Methodist, pp. 170-1.
* M. Edwards, ohn Wesley and the Eighteenth Century, p. 72.
See L. Tyerman, Life and Times of #. Wesley, Vol. III, p. 198.
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enter the struggle and extend the field of carnage ; and whereas the Americans were largely united, many Britons, he warned, were "ripe for rebellion"? at home.
In conclusion came Wesley's memorable, prophetic plea : ''
For God's sake, for the sake of the King, of the nation, of your lovely family, remember
Rehoboam ! Remember Philip II!
Remember Charles I ! ''1
In the light of later events, were ever admonitions more apt ?
The following year, when the Revolutionary War was at its height, Wesley.wrote his Seasonable Address to the More
Serious Part of the Inhabitants of Great Britain respecting the Unhappy Contest between us and our American Brethren.
That treatise portrays vividly Wesley's utter abhorrence of war.
Picturing the armies of the revolution rushing together in conflict, he asks:
'' But what are they going to do?
To shoot each other through the head or heart, to stab and butcher each other?
. Why so?
What harm have they done to each other?
Why none at all.
Most of them are entire strangers to each other.
But a matter is in dispute relative to the mode of taxation.
So these countrymen, children of the same parents, are to murder each other with all possible haste—to prove who is in the right.
What an argument is this!
What a method of proof!
What an amazing way of deciding controversies !'?
Then, suggesting impartial arbitration instead of bloodshed, he inquires:
'' Are there no wise men among us?
None that are able to judge between brethren?
But brother goeth to war against brother, and that in the very sight of the heathen.
Surely this is a sore evil among us?
How is wisdom perished from the wise!
What a flood of folly and madness has broke in upon us ! ""?
But meanwhile, in the autumn of 1775, had appeared Wesley's Calm Address to our American Colonies.
This treatise everyone has heard of, and on ten thousand occasions has it been used as a stick with which to beat Wesley's back.
Certainly it represents a marked change of front as to the '"' oppression "' of the Colonials and the "legal right"? of their demands.
He here tells the Americans that the laws against which they were revolting are just, and that the taxes they refused to pay are both moderate and fair.
Here Wesley's subconscious and traditional Toryism reasserts itself in robust form.
Yet his changed attitude represents more than traditional prejudice or patriotic fervour.
It is a remarkable fact that a large volume of recent and disinterested research, both American and English, is completely overthrowing the long dominant delusion that the American rebels were wholly in the right and that the 1 ¥ournal, Vol. VIII, Appendix 27.
2 Works, Vol. XI, p. 122.
ENGLAND:
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AND AFTER WESLEY
English Tories, then controlling Parliament, were all vindictive tyrants.
But dropping this thorny problem, what caused Wesley's altered attitude ? Did he arbitrarily change front?
Were the numberless charges of inconsistency and even of sycophancy now hurled against him rooted in truth?
First of all, it must be remembered that, when the Calm Address was written, every last chance of pacific settlement had passed.
War had come, and war to men of action means Yea! or Nay!
Meanwhile, too, Wesley had read Dr. Johnson's Taxation no Tyranny and was profoundly impressed.
Indeed his main thesis in the Calm Address is a popular adaptation of Johnson's argument.
But if Wesley had received "light"? from Johnson's treatise, and 'thought it his '' duty to enlighten others," it must not be imagined that this was the sole cause of his changed demeanour.
Daily was it becoming more obvious that the American slogans had been quite misleading, and that, presuming upon the new geographical safety won for them by the Seven Years War,
Rebellion and Independence had become the Colonial leaders' real, but covert, intent.
Though the American watchword was '' Liberty," the actual situation had largely drifted into the hands of demogogues and mobs.
Tom Paine, who had gone to America in 1774, already was showing his hand, and in 1776 was to appear his Common Sense.
Lawyers, for some time past, had been openly threatened with mob murder, if they brought any case before a British judge.
'' Loyalist " neighbours, in considerable numbers, had been "' tarred and feathered."'
Smuggling long had been openly encouraged as an honourable trade.
And while the revolutionaries all shouted "* Liberty' and '"' Independence," their armed forces were being commanded by a slave-owning planter, who entertained never a thought of freeing his own human chattels.
'' Liberty " was not for "' blacks " ; nor had the leaders of "' Independence " a thought of granting the franchise to any save a favoured minority among the whites.
When therefore the crisis came, Wesley's love of '' law or order"? made him a staunch defender of Parliament.
England's protracted bungling of a delicate situation, he still deplored ; but the madness of mobs was a phenomenon with which he was all too familiar: and the provocative outrages of the Colonial mobs, he deemed wholly unpardonable.
Hence the famous Calm Address.
As for the countless charges of plagiarism and sycophancy, they need not detain us.
Dr. Johnson, far from being offended 1 See Jeudwine's Religion, Commerce, Liberty, 1683-1793, chapters xi and xiv.
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at Wesley's use of his arguments, was highly flattered.
" To have gained such a mind as yours," the Doctor wrote to Wesley, - ""may justly confirm me in my own opinion.
. The lecturer was surely in the right, who, though he saw his audience slinking away, refused to quit the chair while Plato stayed."1
Concerning the sycophancy charges, Wesley's letter to Lloyds Evening Post is highly illuminating.
The said Address, he answered his assailants, was written:
"Not to please any man living, high or low.
I know mankind too well.
I know that they who love you for political service, love you less than their dinner ; and they that hate you, hate you worse than the devil."2
The American revolt, Wesley averred, had been largely " incited by letters from England."
The rebels had been " advised" by political malcontents in the Home Land, to " seize upon all the King's officers," and were told that, if they "' stood valiantly " for six months, there would be "such commotions in England," that they might have their '"' own terms."
The flame of disloyalty, Wesley contended, "rages "' all over England ; many were " pouring oil into the flame": he wrote to " contribute his mite' toward " putting out" the fire.®
Wesley's prediction that an American rebellion would spread to war with France and Spain proved correct.
He knew well, that such an event would threaten every foundation of British influence throughout the globe.
And he believed that England, for all her sins, was more worthy to guard the high seas and to exercise far-flung colonial influence than either France or Spain, her then envious rivals.
His abhorrence of war was unchanging.
He did everything in his power to prevent the outbreak of the American Revolution.
But when once the war came, he supported the Government.
His Calm Address and his co-related treatises ran into a circulation of many scores of thousands.¢ And this support to an England honeycombed with Whig dissention at home, facing rebellious colonies in America, and pushed to the wall by France, Spain and Holland at Gibraltar as well as in East and West, did much to save the Empire from complete disruption.
Little wonder, therefore, that Wesley was violently lampooned as a '' Government pensioner."
The Man of Peace, by raising the morale of the issues and by radiating the spirit of national confidence and honour in England, proved a mighty bulwark of defence in time of war: but all war he continued to loathe ; and certain
1 Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. XVII, Part I, p. 455.
2 Fournal, November 27th, 1775.
3 Thid.
4 See, too, Wesley's Observations on Liberty and Calm Address to the Inhabitants of England.