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LECTURES
AND
SPEECHES
BY
74707
ELIHU BURRITT
LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, SON, AND MARSTON,
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET.
1869.
(All Rights reserved.)
I
35
1897

LONDON:
1. 9. RICKERBY, PRINTER, 4A, WALBROOK,
MANSION HOUSE. X. C.
PREFACE
•
CONTENTS.
LECTURES.
On the Physiology of Free Nations
On the Benevolent Associations of the Day
On the Higher Law and Mission of Commerce
On the Dignity and Comfort of the Farmer's Life
SPEECHES.
…………
143
164
Testimonial Speeches at Manchester, October 5th, 1849
Reception Speeches at New Britain, Conn., U.S.,A.
Speech at the Peace Congress at Brussels, September 21st, 1848 193
Speech in the Salle du Jeu de Paume, Versailles, August
25th, 1849......
203
Speech at the Peace Congress at Frankfort, August 24th, 1850 207
Extract from a Speech at Birmingham, in 1851
214
Extract from a Speech in the London Peace Congress,
July 24th, 1851
Speech at the Annual Meeting of the American Peace
Society, Boston, May, 1861.....
Speech at the Annual Meeting of the London Peace Society,
May, 1863.....
Speech at the Anniversary Meeting of the London Peace
Society, May, 1864
PAGE
1
37
68
105
222
230
244
251
A 2
iv
Contents.
Speech at the Annual Meeting of the London Peace Society,
May, 1867.....
Speech at the Annual Festival at Hartwell Park, Aylesbury,
August 25th, 1864
Speech at the Anniversary of the Parish Schools, Harborne,
May 24th, 1866
A Tribute to Richard Cobden………………….
Conclusion of a Paper read at the Social Science Congress,
August, 1868......
The Olive Leaf Mission
OLIVE LEAVES FOR THE PEOPLE:
No. 1.-Ein Oelblatt für das Volk..
No. 2.-Peace a Working Man's Question
No. 3.-The Husbandry of the Plough and the Sword
No. 4.-The Valuation of Human Life in War
No. 5.-The Inheritance of National Mistakes
No. 6.-The Great Families of the Fatherland
No. 7.-Thoughts at the Paris Exhibition
No. 8.-A Friendly Address of Citizens of Birmingham
to the People of France and Germany
Letter to the New Britain Agricultural Club
...
...
*****
:
PAGE
262
275
289
299
302
309
312
315
317
319
322
324
327
330
334

Preface.
S
TH
HE author, during his several sojourns and long
residence in England, having addressed probably
more public audiences in the kingdom on various topics
than any other American, dedicates and presents this
volume to those who have listened to him with that
attention, respect, and sympathy which he will remember
to the last with sincere and deep satisfaction. The four
Lectures and the short Speeches here dedicated and
tendered to their goodwill, in token of his pleasant
remembrance of it, contain a kind of résumé of the
sentiments and views he has laboured to put forth, by
tongue and pen, on both sides of the Atlantic, during
the last twenty-five years, and which are as apposite
and applicable now to the questions to which they relate
as when he first essayed to address the public mind
upon them. Although he devoted several years to the
advocacy of an Ocean Penny Postage, and presented the
vi
Preface.
subject at a public meeting in almost every considerable
town in England, Scotland, and Ireland, he gives in
this collection no extracts from his speeches on those
occasions, because he anticipates that the postal reform
proposed will soon be realized, and that, consequently,
the arguments he used to advance it would lose the
interest or propriety which they might otherwise possess.
For the same reason he has not taken a page from his
speeches on "Compensated Emancipation," a proposition.
on which he addressed a public audience in nearly every
town and considerable village in the Northern States of
America, travelling for this purpose ten thousand miles
in one season. Though still believing as fully as he did
then that if the offer had been made on the part of the
Free States to buy out slavery by compensation from
the National Treasury or the National Domains, the
"domestic institution" of the South might have been
extinguished without being drowned out in human blood,
still the author refrains from preserving in this collection
any of the arguments he urged in favour of the peaceful
mode of adjustment which he laboured so long and so
hard to promote. It is now too late to question or
discuss "what might have been." The great problem
has been solved-in blood; tears may have been too
laté, if the nation had wept them.
The four Lectures embrace a rather wide range as well
Preface.
vii
as diversity of topics, which the learned and critical
reader may regard as rather superficially treated. But if
he has ever essayed to address a public audience on any
similar subject, he will appreciate the difficulty of pre-
senting a full development of it in the space of a single
hour and to a miscellaneous audience, including even
children in years as well as intellect. In endeavouring
to make the subject interesting as well as intelligible to
his hearers, he must often employ homely figures and
language, which would not be customary nor necessary
to the professor's chair. In fact, a popular lecturer must
be superficial, measured by the standard of a college
professor; but the cream of a subject is generally super-
ficial, and if he skims it successfully for his popular
audience, he contributes perhaps as much to their in-
struction and entertainment as they are able to receive
or he to give. This unpretentious merit is the only one
the author aspired to in the Lectures which form the first
half of the present volume.
The Short Speeches at the various Peace Congresses,
and at the Anniversaries of the London and American
Peace Societies, will embody the principles and senti-
ments which the author has laboured for nearly thirty
years to bring before the public mind in Europe and
America, in the various publications he has edited, as
well as by living speech on the platform. Many who
viii
Preface.
listened to them at the time of their utterance, and far
more who first read them now, may not be able to sympa-
thize with the doctrines they express, but it is the hopeful
prerogative of faith to believe that the day will come
when Governments and peoples will recognise their truth
and force, and act upon them in local and international
society.
On the whole, whatever defects in style, diction, or
logic a learned criticism may detect and condemn, the
author believes the spirit that pervades the volume will
be generally recognised and approved.
BIRMINGHAM, May 20th, 1869,
I

;
1
LECTURES.
41

LECTURE
ON
The Physiology of Free Nations.
WⓇ
E have reached a point in the intellectual pro-
gress of mankind at which the mysteries of
science have been opened wide to the comprehension and
use of the great masses of society. The most subtle
agencies, principles, and combinations in nature's realm
have been brought forth from the dreamy mysticisms in
which they were enveloped for centuries. They have
become incorporated with the occupations of common
life. They have been domesticated with the farmer,
mechanic, and merchant, to serve as helpmeets in every
department of human industry. The command given to
the father of the race, to subdue the earth and its ele-
ments to their service, has been carried out by his
posterity to such extraordinary ramifications of that in-
junction, that nearly the whole of Christendom has taken
to a habit of boastful exultation at what has been done
in this direction. What next? what more? are natural
and popular questions, in view of past achievements.
Are there any new forces in the dynamics of nature to
B
2
The Physiology of
be discovered and applied to the use of man? Are there
any new and subtle combinations in its wide laboratory
which science may invent or analyse to the advantage of
the world? There may be such; time will determine it.
But enough has been developed already to show that
there are central principles and concentric combinations
which not only run through the entire domain of nature,
but through the whole compass and constitution of human
society, widening outward, and ascending upward, until,
for aught we know, they cross over the circumference of
human interests and destinies, and carry their sway into
the central realm of celestial existencies. 'Order,” said
one who made the saying sound like a Divine axiom,
"Order is Heaven's first law." But order would need
no law, nor even exist as a notion, were there no di-
versity of essences and agencies. Order is not the rigid
exactness of one mind's motion, of one life's sphere of
action, or of one wheel's revolution. It is the grand
law of society, of companionship in the world of mind,
and of combination in the world of matter; and it runs
through both on parallel radii to the centre throne of
Divine government. It matters not whether we trace
the working of this law from the circumference to the
centre, or from the centre to the circumference, we shall
see in either direction the series of concentric harmonies
which it was designed to establish. Let us, then, begin,
not at the centre, but at the circumference, of this car-
dinal law of order, and follow it up from the primary
combinations of nature's realm to that point where it
intersects with the constitution of human society, and
determines the Physiology of Nations.
Free Nations.
3
One hundred years ago the primary elements of the
material world were apparently but a little better known
to the great majority of the people than they were to
Noah and his family when they left the ark. All the
available, popular knowledge in regard to them was
generalized and comprehended in the terms, earth, air,
fire, and water. A few men, scattered over Christendom,
of suspected learning, pretended to analyse these things,
and to say that they were not independent substances,
but composed of different elements, existing in different
forms of combination. But these men were chemists or
alchymists, the first-cousins to soothsayers and conjurors,
men suspected of improper intimacy with the black arts,
and with the prince of darkness himself. The facts
they developed lay sterile for years as impracticable
curiosities, fit only for discussion in the secluded schools
of cloistered science. How slowly and painfully they
worked their way into popular comprehension and use!
What a head sea of suspicion and doubt they encoun-
tered! What pertinacious and unreasoning obstinacy of
the common mind rejected and reviled their teaching!
The history of what may well be called the martyr-age of
science is so familiar, so often cited, that it has come to
be regarded as trite and hackneyed. We will not trace
back the long and painful process by which the most
important, the most helpful forces, laws, and combi-
nations of nature have been developed and brought into
active service for man's comfort. It will suffice to say
that some of the most abstruse and mysterious sciences
which the common people, two centuries ago, regarded
as allied to witchcraft, are now working hand in hand
B 2
4
The Physiology of
with the most common and rustic occupations. Those
principles and combinations which the chemist evolved
in his dark and bolted cabinet, have been brought to the
comprehension and daily use of millions. And what is
rather singular and promising withal, that class of the
community which seemed at the very antipodes of this
science and its investigations, are now making the great-
est use of its teachings in their avocations. The farmers,
at the time when chemistry was closeted with its crucible
under the ban of their suspicion, were probably the
most depressed and benighted class of society everywhere.
They had but recently emerged from serfdom, were
rarely able to read, and still constituted the peasantry
of different countries. A whole century had seldom wit-
nessed any accession to their knowledge, even in regard
to their own occupation, though it had absorbed all their
thoughts. Many of them still turned the earth with the
butt-end of a beech sapling for the plough-beam, and
with its toughest root for the ploughshare. All the skill,
economy, and judgment they applied to agriculture were
hereditary, coming down to them through a thousand
years. What could the chemist do for such a class, for
such an occupation? When and how could they ever be
brought within the reach of his mysterious science? to
comprehend and apply its principles? to take hold of its
complicated abstrusities, its delicate and subtle combi-
nations, and turn them to their own advantage?
Well might the chemist and farmer of the seventeenth
century ask these questions with mutual surprise and in-
credulity. But the chemist and farmer of to-day can give
these questions an answer containing the most astonishing
Free Nations.
5
fact in the progress of human knowledge. The two men,
one representing the most abstruse science, the other the
most common department of manual labour, who were
sundered by the widest mental disparity and disfellowship
two centuries ago, now stand in the closest affinity and
companionship. Now, no man in the community has
such a wide and varied interest in the law of combination
as the farmer; no one has such motives to consult the
chemist and apply his teachings; no one has such
practical reasons for knowing the different properties of
the soil, the composition of plants, the elements of air,
water, and fire, and the action of these elements in
different forms of co-working.
Books and periodicals
without number are published expressly for his guidance
in this law of combination. They teach him to apply it
to the fertilizers prepared for his fields. They show him
what mineral elements enter into the structure of various
plants; what are the respective proportions of phosphates
and potash in the straw of wheat, barley, rye, and oats
of gluten, sugar, and starch in different kinds of grain;
what are the nutritive properties of potatoes, carrots, and
turnips. When his own science will not solve the
question, it is no uncommon thing for the farmer of the
present day to box up a square foot of the common soil
of his farm and send it to some distant university, to be
analysed by an agricultural chemist, in order to ascertain
what quality it lacks for the growth of this or that kind
of grain or roots, and how he may supply the wanting
element. He ploughs and sows by the law of combina-
tion. He applies it in every direction by a process which
he calls crossing. He crosses his soils, and obtains new
6
The Physiology of
capacities of production. He crosses his seeds, and pro-
duces new varieties of grain and roots. He crosses his
fruit-trees, by grafting or innoculation, and obtains better
kinds of apples, pears, and peaches. He crosses the blood
of his horses, cattle, sheep, and swine, and gets improved
varieties of barnyard stock. Crossing is the simple, Saxon
term which the farmer gives to that great law of combina-
tion which runs not only through the whole world of
matter, but through the whole world of mind, shaping
all its moral and political structures.
Not one in a thousand, even of the most scientific men
of the present day, has attained to any definite idea of
what this cardinal law of creation has wrought from the
beginning of its action upon the elements; what new
forms of beauty it has produced in the vegetable domain
of nature; what new petals, leaves, and tints it has given
to our choicest flowers; what new forms and qualities to
plants we most prize for use and ornament; what new
dimensions, complexions, and delicious flavours to the
fruits of our orchards and gardens; what new shapes, sizes,
and properties to grains and roots for man and beast.
Following this central, ever-working law across the
vegetable domain of Nature into her animal kingdom, we
see it producing there the same important and beautiful
transformations. What it has already wrought in this
department, few, even of the most inquisitive and curious,
have ever undertaken to ascertain or describe. Every
body knows, even children of ten years, that, some day
or other, the most enormous, unsightly, unsymmetrical
monsters and reptiles have lived upon the globe and
infested its waters. The very pictures of these ugly,
Free Nations.
7
ill-formed brutes are enough to throw sensitive natures
that dream of them into a nightmare. But when they are
represented as large as life in rude statuary of brick and
mortar, as in the park of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham,
they outrage all our ideas of animal propriety of form and
character: compared with the most ungainly creature
that now walks the earth, the best of them is like Satyr
to Hyperion. These creatures had their day and genera-
tion. They doubtless grew by that on which they fed;
and that on which they fed was unquestionably as gross
as the flesh and form which that feeding made. The law
of combination was probably as undeveloped in the
vegetable as in the animal kingdom at that epoch of the
earth's history. But it worked on and upward, until the
earth was not only covered with new vegetation, but
with a new set of animals to feed upon it. And all those
animals which have been subjugated to the service of
man have doubtless come to their present character and
value through that long, slow process of development
which the farmer would call crossing or grading. And
yet, after a thousand years of this process, there were
never so many new forms of combination suggested and
adopted for the further improvement of these animals as
at the present moment. Horses, cattle, sheep, swine, and
even poultry, are conveyed by steam and sail over the
widest oceans and continents for this express purpose.
Savants, statesmen, ambassadors, men of the highest
culture and refinement, make long journeys to attend con-
ventions of these animals, and enthusiastic connoisseurs
run almost into a rhapsody in describing their qualities
when pure or mixed.
8
The Physiology of
We have now followed the law of combination through
the two outermost circles of the material world -- the
vegetable and animal. We are now to ascend into the
third and last circle into which I shall venture to in-
troduce you at this time. That is, the circle of humanity,
with some of its varieties and combinations, actual and
prospective. On entering this broad area of investiga-
tion, let us carry with us those standards and similes of
measurement and valuation which we applied to the
lower circles of vegetable and animal life. The simpler
the terms we adopt, the more clearly defined and in-
telligible, to young and old, will be the facts and ideas we
may evolve in regard to the great problem before us. In
other words, let us take the farmer's homely manual, and
apply its simple, Saxon formula to this important and
complicated subject. There are two or three rules and
characteristics of his standard of estimation which we
should remember on the threshold of our reflections and
inquiries. He draws no invidious comparisons between
elements of those spontaneous or artificial combinations
so important to his occupation and interests. He deals
fairly with them all, allotting to each its proper use,
value, and honour. He does not undertake to say which
is the most important ingredient of his soil, silex or
marl; or which is the most valuable property of his
wheat, gluten, starch, or sugar; or which is the best blood
of his graded stock, Devonshire or Durham. Nor does the
chemist tell us which is the most vital element of the
blood that circulates in our veins, albumen or fibrin; or
which is the most essential to the air we breathe, oxygen
or nitrogen. The aggregate result of the combination is
Free Nations.
9
the great paramount interest. There is one more circum-
stance I would ask you to bear in mind, as we proceed,
which is familiar to every household. The most useful
of all our combinations are those of elements which are
as repugnant to each other as possible; which effervesce
and splutter with the most obstinate antagonisms when
brought together; which, to use a common simile, are as
unlike as oil and water, or honey and vinegar, but which,
by the mediation of a third element, unite and form a
harmonious and valuable compound. Thus, in many
cases, the more antagonistic are the elements, the more
useful and necessary is their combination. This fact let
me again ask you to keep in mind, and to apply, as we
now advance to the main department of our subject.
In the family circle of mankind, there is a certain
number of distinct races at the present day. How many
there were three thousand years ago no one will under-
take to say.
We will not now stop to consider the
peculiarities of climate, soil, and occupation, which have
tended to individualize these races, and to perpetuate that
difference of form, stature, complexion, and character,
which now distinguishes one from the other.
One great
fact will serve us as a point of departure. They all
received the first elements or aspects of their individuality
on the continent of Asia. A mystery, which we will
not undertake to fathom, is involved in the movements
by which they scattered themselves over the globe, and
produced such varieties of religions, language, habits,
physical, mental, and moral characteristics. We know
that many of these races have disappeared from the face
of the earth altogether; that, in fact, nearly all the
IO
The Physiology of
aboriginal inhabitants of the various continents, and of
the islands of the world, seem destined, like the inferior
orders of the animal creation we have noticed, to be ex-
tinguished, either by absorption into more vigorous races,
or by that slow process of mortality which has melted
away their predecessors. One thing, however, is evident
and inevitable: it is the will and working of Divine
Providence that this law of combination, irrespective and
independent of human antagonisms, shall move onward
and upward through the whole domain of mankind, until
the earth shall be covered and cultivated by higher
orders of humanity than inhabited it in the first centuries
of its existence. The will and working of Providence are
the only voluntary agencies perceptible in these slow but
mighty transformations. Neither the individual man,
nor the confederate nation, is a willing or conscious party
to the process.
In the lower circles of vegetable and
animal life, man is as busy as a bee, full of enthusiasm
and ingenuity in blending different properties and quali-
ties, and producing new forms of beauty and perfection;
but, in the great circle of his own physical nature and
existence, he is a silent, passive, and almost unconscious
subject of the law of combination. With all his immense
and intense interest in his own physical character and
well-being, he never thinks of grading human blood by
any blending in order to make a more perfect man, in
strength, stature, or complexion. The nation, of which
he is a component individual, never absorbs nor amalga-
mates itself with another in order to acquire capacities
which it lacks and needs, or to impart them to a neigh-
bouring community. On the contrary, no combinations
Free Nations.
II
in the realm of nature have encountered such mutual
antagonisms, or have produced such protracted and vehe-
ment repulsions, emotions, and effervescence, as the union
of contiguous races of mankind. And what is a striking
fact, those races to which amalgamation is the most
necessary, which, without it, can never attain to that
status of national vigour and civil liberty to which they
individually aspire, are pitting themselves against each
other in the sharpest forms of repugnance. At this very
moment the whole of Europe, and half of America, are
passing through a profound emotion, in consequence of
these hereditary and almost invincible antagonisms be-
tween conterminous races, on which, in some cases, the
same sun of civilization has shone for a thousand years.
And it is for this reason that I have ventured, on this
occasion, to ask your attention to a few thoughts on the
Physiology of Nations, or of those nations with which
we have most to do.
At this stage of our subject, we may safely take it for
granted that all those mental and moral capacities upon
which humanity must depend chiefly for its destined
development and progress are concentrated in races
elaborated by Providence in Europe. The Star of the
East has not set; it has risen to a meridian from which
its light has flooded another continent, leaving the lands
illuminated by its morning beams in the dim and dusky
twilight of civilization. All that can move or impress
mankind has left Asia, and followed the star of empire in
its westward course. Even the Star of Bethlehem shone
but a brief period over the favoured region that saw its
first rays of mercy and glory, and it, too, followed the
I 2
The Physiology of
movement of the world's energetic mind in the same
direction. The centres of Christianity and civilization
shifted to another continent, where their light and life
might be fed with more vigorous qualities of human
character.
History has transmitted to us but little accurate know-
ledge of the aboriginal inhabitants of the various coun-
tries of Europe. Their tribes doubtless differed from
each other in language, character, and customs as much
as did the North American Indians when that continent
was first discovered and settled by our ancestors. They
evidently occupied the same scale of moral and intellec-
tual being; they were equally pagan and benighted, and
equally unable to compete in vitality with the more
vigorous races that subdued them. Most of them have
shared the same fate with the aborigines of America.
They have been extinguished or absorbed, until few ves-
tiges of their distinctive existence remain.
The popu-
lations that supplanted or succeeded them present a long
list in history; but they may all be generalized in two
grand divisions, one of which we will call the Latin, the
other the Teutonic race. On the character and combination
of these two races hangs the progress of civilization,
science, liberty, and all the great temporal interests of
mankind. No two contiguous portions of the human
family ever differed more widely in character and career.
The Latins made Rome the boasted metropolis and mis-
tress of the world. Its gates and temples were hung
from year to year with the fresh trophies of their vic-
torious arms. Their terrible legions trod down the
effeminate and demoralized nationalities of Asia and
-
Free Nations.
13
Africa, and the rude Celtic tribes of Western Europe.
But there was one race they never could subdue,—a light-
haired, blue-eyed race that peopled Central and Northern
Europe to the frigid zone; a race whose rude energy of
character and will a century's struggle with the vaunted
conquerors of the world could not bend nor tame; a race
whose rugged virtues no temptations could seduce or
undermine, whose moral nerve and sinew grew stronger
by endurance, as Rome grew weaker by every disease of
internal corruption; a race which had no written lan-
guage when Cicero was in his glory, which had no
capital nor centre of population equal to a three-year-
old American village when its allied tribes smote the
Roman legions in the forests of Germany, or when the
Eternal City tottered to its fall before the uncivilized
hordes of Northern Europe; a race which to this day
never has had a Rome, nor a Paris, nor a St. Petersburgh,
which has no distinctive capital now, neither in Vienna,
nor Berlin, nor Frankfort, nor Hamburgh, nor in Copen-
hagen, nor Stockholm. This remarkable race, with its
German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Ice-
landic families, we call the Teutonic. What this element
has done, and is yet to do, in the mental and political
career and character of modern nations, is not left to
fanciful deduction, but is established in the capital facts
of their history.
When Rome fell, the Latin race possessed nearly all
the elements of Christianity and civilization in Europe.
The Germans or Teutons were still pagan, wandering
tribes, with no science, literature, nor even a written
language. The log or leaf cabins of Germany, compared
14
The Physiology of
with the magnificent architecture and sculpture of Italy,
would seem to measure the intellectual difference between
them. But as the humble fishermen of Galilee were
chosen the Apostles of Christianity to the world, so were
the rude hunters of German forests honoured by Provi-
dence with a mission of kindred dignity in the develop-
ment of Christianized civilization. From that time to
the present moment the Divine hand and will may be
most strikingly seen in combining the Teutonic and
Latin races to form a people that shall cover the globe,
and carry forward universal humanity to the acme of
its earthly destiny. Although the union of these two
races is to be the grandest result of the law of combina-
tion in the history of mankind, although it is to re-
mould the moral and political condition of the world, and
to affect intensely and for ever the character and rela-
tionships of the earth's populations,-still not one
statesman, not one political philosopher in a hundred
has kept his eye on the process, or measured the conse-
quences of its consummation.
No sooner had Rome, the great Latin metropolis, been
uncrowned as mistress of the world, than the Teutons
inaugurated that unconscious mission to which Provi-
dence had assigned them. Their populations multiplied
with a fecundity hitherto unknown to the world; and,
as they increased in number, their inherent and indomi-
table energy of character seemed to take new thews of
moral vigour. In the full apostolic number of twelve
tribes, they went forth in every direction, absorbing
other races, or imparting to them their own qualities of
character. The Scandinavian branch of the family
Free Nations.
15
pushed their expeditions over the seas that almost sur-
rounded them, and, crossing over into Russia, planted
a race of kings at its metropolis. A Saxon branch,
from the other extremity of its territory, crossed over to
Great Britain. From Schleswig Holstein and Friesland
others pressed eastward and southward, each doing its
part in the process arranged by Providence to mould a
new character for the nations.
The island of Great Britain was the great elaboratory
for working the law of combination to its grandest issue.
That small sea-girt territory was selected for this mighty
and magnificent operation. There the Teutonic and
Latin races were to be blended in a people which should
combine the best qualities of both, and colonize them all
over the world. In the first place, the territory chosen
for this extraordinary amalgamation was the most fa-
vourable that could be found in Europe. It was an
island, just large enough for the purpose, of a good nor-
thern latitude, and at a convenient distance from the
Continent. Its climate, never subject to quick and
severe extremes of heat and cold, was most auspicious for
building up a new and powerful race. The qualities of
its soil, and the minerals beneath it, all combined to fit
it for the grand design of Providence. A series of seem-
ingly incoherent events might appear to the superficial
observer to have determined the different stages of the
process; but to the mind that studies the order and sig-
nificance of these occurrences, they are the consecutive
links of the chain by which the grand result was to be
reached. It was indispensable to the character of the
new people to be formed, that the agricultural branch of
16
The Physiology of
the Teutonic family should first migrate to Britain, and
establish their character and occupation there on a basis
which should never be subverted nor seric- y affected
by any subsequent population; for, thou iculture,
sea-faring enterprise would have beco e piry. If the
Scandinavian Teutons, or the Danes, had come first to
England, they would have made it a nest of pirates
preying upon the plunder of neighbouring countries.
But such was not the ordering of Providence.
rural, home-loving, patient, plodding, blue-eyed, and
light-haired Saxons came first. They had not the
slightest maritime genius in the world, but took to farm-
ing with all the natural predilections with which their
northern cousins, the Danes, took to the sea and to a
corsair life.
The
For nearly five centuries the Saxons had the best part
of the island of Great Britain to themselves, and estab-
lished their character upon it for ever. Its fertile soil
they could plough at all seasons of the year, and sow in
months when snow covered the old homeland of Ger-
many. For nearly twice the space of time that the
American continent has been settled by the English
race, they had the full sway of their genius and will
without any hostile interruption from the continent of
Europe. During this period they probably absorbed the
aboriginal tribes of England proper, which were branches
of the Celtic family, partially Latinised by the Romans.
If they were substantially the same as the Welsh family
of Celts, their amalgamation with the Saxons must have
contributed to the result several energetic and valuable
qualities.
Free Nations.
17
About a thousand years of the period which Provi-
dence employed in elaborating a new race for the future
peopling
the globe had now passed away. Two
capital ev s had arked and formed each a stage of
the process. Firs the Roman conquest and occupation,
which lasted about four hundred years, or just long
enough to impress upon the more advanced populations
of the island some of the elements of Latin civilization,
blood, language, and religion. The second event was the
Saxon immigration, conquest, and rule, which lasted
nearly five hundred years, at the end of which we have a
race occupying an island, and yet without the slightest
maritime genius or propensity in the world. While the
Saxons in England were ploughing its rich soil, the
Scandinavian Teutons of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden
were ploughing every league of sea from the North Pole
to the equator, from Iceland to Greenland, from Copen-
hagen to Constantinople, carrying the barbarous and
daring raids of corsairs to every accessible shore. Their
indomitable and ubiquitous sca-kings were everywhere a
terror, and in the litanies of more than one country the
prayer was introduced, "From the Devil and the Danes,
Good Lord, deliver us!" Their Ruricks, and Erics, and
Canutes, and Harolds were carrying their prowess in
every direction,-one crossing over into Russia, and
wielding that sceptre now held by his lineal descendant,
the imperial Alexander; one crossing the Northern
Ocean, and exploring the coast of North America four
hundred years before Columbus was born; and a third
invading England with nearly a thousand little ships.
They differed but little, morally or physically, from
с
18
The Physiology of
the Saxons. Indeed, the latter evidently emigrated to
England from Schleswig Holstein and Friesland, or
districts more contiguous to Denmark than to other
portions of Germany. Their great distinctive indi-
viduality was the most hardy and indomitable sea-
faring genius that had ever distinguished any people on
the earth. There was not enough industrial commerce
at the time to satisfy or employ this propensity, so they
took to piracy on the largest scale. Their most cele-
brated corsairs were called sca-kings, and well did they
earn that name for several centuries. As they were
virtually of the same blood and language, they united
somewhat easily and speedily with the Saxons, or the
Saxonised people of England.
About one hundred and fifty years were allotted to the
amalgamation of the Danes with the Saxonised popu-
lations of England. We now come to the introduction of
the fourth element numerically, which was to give to the
race under elaboration those supplementary properties
which it needed to fit it for its mighty mission on the
earth. I mean the Norman Conquest. With this event
began the union of the Teutonic and Latin races on the
island of Great Britain. The slow but ever-working pro-
cess of preparation for this union had covered the space
of a thousand years, and now it came in its order, the
grandest combination ever wrought in the history of
mankind. In this union the two races were not brought
together in their absolute individualities. Both had been
considerably modified and prepared for fusion by inter-
mediate elements,-the English Teutons, by their amal-
gamation with the partially Romanised Celts of Britain;
-
Free Nations.
19
the Latins of Normandy, by a large infusion of the
German element. Indeed, when William the Conqueror
first landed in England, not only his own immediate
followers, but the whole population of Northern France,
were at least one-fourth Teutonic in blood and language.
France had had its Hengis and Horsa too, its Eric
and Rurick, and at about the same time as England.
Northern chieftains had conquered portions of the
country, and established their rule over them. For
several centuries all the kings and queens of France
bore Scandinavian or Teutonic names. The Latins, Celts,
and cognate tribes predominated in the population of the
country at the time, but the strong thews of their moral
energy and power were Teutonic. Nearly all the science
and civilization of Western Europe was Latin. The
literature, the arts, refined tastes, and mental culti-
vation were Latin in origin and language. All these the
Normans brought to England, and imparted to the nation
they conquered, and which afterwards absorbed them.
Four hundred years were allowed for the amalgamation
of these Celtic, Teutonic, and Latin elements on the
island of Great Britain, and then, and not till then, a
New World was discovered, to be peopled by a race
which Providence had been preparing for fifteen cen-
turies for the mission. Every one of these elements has
its place and power. No one can say to the other, "I
have no need of thee." No one can say to the other,
"I have a more honourable function than thine." In-
deed, it is difficult to form a compound term of only two
words which shall fairly designate this composite race.
Whoever analyses its combination cannot honestly call it
c 2
20
The Physiology of
Anglo-Saxon. Nor can it be called much more justly
Anglo-Norman. The two great elements blended in the
amalgamation are the Teutonic and Latin, and one is just
as important to the grand result as the other. France has
just as much reason to be proud of that result as England,
or Germany, or Scandinavia. She contributed to it as
many vital qualities as any other population, Celt, Saxon,
or Dane.
Let us now glance at what this race has already become
and done. In the year 1600, the population of the island
of Great Britain, including England, Wales, and Scotland,
was but a little more than five millions, or less than the
present population of New York and Pennsylvania.
that date there were not a thousand persons who spoke the
English language residing in all America, Africa, Asia, and
the distant islands of the ocean. About two hundred and
fifty years have elapsed since the permanent settlement of
the oldest English colony in North America, and now there
are full forty millions of English lineage and language on
that continent and its contiguous islands; an equal
number in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Indian and
Pacific Oceans, making in all full eighty millions, who
speak the language of Shakespeare and Milton, and call
England their motherland with filial pride and affection.
Counting in the East India subjects of the British Crown,
full one-fourth of the entire population of the earth is
embraced in the empire of this English-speaking race, thus
elaborated on the island of Great Britain, and which did
not equal in number the present inhabitants of London
when America was first discovered. Within forty years
from the present moment, or by the year 1900, this race
Free Nations.
2 I
will double itself, or number 160,000,000, and by that
time 160,000,000 more of the aboriginal inhabitants of
Asia, Africa, and America will probably speak the
English tongue. These facts prove the unparalleled
vigour of vitality which distinguishes the Teuton-Latin
race from any other in the world. A single comparison
will show this remarkable characteristic in a striking
light. In 1831, the population of France was, in round
numbers, 32,500,000; in 1851, it was 38,800,000. In
twenty years it gained only 3,300,000. The populations
of English lineage in the Old World and the New increased
by over 20,000,000 in the same period, or about six times
as fast as the French. In one hundred years they must
number 300,000,000 if they increase at the present ratio;
and one-half of these myriads will, doubtless, occupy this
western hemisphere.
Here are some of the physical characteristics resulting
from that combination we have considered. But this
great power of vitality is only one of the elements of
strength with which this extraordinary people are fitted for
working out the great mission of Christian civilization.
The English language has more self-expanding and ab-
sorbing power than the English blood. It precedes that
blood in this mission. It is a voice crying in the wilder-
ness, Prepare the way of the Lord!" come to the
light of civilization; come to the sources of knowledge,
and drink to the stature of cultivated men. Nearly
three-fourths of all the commerce that floats upon river,
lake, sea, and ocean belong to Great Britain, its colonies,
and the United States. They own full three-fourths of
all the ships propelled by sail or steam. They trade with
(C
22
The Physiology of
every accessible tribe of mankind. No human being has
anything to sell which they are not ready to buy, and
trade cannot be carried on without language; and thou-
sands of heathen men are at this moment learning English
words to use in trade. From isolated words they will go
on to sentences, and gradually they will be brought
within the range of larger knowledge. Schools by the
thousands are being established for their children; and,
within a century, there may be as many Hindoos and
Chinese able to read the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton,
in our mother tongue, as there are now those of English
blood who speak that tongue in both hemispheres.
This educational feature is one of the leading charac-
teristics developed by the combination we have described;
and it may be justly ascribed to the Latin or Norman
element. The Normans introduced a higher civilization
into England and Scotland. They brought with them
all the science and arts of southern or Latin Europe.
England is full of the magnificent embodiments of their
architectural taste and skill in the grand old cathedrals,
nearly all of which were founded soon after the Norman
Conquest. Hundreds of parish churches, which are now
the pride of city, village, and hamlet, were built at the
same time. Colleges, universities, public schools, and
institutions of every kind of learning, were established
within the same period. If this feature of English civili-
zation may be justly ascribed to the Norman element,
that element has not lost one iota of this educational
character. It is just as distinctive and prominent now,
in the movements and habits of the English race all over
the globe, as it was eight hundred years ago, when fifty
Free Nations.
23
CC
magnificent cathedrals, abbeys, and colleges were arising
simultaneously on their foundations in England, though
the whole population of the country did not equal that of
London to-day, and were poor and scattered at that. If
England, her colonies, and the United States should ever
modernise their national flags, so as to represent, not the
habits and dispositions of beasts and birds of prey, but
the great distinctive elements of their prosperity and
power, they would emblazon upon their common banner
the Pulpit, Printing Press, and the School-house, sur-
mounted by those words which Constantine saw encircling
the flaming banner of the cross: ‘Εν τουτο Νικῶ,”.
"In this I conquer." In this they have conquered
gloriously. With these immortal and irresistible agencies
they will march on from conquering to conquer, until the
whole world shall be filled with the light and life of
Christian knowledge and civil liberty. I think we of the
North American branch of the English race have illus-
trated this characteristic in our own course. Already
there are more newspapers and periodicals published on
this continent than in all the rest of the world put to-
gether. Wherever our English-speaking populations
go, they plant on the demolished walls of paganism and
moral darkness the Printing Press, as the symbol and
agent of their power. I believe the second journal in
all the British empire for wealth, circulation, and influ-
ence, is issued in Australia, a region represented on the
map, when many of us studied geography in childhood, as
a blank, unknown portion of the globe. One of the
richest journals in the United States is published in
California, a country as little known as New Holland
24
The Physiology of
1
twenty years ago. The Printing Press and Common
School, linked to the Pulpit as the centre of the triad, are
the Red, White, and Blue of our common banner. Under
that flag may the future republics, kingdoms, and colo-
nies of our English-speaking race march on and on for
ever, to the Bible beats of one common duty and destiny,
until every benighted tribe and every dark corner of
the earth shall be brought up to the life and light of
Christian civilization.
As we pass the eye from one result to another of this
combination of races in Britain, we cannot but notice the
fact that no element that entered into it was extinguished
by the process. Each one retains its distinctive cha-
racter to-day. The sturdy, indomitable bone and muscle
and mercurial temperament of the Celtic are as percep-
tible now as a thousand years ago. The rural and
agricultural predilections of the Saxon are as strongly
developed over all the continents and islands of our race
as they were in England under the Saxon heptarchy.
This great continent, waving in summer with harvests
sufficient to feed half a world, proves that American
climate and soil have not weakened our Saxon habits.
Full three-fourths of all the shipping that floats on
ocean, sea, river, and lake, all over the globe, belong to
the different branches of our great family. They prove
that we are as Danish now as when the Danes estab-
lished their rule and maritime genius in England. Our
churches, colleges, common schools, and newspapers
show that we are as Norman now as when the Normans
conquered England, and established there the science,
arts, and institutions of Latin civilization.
Free Nations.
25
But we have not yet noticed that great cardinal cha-
racteristic of the combination which constitutes its capital
feature. I mean that capacity of self-government and
civil freedom which results from the union of these
elements. On the threshold of this department of the
subject, let me ask you to bear in mind that it would be
equally unfair and unphilosophical to assign more value
and importance to one of these elements than to another.
Let me ask you to apply the farmer's and chemist's
honest standard of estimation which we have already
noticed. Neither one nor the other suggests an invi-
dious comparison between various properties of useful
and vital substances. The farmer does not even admit
into his thoughts the speculation which is the most
valuable element of his grain-sugar or starch, or which
is the most valuable quality in his graded stock—Dur-
ham or Devonshire. Nor does the chemist, after the
severest analysis, say or think which is the most vital to
the air we breathe-oxygen or nitrogen, nor to the blood
that circulates in our veins-Albumen or Fibrin. And
thus far in our analysis of the Physiology of Nations no
one can justly say that we have suggested any compa-
rison to the disparity or disadvantage of the Celtic,
Teutonic, or Latin element in the composition of our
English-speaking race. I have endeavoured to point out
some of the finger-prints of Divine Providence impressed
upon the process of this combination, to show that a
grand aggregate result was intended, and that one ele-
ment was as essential to that result as another.
Let us
adhere to this fair and generous rule as we proceed just
one step further in this investigation. I am aware of
26
The Physiology of
the discrepancy of parallels and analogies instituted be-
tween agents and laws of the natural world on one side
and of the moral world on the other. But I think a
thousand years of history will justify us in putting these
two propositions together as honest parallels. The air
we breathe would be inflammable, and liable to awful and
universal combustion, if it were all oxygen; the atmo-
sphere of political life all over Christendom would be
inflammable, exposed to frequent combustion, revolution,
faction, and anarchy, if it were all Latin. In saying
this, we do not disparage the vital functions of oxygen in
the air, nor of the Latin in the political life of nations;
and when we say that nitrogen is indispensable to the
safety, salubrity, and vitality of the air, we do not set up
that element above the value of oxygen; and when we
say that the Teutonic element is equally indispensable to
the life and being of any nation on earth that would attain
to the summit-level of self-government and civil liberty, we
do not set up that element above the Latin in its value
to mankind. On the broad basis of these fair and honest
analogies we may rest the position, that it is the Teutonic
element that gives to a people that capacity of self-con-
trol, patience, faith, and hope which is absolutely neces-
sary to constitute a law-making and a law-abiding nation.
The history of ten centuries has proved that no people in
Christendom has been able to attain to a high form of
constitutional government and civil freedom, and to
maintain it, without being thoroughly permeated with
this Teutonic element; and the history of two thousand
years proves to the man who reads it with comprehen-
sive and candid study, that Providence has determined
5
Free Nations.
27
and arranged that this element shall work its way into
all co-existing races of mankind, imparting to them those
physical and moral qualities which they need to fit them
for one common status and rank of Christian civilization
and civil liberty. Not for the space of two thousand
years has there been any break in the outgoing and
operation of this element; not for a thousand years to
come, if the earth abides so long, will it suspend this
permeating process. “The heathen may rage, and the
people may imagine a vain thing; the kings of the earth
may set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together "
against this process; but it can never be arrested until it
has accomplished its divinely-appointed work. Neither
Napoleon nor Alexander, neither the Pope nor the
Sultan, nor any coalition of earthly potentates, can
arrest its progress. It moves on in every direction,
infusing itself into the most antagonistic families of man-
kind. It is slowly and irresistibly working its way
eastward, southward, and westward. As it comes in
contact with repugnant masses, there is commotion,
effervescence, hissing, and seething. The Teuton is now
coming into more direct and unmodified contact with
the Latin than it ever did in Britain, where the mutual
antagonism was softened by the mediation of a third
element. It is now pressing upon the Spanish, Italian,
Greek, and Sclavonic populations of Southern Europe.
In spite of their sharpest antagonism, it is infusing
nitrogen into the oxygen of their fiery, inflammable tem-
peraments, imparting to them slowly that capacity of
self-control without which no people is fitted for self-
government or constitutional freedom.
28
The Physiology of
And here let me remind you of a principle we noticed
in the circle of the natural world. We there saw it
proved, by a simple household illustration, that some of
our most common and useful compounds result from the
combination of the most antagonistic elements in nature,
or those which we say are
،، as unlike as oil and water."
So in the constitution of nations. At this moment there
are no populations in Europe to which the Teuton is so
repugnant as to the Italians, Spaniards, Poles, and Hun-
garians; and there are no populations in Europe to
which the Teuton is so vitally necessary as to these.
Without being Teutonised, they can never attain to the
highest level of civil freedom, or sustain a constitutional
government free from periodical paroxysms of revolution
and anarchy. And yet the whole of Europe has been
for months in bewildering commotion in consequence
of the vehement antagonism of these peoples to just such
a combination of races as was accomplished in Britain,
and which was of such immeasurable advantage to all
the parties concerned, and to the world at large. And,
what is somewhat remarkable, no people on earth appa-
rently sympathise so heartily with these populations in
their opposition to this combination as the English-
speaking race on both sides of the Atlantic, and that,
too, in face of the most salient facts in their own physical
and political history. It is for this reason that I put
forth these views with deference and diffidence. I know
that they do not coincide with the opinion of the great
majority of an English or American community. Still
I venture to believe that many intelligent minds in
this audience, after giving dispassionate thought to the
Free Nations.
29
principles I have endeavoured to develope, will see them
justified and illustrated by the history of modern nations.
I think that on looking at all the aspects of this great
and difficult question now agitating Europe, and America
too, they will say with me, let this irresistible law of com-
bination go on to the mighty issue designed by Provi-
dence. It is not a fortuitous concurrence of opposite
elements. A Divine mind and hand are guiding the
process and ordering the result. I think we may take
one step further without wounding the most delicate
sensibility. Look at the history of the Italians for the
last five hundred years, and see what they have done
for themselves and the world in that period. Test the
strength and stamina of their mental stature, their moral
life and national being. Apply the mining rod to all the
literature they have produced since Columbus was born;
take the guage of their songs and sonnets, their ballads and
ditties, their novels and novelletes; measure, with some
moral standard, their amusements, their habits, their
social life, and the whole compass of their intellectual
being; and then compare them, at all these points, with
the Germans, and I think most of you will see and
concede that their amalgamation with the race they
so obstinately oppose would tend more to their true
well-being, dignity, and worth to mankind than any
benefit which all the other nations of the earth could
bestow upon them.
What is true of the Italians is equally true of all
those "oppressed nationalities," as they are called, which
have been the objects of so much solicitude and sympathy
in Christendom. No great Powers can give them free-
30
The Physiology of
dom and independence, any more than one man can give
to another a new heart and eternal salvation. Armies
and fleets flying to their rescue cannot impart to them
those moral qualities which can alone fit them for self-
government and national independence. A probation
of five hundred years has proved that, although they
possess several good and admirable characteristics, they
lack one element, which is vitally necessary to that
political being to which they aspire. No treaty stipula-
tions, no compact of Great Powers, can prevent, nor even
long postpone, this great consummation. The hand that
guides it holds the mightiest of earth's nations in its
palm, and all their puny antagonisms are like the strug-
glings of cradled infants to its power. Spain Italy,
Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Turkey must be Teutonised
before they can ever attain or even approximate to the
political condition of the people of Great Britain and
of the United States; before they can ever rise even to
the middle rank of constitutional governments. France
itself must have a larger infusion of that element in
order to attain to that position. The law of combination
has already achieved more difficult results than this amal-
gamation. If Celts and Saxons in England could be
blended in an age of mutual paganism, surely the Teutons
and Latins, at this advanced period of civilization, may
be united with far less difficulty and delay, to the im-
measurable advantage of themselves and the world at
large.
Let me ask you if time, experience, and observation
have not already changed your impressions in regard to
system and events which you once regarded as disastrous
Free Nations.
31
to mankind? For instance, what in all the history of
modern nations has moved the two great branches of
the Teuton-Latin family to such distrust and dissatis-
faction as the growth of the Russian empire? What
eloquent denunciations have been launched by English
and American orators and writers against its one-man
power, against the linking of a hundred half-pagan
populations, from the Baltic to the Pacific, in one chain-
girdled organization! But when we come to the second
sober thought of candid reflection, it is easy to perceive a
divinity shaping the inception and end of that huge
hyperborean empire. We may see even in its one-man
power the leverage which God has chosen for lifting the
serfed millions of that empire out of the bog of their
degradation up to that hard ground for their footing on
which the oppressed populations of every land and age
have worked their way upward to the social dignity and
political power of peoplehood. What chance would
there have been for the immediate and universal emanci-
pation of the serfs of Russia if the question had been
submitted merely to the votes of the Muscovite and
Asiatic aristocracy of that country? What prospect or
possibility of freeing those bond millions if the breaking
of their fetters had been left to the voluntary action of
their owners and oppressors ?
But what has turned the one-man power of Russia to
this uplifting of serfed millions to that footing of freedom
from which they may ultimately arise, like the emanci-
pated serfs of England, Germany, and other countries, to
the rank of that mighty middle class which now governs
nearly the whole of Europe? The motive force to this
32
The Physiology of
grand act of justice and humanity is the Teutonic ele-
ment and genius operating upon the Russian executive.
For a hundred years and more the Teuton and Muscovite
have had a hand-to-hand struggle for mastery in the
Russian Government. The Teuton has at last won the
day; and a new day is dawning upon the moral and
political life of the empire. This is only one of the vic-
tories won by the Teuton. It is working like the leaven
of a new life through the whole Russian body politic.
It is working perceptibly in the upbuilding and expan-
sion of municipal institutions throughout the empire,
those primary schools in which peoples acquire the habit
and capacity of constitutional government. The day
may come—I believe it will-when St. Petersburgh shall
become a working centre of the Teutonic influence and
institutions second only to London itself; when England
and Russia shall divide the whole continent of Asia
between them, one Teutonising the Southern, the other
the Northern half, while all the outside nations, seeing
and sharing the benefits of the arrangement, shall say,
"Grace, grace unto it!"
The Teutonic blue eyes are fast coming to the meridian
of Europe's firmament, to shine out of its tranquillised
depths like the morning stars of a better future to man-
kind. The fair young sister of England's future Queen
is to put the white soft hand of her influence to the
sceptre of the Russian realms. Who shall say that the
graceful and gentle touch of those young fingers shall
not take the iron out of that sceptre, and give it a
silver sway over the millions who shall own and bless
its rule?
-
Free Nations.
33
1
Now, then, turn your eyes toward another point of the
compass of Europe, and see what a lodgement the
Teutonic element has obtained in the heart of Greece.
At the end of two thousand years of tempestuous ex-
perience and history of that unhappy country, one of
the fair-haired, blue-eyed men of the North is at last
seated upon the throne of Pericles at Athens. The
young brother of the fair mother of all England's kings
to be now wields that sceptre once studded with the
most brilliant histories of the old world's civilization.
The young Dane is not there alone. He is surrounded
and guided by wise men of that northern race whose
sea-kings and land-kings once ruled the ocean, and wore
the iron crown of their vigour and will on the thrones
of England, France, and Russia. Athens will become a
new working centre of attraction and irradiation of that
element which gives such an energetic vitality to our
English-speaking race. Alexandra on the British throne,
Dagmar on the Russian, and their brother George
sceptred at Athens, will form an equilateral triangle of
stars, shining with equal ray serene of those northern
lights which have haloed the horizon of the dark ages
of the world with the golden aurora of a better morning
for mankind. So much for the Dane; and who shall
say that in mounting to this equilateral triangle of
Europe's thrones, it is not amply compensated for all it
lost in its recent and unfortunate trial of the arbi-
trament of the sword?
The Teuton recently essayed to win a new foothold in
the Western Hemisphere. Had it been a spontaneous
and voluntary movement on the side of both parties,
D
34
The Physiology of
that essay would have succeeded to their mutual and
immeasurable advantage, and the advancement of the
best interests of mankind at large. The Teuton at one
sudden and unexpected bound leapt sheer across from
the Mediterranean to the Mexican shore. It ascended
to the throne of the Montezumas, and put on the
imperial crown of Mexico. But it was
But it was an unbidden
and unwelcome regime, forced upon the country by
foreign bayonets. Had it been otherwise, had the
Mexicans chosen Maximilian to be their sovereign by
universal suffrage, there is no reason to doubt that he
would have made them the most able, sagacious, and
beneficent ruler they ever had. His amiable and accom-
plished wife would have made them a new centre and
source of moral refinement and virtuous cultivation.
Thousands of Germans would have settled in Mexico,
and mixed and intermarried with the population, and
little by little they would become Teutonized, and fitted
for stable, constitutional government, free from those
periodical paroxysms of lawless violence and anarchy
which have hitherto marked their career. But if the
Teuton failed in this unfortunate attempt to impress its
character and institutions upon the mercurial Mexicans,
that element will be sure, at an early day, to get the
moral and political ascendancy in that country. Ame-
ricans, English, and Germans are making headway in
all its chief centres of population and commerce, and the
leaven of their habits, ideas, and energy must gradually
affect the Government and transform the character of the
nation.
And here we may notice the groundlossness of that
Free Nations.
35
1
apprehension which Americans and Englishmen have
entertained in regard to the ascendancy or extension of
the Latin races. Those of Spain and Portugal have
already permeated and virtually absorbed the aboriginal
populations of Central and Southern America from the
boundary of the United States to Cape Horn. They
have also established their blood, language, institutions,
and religion on some of the finest islands of the Southern
Seas. The French branch of the Latin family may
establish their ascendancy over the northern half of
Africa; and English, and perhaps American, writers
will deprecate this extension of the Latin element. But
in the end it will only prepare the way for the English-
speaking race to occupy the entire American and African
continents, and to plant them from sea to sea with all the
institutions, the liberty, and life of their civilization.
The Latin, pure and simple, has no repugnance to amal-
gamation with the aborigines of South America and
Africa. We see this fact in the movements of that
race in Mexico, Central America, and Brazil. In those
countries a mixed race has thus been produced, with
which the Teuton-Latin may be easily combined. Thus,
by these primary and preparatory combinations our
English-speaking race will acquire physical qualities
which will enable them to thrive with vigour in tropical
regions, thus fitting them to people, the whole habitable
surface of the globe, as well as to establish their language
and institutions on all its continents.
We have thus taken a bird's-eye view of the outgoing
and operation of that element of our English-speaking
race to which we owe so much of what we most value
D 2
36
The Physiology of Free Nations.
in our moral character and political institutions. Even
the large space of time you have allowed me for the
development of these aspects of the subject has only been
sufficient to point out a few of them. But perhaps I
have advanced suggestions which may induce some of
you to give more extended and elaborate thought to this
interesting question than I have been able to present
within an hour's space.
In conclusion, I would express the earnest hope that
all the sea-divided branches of our English-speaking race
will ever cherish a sentiment of physical and moral
solidarity; that, though diverse like the waves, they
shall be one like the sea, one in the great aspiration
and effort to uplift and uplighten the benighted and
depressed populations of the earth to their own level
of civil and religious freedom and vitality,-one above
all in the everlasting blessing and glory of that people
whose God is the Lord, and whose crown of honour is
that righteousness that exalteth a nation.


SWGWANG
COLDER ye
LECTURE
ON
ཀཎ་ལེན་པ
The Benevolent Associations of the Day:
THEIR PHILOSOPHY AND POWER.
TH
HIS truly and beyond all precedent is an age of
Association. Never before could the social prin-
ciple be seen working so perceptibly throughout the world of
mind and matter and motion. We can now look across
these three great domains of its operation at the same glance,
and see its action in each, and its reflex and combined
movements in all. The wheel within wheel, the circle
within circle, revolve before our eyes simultaneously and
evenly in a series of combinations as wide as the material
world with its organizations, as deep as human nature
with its attributes and histories. That force and law
which attach atom to atom, planet to planet, which con-
stellate the stars in their sublime and everlasting com-
panionships, are as old as the creation itself. They act
with no new nor additional impulse upon matter or
motion. In them we have the social principle operating
as a physical law.
Crossing over into what may be called the outer circle
38
The Benevolent
of animal being, we see the social principle acting, almost
with the force of human intelligence, in the unreasoning
communities that move upon the earth, in the sea and
sky. In the ingenious and industrial commonwealth of
the bee-hive; in the amphibious republic of the beaver-
dam ; in the well-ordered battalions of the buffalo herd;
in the measured flight of wild geese, with wings drilled
to military beat; in the submarine squadrons of mon-
strous whales, charging in snorting triumph through the
ocean; in all these representative classes of animal life,
we see the working of the social principle as an instinct,
in forms so varied and perfect that it seems to border
closely upon the line of human reason. But herein is
the difference: it borders, but never advances. It is no
nearer reason now than when the first brute couple walked
away from the hand of the Creator upon the new earth,
or housed themselves in the untrodden caves of the ocean,
or mounted, on wing of bee or eagle, to the blue and
peaceful pathways of the firmament above. Such as it
was in the beginning, such is it now, and such will it
continue to be to the end of time, without accession of
force, change of direction, or difference of phenomena.
Let us now cross over into the circle of humanity, and
notice the development of the same central principle of
society, working through the concentric series of its
associations, first, as a prime necessity and law of human
nature; then as a motive of political economy; then
as a sentiment or sympathy of the heart of man.
First,
we see it in the oldest and most sacred association formed
on earth-the Family Circle. Within this primal sphere
of its action, it lived, and moved, and had its being, in the
Associations of the Day.
39
perennial outflow of parental and filial affections, long
before the first political organization was called into
existence. Here it acted as a necessity, as a law
inwrought in the moral structure of human nature itself.
Slowly and feebly it radiated outward beyond the circum-
ference of the individual home, and associated families in
little communities, chiefly to regulate the conditions on
which they should own and occupy certain districts of
country, and defend them against foreign aggression.
Here we have the social principle acting as a motive of
political economy. Through all the centuries that pre-
ceded the Deluge, its movement was comparatively weak
and slow. If individuals were long-lived giants in those
days, States were pigmies. There was no antediluvian
nation. Up to the day that Noah entered the ark, the
earth was evidently peopled only with small hostile
tribes or clans, as fiercely bent on each other's extermi-
nation as were those of ancient Scotland. It was doubt-
less several centuries after the Flood that the social
principle, acting as a political motive, first produced
what might be called a nation. To this extent, no
further, did it go for four thousand years or more.
Associations of sentiment and sympathy were•unknown
to the palmiest days of Grecian and Roman civilization.
The ages of Pericles and Augustus shine through the
centuries to us, brilliant with the glory of their sculpture,
rhetoric, and belles-lettres; but Demosthenes never pre-
sided at the anniversary of a benevolent society, nor
Cicero at a public meeting convened in behalf of some
depressed class of the Roman people. The family, the
school, the Church and State, were the only permanent
40
The Benevolent
forms of social organization for full seventeen centuries
after the birth of the Christian era. At what precise
period the social principle passed beyond these con-
centric circles of its action, and produced the first
philanthropic society, it would be difficult to ascertain.
When in London, in 1855, I had the curiosity to count
up the benevolent societies that held their anniversaries
within a fortnight's space in that metropolis, and found
they numbered about ninety, and not more than half-a-
dozen of these were fifty years old. These were national
associations. If we add those of the provincial towns
and villages of the same character, what a host of
organizations, representing, filling, and conducting all the
minute ramifications of philanthropy! The same is true
of America to a still larger degree. If the census of all
our religious, educational, and benevolent associations
were taken this month, I doubt if half-a-dozen of them
would be found over twenty-five years old.
If, then, the enamoured students of Greek and
Roman lore are disposed to ask what has the boasted
civilization of this age to show as proof of superior
progress compared with preceding periods of human
history, let England and America point to their bene-
volent associations, and say, what the sublime memorial
of Sir Christopher Wren says in St. Paul's: "If you
would seek a monument, look around you."
They are more than a monument; a thousand times
more than mere way-marks of civilization in these latter
days. They are a living power among men, chosen and
worked by Omnipotence to the mightiest issues. The
Divine mind and hand may be seen most clearly, shaping
Associations of the Day.
4I
them to their present development, and to that stupen-
dous expansion which they must reach cre the sun of this
century sets behind the dead years of the past. They
are full of a philosophy few have studied as it deserves.
We are told that the light of some distant stars is forty
centuries and more in reaching our eyes. So the social
principle has been as long in travelling through the
generations to this way-point of its progress.
The thinnest segment of a fruit-tree reveals to the
microscope the buds, leaves, blossoms, and fruit in their
undeveloped perfection. We have all heard of the con-
tury-plant; some of us have seen its flower. Only once
in a hundred years it puts forth its white blossom. The
human heart is an older plant. It has been six thousand
years in putting forth the blossoms of these beautiful and
variegated associations, which are dropping such healing
leaves and fruits for the nations. In Adam, as he went
out childless from the garden with the wife God gave
him, there was pulsating a social nature endowed with
the latent attributes, sympathies, and sensibilities which
constitute the web and woof of these social organizations.
In Noah, as he left the ark, and presided over the whole
human race grouped around his family board, that social
nature had progressed more than a thousand years to-
wards the development we now see and admire. For
centuries after Noah's day, the largest expression of the
social sentiment was the clan-feeling, or that peculiar
attachment that grouped into tribes the descendants of
certain representative fathers of mankind. The highest
form of this clan-feeling ever attained was by the twelve
tribes of Israel, who lived in fraternal relationships, and
42
The Benevolent
formed one great federated people for centuries. The
clans of ancient Scotland, and the tribes of heathen coun-
tries in both hemispheres, present lower types of this
social sentiment. But, through all the races and genera-
tions that preceded the Christian era, it seemed a funda-
mental and common law written upon the heart of man.
to hate all outside the circumference of his own tribe or
nation. The leading languages of the era are full of
terms expressing this feeling of jealousy and enmity
towards all outsiders. In Latin, even, the same word
was used to designate an outside man as an enemy.
The
word alien means literally nothing more nor less than
other, or a man or people other than one's self or nation.
Retaining this significance, to alienate means literally to
make a friend or neighbour other than yourself in senti-
ment or interest. Thus, for several thousand years, the
various tribes and nations of the world isolated them-
selves one from the other. Caste feeling and religious.
antipathies strengthened other forms and forces of mutual
repugnance. Up to the evening anthem of the angels,
singing over the plains of Palestine that new song of
love and human brotherhood, "Peace on earth, good-will
to men," all the earth's peoples were pagan, except one
small, subjugated population; and they had no society
nor sympathy with the rest of mankind, but shut them-
selves up against all outside companionship with the
most rigorous seclusion. The weak and stinted life of
charity breathed and moved in a nutshell. There was
no benevolence that radiated outward beyond self, or
one's kindred, clan, or nation. There was a species of
barbarous and heartless courtesy between monarchs and
Associations of the Day.
43.
minor potentates, who occasionally exchanged presents
of even value, and visits of equal ostentation. Intel-
lectual pursuits and affinities brought together philoso-
phers and their pupils in the great capitals of learning,
such as Thebes, Athens, and Rome. There were ships
of different flags that sailed to Tarshish, Tyre, and other
ancient ports. Nomadic traders of different nationalities
made long journeys by land to the chief marts of the
world. But there was no heart-warmth in the movement
of these social elements of self-interest. No sentiment
of philanthropy pulsated in this stinted intercourse; no
flow of sympathy or fraternal interest softened this rigid
isolation of the peoples. Their knowledge of each other's
condition was dim and uncertain, and acquired inci-
dentally through indirect mediums of communication.
Despotism was virtually at a dead level over all the
earth, and there was nothing in the political condition of
one people to excite emulation or envy among the masses
of a neighbouring nation. Alienation, in its thousand
forms of repugnance, was the universal rule. Heaven
and earth, time and eternity, were seemingly alien to
each other; and a starless night of darkness and doubt
obscured the immortal existence and destinies of the
human soul.
This darkness was deepest just before the break of
day. A sun arose with light and healing on his wings.
Before his rising rays the mysteries of life and immortality
were brought to light. The Saviour of mankind bridged
with His cross the chasm of alienation between the two
worlds of guilt and glory,-between God and man, time
and eternity. Up to the great moment of His advent
44
The Benevolent
all the motives that affected the conduct or moved the
heart and hopes of man were bounded by the limits of
his temporal existence. His soul found no anchorage in
the great hereafter; no fact nor condition to which it
might attach its cager and sleepless longings, and steady
the throbbing pulses of its immortality. With the ex-
ception of a few divinely-illumined men scattered through
the ages, human nature had been left to its own impulses.
No regenerating life-element had been breathed into it
from without to increate new dispositions and capacities
of elevated sentiment and action. The religions even of
Greece and Rome did not rise above the level of human
nature's lowest moralities. The very gods of their wor-
ship and adoration were not only of like passions and
lusts with common men, but often surpassed the most
reprobate of human villains in acts of impurity and
injustice.
In the bow of Christian faith that now diademed the
darkness, a new principle and power were revealed to the
benighted world. From the apex of Calvary that iris of
hope and salvation bent outward either way, encircling
all the alienated families and all the future ages of man-
kind with that great central glory of its brightness and
blessing, the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of
At first, no living man was gifted with the vision
to see the stupendous dimensions of that truth. Even
that favoured disciple who lived nearest and leaned
closest to the bosom of his Master, could grasp at first
but a small segment of that bow. Peter, the very van-
leader of the great apostleship, had a shorter vision still
of its compass.
Like a boy who thinks he can count the
men.
Associations of the Day.
45
fields lying within the span of a summer rainbow, so that
ardent apostle measured the span of the great revelation
by the same standard. He almost contended with his
Lord in the vision that the bow of Divine mercy and sal-
vation should only encircle Judea, and that all outside bar-
barians should be excluded from its promise. Three times
the vision of four-footed beasts let down from heaven had to
be repeated before he could be made to see and feel that
the Christian religion was to level all the partition-walls
between Jew and Gentile, bond and free, and place them
all on the same footing in regard to the even value of
human souls, and the precious possibilities of immorta-
lity. Paul himself needed the overwhelming manifes-
tation that smote him to the earth, and the voice and the
power that melted him to a child's meekness, not only to
convert him to the Christian faith, but to make him
willing to preach it to outside peoples,-to aliens from
the commonwealth of Israel.
A new and mighty force was now imparted to the
social principle. For the first time in the history of
humanity it crossed the icy boundaries of clan-feeling
and national antipathy, and melted them in its passage
and its power. The new affinities, hopes, and destinies,
inspired and revealed by the Christian faith, united
estranged thousands of different lands and languages, and
formed them into brotherhoods of most intimate com-
munion. The social principle, acting under a Divine
impulse and guidance, crossed the boundary of time, and
swept the range of eternity for new forces of attraction
wherewith to draw together more closely the preparatory
companionships of the earth. The grand and glowing
46
The Benevolent
apocalypse to John of Patmos revealed the rapturous
and everlasting fellowships of the spirit-world in com-
munions so pure and lofty, in such anthems of quiring
cherubim, in such choral songs of countless millions
raised from the tribulations of time, in such forms and
fulness of social happiness, as Paul's inspired tongue
dared not essay to describe. All these splendid and
thrilling realities of another existence, which the new
faith made accessible to men of every tribe and tongue,
colour and condition,—all these new motive forces of
sympathy superadded, applied to the inherent social senti-
ment of human nature, melted down caste feeling and clan
prejudice, uniting kindred minds of different races in
the happiest fellowships, and producing, for the very first
time in the history of mankind, a disinterested bene-
volence, as a mighty, ever-working, ever-expanding
power among men. In less than ten years after Peter
was rebuked by his fellow-disciples for sitting down to
the table of a converted Roman captain, the Christian
Church had gathered into its scattered folds men of
nearly all the races then known to the world. The
Jewish Christians, who at first thought it a sin to eat
bread with a Gentile proselyte, were fed in their need by
contributions from the young Churches of Greece, sent
with hearty and brotherly sympathy by the hands of
Paul.
Thus, that disinterested benevolence, that good-will
to men which knows no caste, nor colour, nor condition,
that works by love, and walks by faith, that has
breathed into being every institution, every association,
and every enterprise of pure philanthropy, is the emana-
Associations of the Day.
47
tion and effluence of the Christian religion. It has
worked its way through the centuries in a thousand self-
multiplying forms of human kindness, creating everywhere
new social forces and sympathies. The little Churches
that radiated slowly outward from Jerusalem in every
direction, reaching onward, further and further, among
peoples of different race and language, were each the
centre of social as well as religious influence. They
were connected by a bond of unity that never before
existed between human communities. They constituted
societies which had no parallel nor resemblance in any
pre-existing organizations, religious or political. None
ever formed were in such free and frequent communica-
tion. The apostles who planted them, and those who
succeeded in the ministry, visited these little Christian
commonwealths from time to time, inspiring them with a
livelier sentiment of their oneness in faith and hope, and
creating new friendships, sympathies, and charities. The
fiery and bloody persecutions they endured, when their
influence began to sap the cruel systems of pagauism, only
gave new strength to this social feeling. The blood of
the martyrs not only became the seed of the Church, but
the cement of intense sympathy between communities scat-
tered over the known world. In the long wrestle with
Christianity, Grecian and Roman paganism came to the
ground. The process was long and slow, but sure. The
old gods of heathen mythology were dethroned one by
one; the superstitions and sacrifices of idolatry were
gradually replaced by the simple and spiritual forms of
Christian worship. The symbol of the Cross, which once
was hardly allowed to designate a little upper-room conver-
48
The Benevolent
ticle, now floated in triumph from the capitol of a mighty
empire, and was borne aloft at the head of victorious
legions as the ensign of conquest. Christianity, like
Samson in the temple of the Philistines, pulled down
upon itself a vast and almost stifling avalanche of hea-
then populations and structures. It took a thousand
years and more to permeate the incumbent mass, to
emasculate its pagan elements, and remould it even to the
outward form of Christian faith. But, through all these
twilight ages, the socializing forces generated by that
faith operated in a constantly widening range of action.
They brought governments and peoples into the new
affinities and alliances of a common religion. The whole
Christian world was moved as the heart of one man in
the Crusades. Latin and Teuton, Icelander and Po-
lander, Celt and Saxon, marched shoulder to shoulder to
the holy wars. This companionship of nations, in the
most extraordinary alliance and enterprise known to
their history, worked out for them a new social and
political condition. New elements of civilization were
infused into their public life and institutions. Their
forms of government became gradually assimilated.
Feudalism yielded to the pressure of civil necessities.
The rights and values of the individual man came slowly
to recognition, and the people to a larger participation in
framing the laws they obeyed.
All these changes strengthened the fellow-feeling be-
tween the peoples they affected. They learned to interest
themselves in each other's progress and well-being. The
acquisition and intercommunication of intelligence be-
came a public and pressing necessity. That necessity
Associations of the Day.
49
was the mother of an invention which has blessed the
world beyond the measurement of language itself. The
Printing-Press was brought out, and was wheeled into
the van of all human discoveries to lead and multiply
the forces of science and civilization, to make ubiquitous
and immortal the thinking minds of all ages, and fill
the world with the atmosphere of living and working
thoughts. Some persons have ventured to liken a cer-
tain potentate or policy to a "second Providence."
Considering its mighty capacity of affecting the moral
and political condition of mankind, the printing-press
was only second to the advent of Christianity to the
world. The enginery it brought to bear against the
strongholds of ignorance, superstition, sin, and despotism
was more nearly like the working instrumentalities of
Omnipotence than anything ever before given to human
hands. I say it with reverence :—its rude wooden types,
like the fingers of God on Sinai, reduplicated the tables
of His law by millions, and the grace-breathing sermon
of His Son on the other mount like autumn leaves
among the people. Where they fell, they carried the
germinal principles of civil and religious liberty. They
worked like a new life in the institutions of Christen-
dom. All the cloistered science and knowledge locked
up in manuscript libraries was brought out, and put
almost in atmospheric circulation among the masses.
The literature of the Bible, of Greece and Rome, and of
the middle ages, was brought within the reach of common
men; and a kind of social intercourse was established
between them and the great thinkers and actors of the
world's history. Family and fireside reading made mil-
F
50
The Benevolent
lions of humble homes new centres of knowledge as well
as social enjoyment.
All these new instrumentalities quickened and ex-
panded the social sentiment to a new range of interest
and action. And now the discovery of a new world,
with its strange populations and productions, was brought
before the nations of Christendom to thrill them with
the startling experiences of Columbus, Cortes, Cabot, and
De Soto, to entertain them with the novelties and
romances of the new hemisphere,—with the history of its
colonization, the daring and dangers of the first settlers,
the growth of towns, and the upbuilding of various struc-
tures of civil society. On the other hand, the home
feeling of the colonists, whether English, French, or
Spanish, their correspondence with their fatherlands,
and all the enterprises and changes in which they were
mutually interested,—all this widened and warmed the
social sympathies of sea-divided peoples, and brought
distant lands and populations within the range of daily
thought and personal interest.
The Newspaper was the inevitable necessity and result
of all these new forces of intelligence and international
sympathy. The advent of the newspaper made and
marked a new era in the public life of Christendom. It
quickened the pulse of society, and vitalized its social
elements with new animation and activity. Brief and
few were the weekly records of its scant and narrow
columns; but they were read with eagerness and delight.
As its pages lengthened and widened with the news of
the world, the public mind expanded in the same propor-
tion, and expected to hear from every accessible nation at
weekly intervals.
Associations of the Day.
51
All these new and vigorous movements culminated in
successful struggles for popular rights and religious
liberty. The systems that had suppressed both were
shaken down from their power in the contest. He who
fashioned alike the hearts of individual men made the
hearts of peoples to beat with kindred sympathies.
Moved by this fellow-feeling, the masses of one country
were stirred to the liveliest emotion by popular move-
ments in another. This interest in events affecting each
other ultimately assumed an organized form. Armed
sympathisers, or volunteers, as they were called, from
different nations, rallied to the revolutionary standard
of an oppressed people, uprising to dethrone a despotism
that enslaved them. England, the capital and focus of
these popular sympathies with what have been called
"oppressed nationalities," became at once the asylum of
fugitives from European tyranny, and the recruiting-
ground for men and means to carry on the warfare with
the iron-heeled dynasties of the Continent. Permanent
and powerful societies were organized under the names
of "Friends of Poland,"
""Friends of Greece,” “Friends
of Hungary," "Friends of Italy," and the like. English
statesmen, writers, officers, and soldiers, men of every rank
and condition, gave their emphatic and vigorous adhesion
to the popular cause in those countries, and some of them
died sword in hand fighting its battles. The American
Republic was not one whit behind England in sympathy
with these struggles for liberty, especially in Greece,
Poland, Hungary, and Italy, although the field of action
was too distant for such active participation in it.
The advent of steam and electricity gave tenfold
E 2
52
The Benevolent
energy and action to the social sentiment and intercourse
of nations. To use a hackneyed, but truthful phrase,
they "annihilated time and space," and, as it were, domes-
ticated foreign events. They brought all the countries.
of a continent within whispering distance of each other,
so that a startling occurrence at one extremity thrilled
the other almost simultaneously and equally. This near-
ness of every point in Christendom to the great transac-
tions of the present day gives them fourfold effect upon
the heart of nations. For instance, how the almost daily
news from Italy lately thrilled the millions of this
American continent with the most intense interest in
the cause and conflict of that country, just as if they
could put their fingers to the pulse of that young na-
tion's life, and tell off the beats of its political aspirations.
In America we were twelve days distant from the scene
of these events in Europe, when, in a single hour, we
were brought within twelve minutes of their occurrence.
Suddenly a whisper of intelligence ran at lightning speed
through the Atlantic. Far down along the ocean's bed,
beneath the roar and roll of its billows, it sped its way
to our shores, and was flashed through thirty States and
provinces on the net-work of our electric wires. That
lightning-lipped whisper touched the tongues of ten thou-
sand church-bells from sea to lake and from river to
mountain. From ten thousand belfries they poured
upon the air of heaven a glad response to the greetings of
England's Queen, "Peace on earth, good-will to men!"
But while the bells of the Continent were ringing out
their glad acclaim at the nuptials of the two worlds, that
subtle line was severed: the still depths of the blue sea
Associations of the Day.
53
The
felt no longer the pulse of the passing whisper. But
now it comes again. Again they feel the lightning-thrill
of human thought flashing from shore to shore.
submarine telegraph shall tie in faster noose the nuptial
knot between the two hemispheres. The old Atlantic,
that has interwebbed them with the warp-and-woof
cords of commerce, shall make the electric wire their
wedding-ring, and fold them side by side so close that
one shall feel the heart-beats of the other. Then indeed
shall the throb of new affinities run through the hearts
of nations, and they shall warm to quicker beats of
sympathy with the great sentiments and interests of
human brotherhood.
+
We have noticed the socializing tendencies of political
events and scientific achievements. But events divested of
all political significance have touched the hearts of nations
to finer emotions of their common humanity. The earth-
quake that engulfed Lisbon thrilled the civilized world
with a fellow feeling in the great catastrophe, and, like
Moses' rod at Horeb, smote the rock-ribbed boundaries
of jealous nations, and set them running with rivulets.
of benevolence towards the suffering city. The fire at
Hamburgh lit up many a distant league of land and sea
with its midnight glare, but it kindled an illumination
that compassed continents and crowned them with an
aurora of large-hearted sympathy and kindness towards
the houseless thousands of that desolated German town.
The Irish famine was grievous to the millions it pinched
almost to starvation, but it moved the populations of
Christendom to such a feeling of oneness in the great
experiences of humanity as no event of modern times
54
The Benevolent
had ever produced before. Then came the Great Exhi-
bition of 1851, when all the arts and industries of
the world fraternised in London, and joined hand in
hand to spread and equalize their benefits among the
nations far and near. Next we have an experience of
individual daring and suffering that warms and unites.
the Governments and peoples in both hemispheres with a
common sentiment. The heroic Franklin and his daunt-
less band of braves push their frosty prows between the
icebergs of the Polar Sea, to explore the mysteries it
has locked from human knowledge through all earth's
ages. The grim and giant ice-kings seemingly make
way, and allow the bold adventurer to penetrate into
the arcana of their realm. Then they close in upon him
with mountain bars of eternal winter, and shut him up
to a trackless fate. "To the rescue! to the rescue!" runs
the appeal across continents. Expeditions from different
countries, and men of different tongue and race, volunteer
to scale the barriers and bastions of the frozen sea, to
pluck, living or dead, the incarcerated captives from its
castles of ice. English, American, French, Dane, and
Russian join with a common sentiment in the search.
A noble woman, worthy the imprisoned hero, sends out
of her wife's heart words of such moving eloquence as
only stirred the lips of Peter the Hermit when muster-
ing the hosts of Europe to the rescue of the Holy
Sepulchre. Her appeal makes new heroes in this Holy
War of humanity against the North Pole's despotism
and darkness. Their adventures are read in all lands
and languages of Christendom, producing everywhere one
and the same feeling of interest and sympathy.
Associations of the Day.
55
Then comes another event of entirely different ele-
ments of interest, yet working beyond any antecedent
occurrence to unite the hearts of kindred millions scat-
tered over the earth's surface. During the summer
months of a recent year, two gentle-voiced, mild-eyed boys,
the sons of England's world-honoured Queen, go forth
to bear her greeting, to wear her face, and be her voice
to the subjects of her sceptre on two distant continents.
Human characters have their orbits as well as stars.
They project an illumination or shadow over certain
spaces around them. The pure and womanly virtues of
Queen Victoria put out a mild reflection that not only
reaches the extremest corner of that dominion on which
the sun never sets, but also pervades regions lying out-
side of her rule. The faces of her two young sons beamed
with that reflection simultaneously on two distant con-
tinents. Millions saw in them the features of a Queen
and a mother they revered. The young prince who
visited this hemisphere received first, as was his due,
the affectionate homage of his future subjects in America.
He then put off the prince in name, and crossed over to a
kindred nation, wearing a humbler title. That nation
arose with its millions and looked into his face. They
saw in it a higher and purer image and superscription
than Caesar's at the summit of that Roman's glory. They
did not look for the lineaments of kingly power, but
for the mild features of that royal mother whose name
and character are known and honoured from ocean to
ocean. In the touch of his little hand they felt hers,
and in their own the quickened pulses of the grand
histories and affinities of a common race. As he stood
56
The Benevolent
uncovered in pensive reverence at the tomb of Washing-
ton, the last unpleasant memory between the two grand
empires of that race seemed then and there to be buried
for ever, and the two rivers of their destiny to flow into
each other in one harmonious course.
These and the like of these incidents and events
quicken, multiply, and strengthen the social bonds of
nations. Then to every new silken thread of social
sentiment commerce adds one of material interest to
double the web of their connection. The last few years
have witnessed a new and wonderful interlinking of
nations by a process quite outside and beyond the pro-
vince of common trade. When the net-work of English
always, canals, and telegraphs had been completed, and
there was no more field in that country for large invest-
ments in public works, its capitalists, trusting to those
principles which make honesty the best policy, and
financial honour the common law of civilized communi-
ties, invested their wealth in the material well-being
of other nations. Through all the political antagonisms
and suspicions that have been aroused in England to-
wards some of those countries, this confidence in their
financial integrity has never waned in the minds of
British capitalists. The millions of money they have
invested in French, American, Continental, and Colonial
railways is at this moment almost beyond computation.
All the current value and income of this vast amount
depend upon the business prosperity of the countries in
which it is employed. Thus the actual well-being of
those countries, the successful and growing development
of their resources, become to the monied men of Englaud,
Associations of the Day.
57
and indirectly to its whole population, nearly of the same
importance as the prosperous trade and agriculture of the
United Kingdom itself.
We have now traced the growth of the social sentiment
through some of its principal sources and ramifications.
But a few minutes remain for considering those peculiar
forms of operation which it virtually began to assume
about the beginning of the present century. For, as we
have already noticed, there are hardly a dozen different
benevolent associations in Christendom sixty years old.
The first charitable society, founded on the Christian
principle of disinterested benevolence, was incorporated
in the structure of the first Christian Church. On the
very eve of the Pentecost, even when the disciples of
the new faith were so united in heart and interest as to
have all things in common, the old leaven of Jewish
exclusiveness still worked perceptibly against the Gentile
converts. It went against the grain of Abraham's
children to admit alien born proselytes to the same posi-
tion with themselves. Thus, says the Scripture account,
“There arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the
Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the
daily ministration." This circumstance led to the first
charitable organization on record. The twelve apostles
immediately convened a public meeting; and, at their
direction, an executive committee of seven men Was
appointed to take charge of the charities of the Church,
and distribute them fairly among its needy members,
Greek and Jew, bond and free. Through all the dark
and middle ages, a standing committee or deaconry for
the dispensation of its charities was a part of the organi-
58
The Benevolent
zation of the Church. As Christianity emerged from
the lumbering ruins of paganism, in which it had been
entangled for a thousand years, it put forth other blos-
soms of its vitality, in the form of new organizations,
all ensouled with the same spirit of good-will to men. Up
to within reach of the memory of living men, all the bene-
volent associations in Christendom were founded to alle-
viate the poverty and physical sufferings of the friendless
and helpless; to establish hospitals, collect and distribute
aid to the destitute, and for like offices of home charity.
These primary and preparatory institutions were not
only indispensable for the immediate objects of their
organization, but equally necessary to foster, train, and
educate the benevolent spirit in the heart of the com-
munity, and set it running in other directions of good-will
and good works to men. Herein are the Philosophy
and Power of these associations. Herein lie their chief
strength and value. They train the faculties of human
sympathy for action in a thousand different forms. They
organize Christian benevolence into a thousand working
instrumentalities, and virtually generate for each its own
supply of vital vigour. Thus one set of faculties or sym-
pathies was stimulated into exercise and growth by the
associated efforts of a few kind-hearted individuals to
alleviate some particular form of suffering in the commu-
nity. The benevolence thus educed and apprenticed to
action grew by that on which it fed. It took new thews
of vigour, and warmed its life of love to new activity,
from the very process of continuous exercise.
single, small-winged bird, flying over hill and dale, often
drops the seeds of trees of ample shade and delicious
As a
Associations of the Day.
59
fruitage, so the first benevolent association, on its out-
ward flight of good-will to man, dropped the germs of
kindred societies. Little by little, the spirit of philan-
thropy, thus trained in the meek and unopposed minis-
trations of home charity, was strengthened for bolder
action. Conscience allied its dictates to the impulses of
the heart. Men, moved by both these moral forces,
began to see that there were civil wrongs to be righted,
as well as guiltless suffering to be alleviated. Then
Philanthropy, which had been somewhat praised and
popular for its meek walks of mercy among the sick and
poor, took the rod of Moses, and stood before some
grim Pharaoh of oppression, and said, in Moses' voice,
"Let this people go !”
For more than a hundred years after the first settle-
ment of this continent, the human conscience, in both
hemispheres, winked at the wickedness of the slave-trade.
The despotism of self-interest seemed to wield its iron
sceptre over the system unrebuked, and to sear or silence
every humane sensibility in regard to its iniquities. It
silenced, but did not totally extinguish it. In here and
there a conscience there was secret misgiving. In here
and there a heart there beat a fellow-feeling for the slave.
A signal fire alone was needed to rally hundreds to any
standard raised against the oppression. That standard
was lifted by a female hand, which, from the time it
washed the thorn-prints from the brow of the crucified
Saviour, has ever been first and foremost in ministrations
of mercy to the children of suffering and sorrow.
retired town in England there lived a modest and retiring
woman, whose kindly sympathies had been well trained
In a
60
The Benevolent
for action by preparatory discipline in benevolence.
had thought of the poor and suffering around her. That
was her first duty and impulse. She raised her eyes to
sweep a larger horizon; and the slave with his wrongs
came within the disc of her vision. He came frequently;
came at last morning, noon, and night, and she heard the
clanking of his fetters in her dreams. Secmingly, it was
a venture of hopeless hazard for a single-handed woman
to plead his rights against the great governments and
peoples combined to enslave him. Whose voice would
join her's against a system entrenched behind a hundred
breast-works of self-interest and custom ? She knew
not; no one could tell her. But she made the venture.
What the spirit said in her heart she wrote. Thoughts
came to her, like a revelation, at midnight; and at mid-
night she arose and penned them down, lest they should
be lost behind intervening dreams. Her little pamphlet
went forth in the irresistible power and truth of those
inbreathed thoughts; and hundreds said to their indivi-
dual selves and to others, "That is all true; those are
my sentiments; I have long thought the same." They
said the truth. Hundreds and thousands were waiting
for some one who should have the courage to express their
thoughts, without involving themselves in the responsi-
bility of their utterance. They now gathered courage
and strength to own them, and to array them against the
system of slavery. They formed themselves into a per-
manent society, not only for continuous and united
effort, but for that continuous and united faith and hope
on which depends the success of every great undertaking,
and which such associations are indispensable to produce.
Associations of the Day.
61
Soon statesmen of great ability and influence espoused
the cause, and on a certain first of August, some thirty
years ago, every slave in the British dominions was un-
fettered from his bondage, and sang his first song of
deliverance and freedom.
This was virtually the first instance and triumph of
associated effort in righting a great civil and social wrong.
The success, the machinery, and modus operandi of this
unprecedented enterprise of philanthropy supplied the
working capital of scores of new associations. " Union
is strength" became the preliminary sentiment, as well
as the ultimate fact, among benevolent men. In the first
place, thousands had been awakened, by these long anti-
slavery discussions, to new sensibilities of the heart and
conscience in regard to their relationships and duties to
the suffering, benighted, and oppressed at home and
abroad. Then they acquired an almost certain assurance
of success, as the ultimate result of associated effort, pro-
vided they had truth and right on their side. Then the
process and machinery for moving the public mind were
rendered familiar to them. Thus they entered upon the
organization and action of a society with a stock of faith
and faculties as well defined and as well adapted to
success as the working capital of commercial houses.
Immediately after the final and glorious triumph of the
Anti-Slavery Society in Great Britain, associations of
every species of benevolence sprang into existence and
multiplied rapidly. Even the rights and wants of the
brute creation were not overlooked. A powerful society
was formed, and is now in vigorous operation, for the
"Prevention of Cruelty to Animals." Some humane
62
The Benevolent
heart had been touched to earnest utterance at the
atrocities perpetrated daily by the drovers of Smithfield.
That utterance found an echo here, there, and almost
everywhere. An association was formed to develop and
organize this sentiment against the brutal cruelties in-
flicted upon domestic animals that could give no speech
to their sufferings. Almost simultaneously with this,
"The Aborigines' Protection Society" was formed, to
look after the well-being of North American Indians,
African Hottentots, and all the differently-coloured and
differently-tongued races within the British rule.
Thus, one may justly reply to Dickens's satire on
Mrs. Jellaby's benevolence, that, if there was much
telescopic philanthropy developed by these associations,
there was an equal amount of microscopic good-will to
man and beast set in action by them.
At the very
moment that he was delineating the character of that
diffusive lady, and satirising through her the propensity
to search out objects of charity on distant continents,
thousands of English men and women were searching, as
with lighted candles, the very sewers of poverty, igno-
rance, and sin at home, bringing up their hungry and
degraded tenants to the light and life of Christian com-
panionship, establishing ragged schools, coal and blanket
societies, soup kitchens, cheap lodging houses, social
industries, and other institutions, for the uplifting of the
most reprobate and forsaken victims of ignorance and
vice. It is a truth founded on the divinest authority,
that the poor we have always with us, and shall doubt-
less have them to the end of time, not so much for
their good as for ours. It seems to be the ordering of
Associations of the Day.
63
Providence that certain conditions of misfortune shall
be perpetual in human society for the culture and exer-
cise of a benevolent spirit among men.
Were it not for
these conditions, and the sensibilities, institutions, and
efforts they stimulate and produce, this world of ours
would be a wide and arid waste of selfishness, unmoistened
by a dew-drop, unrelieved by a spring floweret of human
charity. Thus, most of the Benevolent Associations of
the present day are designed to co-exist with all coming
time. They are organized to work a daily and yearly
amount of good, without expecting ever to outlive the
necessity of continued exertion, because the poor, the
suffering, and sorrowing we are to have with us to the
end of earth's history. Thus, no grand and final triumph
is to stimulate and reward these societies. They walk
and work by faith, in the steady and continuous overflow
of a philanthropy which is not bribed into action by the
premium of some crowning victory. But occasionally
some temporary association takes in hand a work it can
fully accomplish, sing a pean of triumph, then disband
in a blaze of glory.
As the most powerful and illustrious of these temporary
societies, we way cite the Anti-Corn Law League in
England. The whole of Christendom is familiar with
the fact and feat accomplished by that association. But
few, perhaps, remember the incipient incidents of its
organization. About half a dozen individuals, mostly
young men, and unknown to the public, met in a little
upper room in Manchester, and, assuming the name of
Sundry Citizens" of that town, passed formal and
solemn resolutions against the Corn Laws, which were
(C
<
64
The Benevolent
then upheld by the whole aristocracy, the great agricul-
tural interest, and by the hereditary policy of the British
Government. To all human seeming, the still small
voice of those upper-room resolutions was as the breath
of a child essaying to check the influx of the ocean's
tide. But those young men were strong in the faith that
right and truth must prevail in the end. They each
contributed a half-crown to pay for the insertion of their
resolutions in the London Times, which would only admit
them as an advertisement. The next day the whole
reading community of the kingdom saw what "Sundry
Citizens of Manchester" thought and intended in regard
to the Corn Laws. Soon afterwards another meeting
was held, and another resolution was voted and signed on
that little baize-covered table, announcing the organiza-
tion of a society to rescue the bread of the poor from the
tax that put it almost beyond their reach. Another
guinca was to be raised to pay for its admission into the
Jupiter Tonans of the British press. One of the first six
in the movement related to me several interesting incidents
connected with that second meeting,-how, having contri-
buted all they could spare from their own small means,
they were constrained to go out the same night to solicit,
from those most likely to favour the cause, a few shillings
towards the guinea for the London Times. This second
pronunciamento from "Sundry Citizens of Manchester "
convinced hundreds, far and near, that a bold and honest
standard had been raised against the time-honoured tax
on bread. Men of substance rallied to that standard by
scores at first, and hundreds afterwards. The little upper-
room organization expanded from month to month, until
Associations of the Day.
65
it assumed dimensions, put forth efforts, and won
victory unparalleled in the history of political economy.
The experience of the British Anti-Slavery Society,
and of the Anti-Corn Law League, was worth more to the
moral world than even the extinction of slavery, and the
abolition of the Corn Laws. It threw down in the
people's mind the whole ideal fabric of brute-force move-
ments for righting political, social, or economical wrongs.
It proved the irresistible power, and the ultimate triumph,
of an enlightened public sentiment, brought to bear
against an evil in the continuous, concentrated efforts
of a well-organized Association. It gave tangible and
vivid reality to the old axiom: "Truth is mighty
and will prevail "-prevail against the strongest pa-
noply of error and wrong, without shedding a single
drop of human blood, or committing a single act of
violence. It is this popular faith in the power of truth
and right, in the motive forces of moral suasion, that has
raised the people of England, head and shoulders, above
all the other nations in Europe, in the prerogatives of
civil freedom, and the dignity of political being. Thus,
not only have these Associations set running a thousand
streams of benevolence for the alleviation of all forms of
suffering and want, but they have raised the whole
nation to a new status of political life. They have taught
the common people to trample upon the very idea of the
bayonet and barricade, on which Continental popu-
lations have so often immolated themselves in vain.
They have inspired the toiling masses of Britain with
the belief that every right and privilege due to them may
be and will be obtained for them through those moral
F
66
The Benevolent
influences now operating on the mind of the nation in
their behalf.
Viewed in this light, we see that the collateral or inci-
dental results of these Societies are almost as important
as the attainment of the direct objects of their organi-
zation. They are the great distinctive institutions of
our English-speaking race in both hemispheres. They
are mightier far than the strongest governments in the
world for the moral well-being of mankind. They pene-
trate with their powerful but peaceful agencies lands
that governments cannot enter with their armies and
navies. What are the conquests that fired the ambition
of Alexander, Cæsar, or Bonaparte, compared with the
aims and achievements of some of these quiet Associations?
What conqueror, of the Napoleon stamp, would essay to
lift the pall of paganism from half earth's millions? Just
fifty years ago, two young students in a New England
college went out by night into a meadow, and, kneeling
beside the new-made hay, prayed for faith, strength, and
wisdom to put their feeble hands to this stupendous under-
taking. One by one others joined them. Their midnight
communing in the fields was transferred to the conference
room. In a few months a Society was formed, and the
first couple of missionaries sent to heathen lands from
America. That little Society grew year by year, until
it is now the most extensive organization on this con-
tinent. Almost simultaneously, a similar movement
took place in Great Britain, and expanded to a still
larger compass of power and operation. These two great
Missionary Societies are now moving hand in hand
around the globe, raising the beacon lights of immortality
Associations of the Day.
67
among its most benighted populations, revealing to them
the vital verities and beatitudes of the Christian faith,
as it were, by the light of their own burning idols. Look
abroad over Christendom. See how every stronghold
of iniquity, ignorance, and error is besieged by some
Association mining its foundations and sapping its bul-
warks! See how the grim Moloch of War is bearded
at the bloodiest altar of its human immolations by a
Society, lifting up the remonstrance of God and nature
against the abitrament of the sword. See what a stand-
ing army of Temperance Societies, on both sides of the
Atlantic, is engaged in close action to rescue millions
from the bondage of their own appetites. Look at the
Anti-Slavery Societies, and their long struggle to break
the manacles of the enslaved African, and to raise him
from the degradation of his chattelhood to the full stature
of a free man.
Such is the meaning and such are the mission and
power of the Benevolent Associations of our day. They
are the flowering and fruitage of the social principle
working through all the centuries from Adam. They are
the instrumentalities chosen from the beginning to come
into action in these latter days, and work out the great
distinctive interests of humanity. As such let us all hail
and support them with the best homage of our sympathy.
Let us regard even the least of them as a link of that
mighty chain of agencies by which all the culminating
realities predicted by the holy seers of old shall be
reached by future generations of our race.
F 2

LECTURE
ON
100
The Higher Law and Mission of Commerce.
IN
N venturing to submit a few thoughts on the subject
announced for your consideration, I do not propose
to enter upon that department of it which contains the
ledger and the iron safe. I will not hazard any crude
remarks, which I could only make, upon the science of
double or single entry, or of limited partnerships, or of
exchanges, foreign or domestic, or of securities, slippery
or solid. Nor could I approach the science of cent. per
cent., or of trade profits, with one iota of personal ex-
perience to commend my observations to your respect.
Leaving those rudimental branches to those who have
made them a professional study, I would invite your
attention to those elements and aspects of Commerce
which, if less practical in a money-making sense, are still
fraught with facts and interests which every intelligent
merchant and man and woman should fully understand
and appreciate.
Although the term Commerce is frequently applied to
mercantile transactions between individuals of the same
country, we will, if you please, on this occasion, give it
The Higher Law, etc.
69
that meaning to which it should be properly confined,
and consider it only as referring to the trade carried on
between nations, or large and distinct communities of men,
divided by physical, political, or ethnical boundaries.
Ever since Bacon's day, the effort to systematize and
reduce to popular comprehension and use the abstract
sciences has become more and more common and successful.
The leading facts and functions of the solar system are
now taught and illustrated in juvenile school books, and
mastered, too, by many a little Miss hardly ten years of
age. Geology has put off its pompous obscurities and
reduced its stupendous revelations to the dimensions of
the common school; so that boys and girls of ordinary
comprehension may understand the structure of the globe
on which we dwell. Chemistry has set aside its heathenish
gibberish and machinations, and come out as a sober,
utilarian science, and taught the common people how
to make soap and candles, how to light their dwellings,
fertilize their fields, and compose durable paints and
healthful medicines. Physiology has followed the other
sciences into the school-room, and made its bow to the
children; and children, looking up with their bright
believing eyes into the face of their teacher, have com-
prehended the structure of the human system. Children
have mastered the main facts and laws upon which these
various systems are based and perfected.
Similies, analogies, and contrasts, drawn from these
various departments of general science, are coming more
and more into popular vogue. You will seldom listen to
a sermon from the pulpit, or to a political speech from the
platform, or to a school-boy's first composition, without
70
The Higher Law and
abundant proof that the central facts of what were once
regarded as abstruse and cloistered sciences have become
(( as familiar as household words." We may presume
that those who thus comprehend and use them are aware
that they are not new facts, though, in some cases, recently
discovered. They must comprehend that the forces and
laws that shape the orbits and regulate the motions of
the planetary bodies are as old as the solar system itself;
that they were the same on the sixth-day morning of the
creation as at this moment. The physical mechanism of
the human system was doubtless the same in Adam as in
every man of to-day. The heart occupied the same
position, and performed the same functions. His organs
of sense were the same in number, faculty, and location.
The sight, hearing, smelling, taste, and touch poured into
his being their varied and mingled tributaries of enjoy-
ment through the same avenues. Although the earth
was made first, it was made expressly for man. Every-
thing that breathed and moved upon it before his heart's
first throb was made directly or indirectly for him,―all
that was fair to look upon, for his eye, all that was deli-
cious to the taste, for his palate, all that was delightful
in the concord of sweet sounds, for his ear. The faithful
dog at his side could hear distinct sounds as far as he,
but it had no organs behind the ear to blend the voices
of men and birds into music. The patient ox, standing
in the furrow, with summer rain-drops cooling his round
and heated sides, as he raised his large eyes towards the
retiring cloud, could see it spanned by an arch of different
colour; but he could not see the rainbow in all the glory
of its mingled hues. The bees that sipped the honeyed
Mission of Commerce.
71
dew from the first flowers that bloomed on the new earth
could find them by instinct among the green herbs, but
could not see the tinted beauties of their glory. Man
alone was gifted with that organism of the brain which,
lying behind the mere outward organs of the senses,
which he had in common with the brute creation, gave to
him the capacity to group and grasp, in one panoramic
vista of beauty, all the varied objects of Nature's domain
around him. Landscapes, cloudscapes, and waterscapes,
in combination and contrast, in all their picturesque
alternations of light and shade, moved from morning till
night across the speculum of his eye, and flooded his soul
with the joy of its terrestrial existence. Thus this glorious
beauty of the outward world was not positively and
independently objective, but perceptive. It was not so
absolute as a fact, as real and thrilling to him as a sense.
The sharp-sighted lynx could not see it, nor could the
soaring eagle bring it within his ken. It was not Nature
that dipped her pencil in the rainbow and mingled all its
tints in the rose-leaf, in that blending so delicate and
delightful to his sight. It was Nature's God, who formed
the eye of man, and put behind it organs of colour, com-
parison, faculties of perception and sensation that virtually
gave to the white face of that flower the pencilling so
exquisite and admirable. Just so with sounds. The
sweetest singing-bird that poured the melting rapture of
its song upon the morning air heard distinctly its own
voice and the treble of its rival songsters, but further
could not go. It was the ear of man or the organs and
faculties behind it which alone could blend those bird-
notes into music,
72
The Higher Law and
Phrenologically considered, doubtless the first created
man was the same as man at this moment. His mind
acted and was acted upon through the same faculties of
perception and sensation. He not only possessed the
same organs of individuality, location, comparison, inven-
tion, weight, sound, and colour, but these were susceptible
of those peculiarities of development, combination, and
co-working which constituted the first cause of the
endless varieties of taste and occupation in the world.
All the minute divisions of human industry may be
traced back beyond the Deluge to this cause, operating in
the two oldest sons of Adam. The first elements of
manufacture and trade may be referred to the same
origin. No sooner were there three men living upon the
earth, than we have a diversity of occupation, occasioned
evidently more by a difference of taste than by the abso-
lute necessities of their mutual relationships. The motive
forces which made a farmer of Cain, and a shepherd of
Abel, most probably resulted from a different develop-
ment of the organs of the brain. Were it not for this
difference, most likely both would have been keepers of
sheep or tillers of the soil, separately or in company.
This was the first division of human labour, and it was
provided for by the Creator in the physical mechanism of
the mental faculties.
The development of mechanical skill, taste, and occu-
pation must have been exceedingly slow in the antedi-
luvian age, hardly introducing a new element into trade.
In the first place, the mental faculties needed a longer
course of discipline to attain to that inventive capacity
indispensable to the manufacture even of the rudest
Mission of Commerce.
73
implements of labour, or the simplest article of clothing.
But if this mechanical skill required a longer training of
the conceptive faculties, the Creator had made propor-
tionate provision for educating it into a capacity which
should steadily increase up to the last year of time.
When Adam opened his eyes upon the new earth, he found
himself surrounded by objects which addressed themselves
to each particular faculty of his mind, and stimulated it
to activity. They contained not only the material, but
the suggestion for the exercise of that mechanical skill
which was to become such an element of power and
progress to his race. God's lesson books were opened to
him from morn to dewy eve,—in the leaves of every tree;
in the texture of the herb; in the structure of the
mountain; in the blue sky above, and in the blue water
beneath, that mirrored his face among the golden stars of
heaven; in the eagle's wing; in the foot of the fly; in
the carol of the lark; in the roar of the lion and the
tints of the rose. All the elements and laws, and even
suggestions, of mechanical science, of the finest arts to
which man has attained, were presented to him in these
primary manuals of instruction in a thousand living
illustrations. All the immeasurable forces which his
race should suborn into their service in remote ages were
operating around him in ever-varying modes of action,
as if offering the necks of their power to his yoke in mute
suggestion. The air, in its mild and mighty moods, now
breathing in breezes that scarcely lifted the leaves of
Eden, now in the hurricane that bent and rent the
distant forest, said to him, in its whisper and whirlwind,
"See what I could for you by sea or land!" The little
74
The Higher Law and
sunbeams of summer, that warmed the dormant insect
to life, and raised its wings to greet them in the air,
that played like a smile of God's love upon the
infant face of his first child, these contained at that
moment the force and law that should one day be deve-
loped to such a mighty ministry in the service of human
necessities. They were beautiful as they lay upon the
golden locks of his sleeping boy, and filled the great round
world with glorious light; but the hiding of that power
with which they permeate and lift the granite shaft of
Bunker Hill, and the iron structure of the Britannia
Bridge, adding inches to the stature of great cathedrals,
was not revealed to him, but left for later lessons in the
hand-book of nature. The placid rivers, that threw their
silver arms around his garden home, refreshed and glad-
dened him with their taste and sight. It made him a
pleasant pastime to see the white, long-necked swans
rowing to and fro, with erected plumage, before the breeze :
but he was not yet ready for the lesson and law which this
interesting sight presented. He was not yet competent
to grasp the motive power of that element, or the struc-
ture and movement of ships upon the sea, suggested by
the delicately-rounded bows and broad-webbed oars of the
graceful bird.
The vapour, that rose from the moist
ground on which he first kindled a fire to warm him when
the sun was low, contained its law and lesson; but sixty
centuries of intermediate observation and experiment
were necessary to their comprehension and application.
The lightning, that rent the mountain side of the black
tempest with such fearful explosion, was to him, from the
moment his first sin brought his first fear, an awful pheno-
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menon, that made his whole being quake and tremble.
For more than five thousand years it was the red gleam
of the Almighty's sword cleaving the clouds and the
mountains. Even to this day the most familiar term in
the Hebrew language for thunder is "Kol Elohim," or the
"voice of God." The quick cross-currents of electricity
that amazed Adam and his race to so many generations
contained a law and lesson which the human mind has
but just reached and utilized in the Text Book of
Creation.
Thus the progress of the mechanic arts was exceedingly
slow in the antediluvian ages, notwithstanding the life of
centuries then accorded to man, perhaps in compensation
for the small stock of knowledge which he inherited from
his predecessors. Although nature's volume was full of
the teaching of these arts, in lessons suited to infant
faculties, the human mind mastered the simplest of them
with difficulty, and made such child-like progress, that
on several occasions it pleased the Divine Mind to help
the human from one rudiment to another, from words of
one to words of two syllables in this educational pro-
This is illustrated in the case of our first parents
when they first felt the guilt and shame of sin. As the
consciousness of their personal condition came to their
agitated minds, they looked around for the instruction of
some easy lesson which they could master at once, or for
the material and model of some kind of covering. The
large, tough leaves of the fig, concealing its graceful
limbs, comprised nature's baby-lesson, and this they
grasped with eager haste and applied to themselves.
They contrived to sew these leaves together, probably
cess.
76
The Higher Law and
with bark threads from the branches from which they
plucked them, "and made themselves aprons." Here,
in the precipitate action of these hours of distress and
mental excitement, the human mind took its first lesson
in one of those mechanic arts which now employ and
support such toiling myriads of the race. The sudden
pressure of a new necessity, humanly speaking, was the
mother of this invention. It evidently cost the unhappy
twain the highest effort in this direction of which they
were capable without Divine assistance. Having made
it, they were apparently satisfied with its small measure
of success. Where could they find better materials and
patterns for their garments? They evidently sought no
better, and perhaps would have worn fig-leaf aprons for
years, if God had not interposed directly to help them
over the space between this first lesson and the next
in His great model-book of instruction. With a pitying
father's hand, He pointed them to more perfect patterns,
to clothing more durable and fitting than that in which
the summer fruit-trees clad their limbs. He raised their
eyes from the lower or vegetable to the animal domain
of nature, and showed them the texture and fashion of
those beautiful garments in which He had clothed the
sheep, the beaver, bear, and buffalo ;-how perfectly,
without visible sean or wrinkle, these garments were
fitted to the body and limbs. He not only pointed out.
the lesson with its illustrations, but He actually applied
it to their own case. In the simple language of Scripture,
"God made both unto Adam and Eve coats of skins, and
clothed them."
Here and thus commenced the art of garment-making.
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It is the only one of all the list that bears the finger-
prints as well as verbal directions of the Creator as its
Teacher. To whatever frivolous ends and influences the
art may have degenerated in these days of exaggerated
fashions, it may show a Divine origin of which no other
mechanical art can boast. The lesson through which it
was taught to Adam is still full of infinite wisdom. Its
instruction will never be exhausted, even when some
future generation shall have exhausted the refinements
of human skill and taste. At that far end of improve-
ment no fabric of the loom or needle will equal in fine-
ness and perfection the warp and woof of the ermine's
skin. The youngest mind will easily understand that, if
necessity is the mother of invention, this garment-
making must have been the first of her children.
Clothing, if not the first, is at least the third, of the
great quartet of man's physical necessities, which may be
ranked thus,-food, drink, clothing, and shelter. To
obtain the first two required no special revelation. The
trees of Eden dropped fruits that were nutritious as
well as pleasant to the taste. The rivers that compassed
it were ready to quench the thirst. The platted branches
of the long-armed cedar, or overhanging rocks or caves
in the mountain sides, furnished shelter already made,
easily improved with the feeblest capacity of invention.
Still, it is doubtful whether the manufacture of clothing
ever constituted a distinct occupation before the Flood,
as every family would naturally make its own supply,
one using the skins of their sheep and cattle, the other
the skins of wild beasts taken in hunting, thus indicating
their several occupations. The farmer, herdsman, and
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The Higher Law and
hunter divided the antediluvian world of labour between
them, and all the elements of trade consisted in the
simple articles exchanged between these three classes of
the community.
With the murder of Abel commenced that reign of
violence that filled and overwhelmed the whole peopled
earth. The rude bludgeon of Cain blossomed and
brought forth war-clubs. The hunter became a warrior,
and doubtless the whole mechanical genius of the race
took the same direction as among the North American
Indians in later times. It all ran to the elaborate con-
struction of weapons of war, and to the fanciful deco-
rations of the hunters of men and beasts. Little of it
was devoted to agricultural implements or to the de-
velopment of the peaceful arts. Indeed, it is very
doubtful whether iron had been very much applied to
common uses before the Deluge. The length of time
occupied in building the ark would seem to denote that
axes and adzes of stone were the sharpest edgetools
employed in felling and fitting the timbers for that vast
structure. It is quite evident that, up to this event,
the art of ship-building was entirely unknown. Doubt-
The human
less its necessity had not yet been felt.
race had not spread far and wide upon the surface of
the globe. We have no data whereby to estimate their
population. Taking into consideration the fearful violence
and bloodshed that prevailed among them, they could not
have exceeded, at the time of the Deluge, the present
population of the City of Glasgow. The rivers of that
region, as now, were fordable at the distance from the
sea at which the Scriptures intimate they were located.
d
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They had no pressing occasion even for boats, and
probably none had been constructed. The Bible history
clearly demonstrates the fact that no vessel capable of
living upon the sea had ever been built or conceived
by man. For here, again, God interposed with a special
revelation, and gave to Noah specific directions for build-
ing the ark. He specified the very timber of which it
was to be made, its length, breadth, and depth, and all
the minute particulars of its structure. He then taught
him how to make the great hull impervious to the water,
by pitching it within and without.
As the patriarch preserved specimens of the animal
creation that every useful bird and beast might be per-
petuated, so in his mind were treasured all the mecha-
nical skill, taste, and intellectual progress that had been
developed in the antediluvian world. The waters that
covered the earth so many cubits deep, extinguishing
every breath of life outside the nutshell of humanity
that danced upon their dark surges, made no breach in
human advancement; they put out the light of no
human thought worth anything to man. All the occu-
pations into which the race had been divided were
represented in Noah and his sons.
When the green
earth re-appeared with its seed-time, he went forth
and resumed that occupation which he had previously
followed, and became a husbandman. As soon as his
sheep and cattle had increased to flocks and herds, their
keeping became the business of one of his sons, who was
a shepherd on the other side of the Flood; when the
wild animals he preserved had multiplied in the forests
and mountains, another son became a hunter. Thus all
So
The Higher Law and
the occupations of the old world went on in the new at
more rapid strides of progression. If the age of man
was shortened, he lived longer now in fifty than his
antediluvian ancestors lived in five hundred years. In
steamboat parlance, the human mind made as many revo-
lutions in half-a-century as it did once in five centuries.
This new and restless vigour soon produced those
characteristics that mark our own times to a higher
degree. "Westward-ho!" was first heard as a motto and
march-word; and westward they travelled until they
found, on the Plains of Shinar, the El Dorado of their
imagination, the very place, as they conceived, for the
permanent habitation of the human race. Here was the
site on which to locate its present thousands and future
millions in one compact, mighty nation. The brief
record of this unprecedented undertaking reveals a new
era in the mechanic and industrial arts, or the manu-
facture of brick from clay, and the construction of
permanent houses and compact cities. Here, too, com-
menced the era of trade, as a distinct and indispensable
occupation. It no longer consisted in incidental ex-
changes between farmers, shepherds, and hunters of their
respective productions. It was the continuous supplying
of bread-stuffs, mutton, beef, butter, milk, poultry, game,
wool, and peltry for a dense population shut up within
a walled town, making brick, building houses, and manu-
facturing rude articles of furniture and convenience.
Occupations became rapidly subdivided by the simplest ne-
cessities of a community thus situated. Trades multiplied;
competition in the manufacture of the same article followed,
developing skill and taste in design and execution. Every
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improvement in the fashion of a garment, in an article
of furniture, in the structure of a cabin, in the weaving
or braiding of grasses, hair, wool, or filaments of bark,
under this new pressure upon the inventive faculties,
presented the model and imparted the capacity for
another and larger step of progress. Thus, by the time
that the rude tenements of the city and its ruder wall
had been constructed, and before the foundations of the
great citadel or tower were laid, the second class of trade
elements was instituted, or those articles which range
next to the four absolute necessities,-food, drink, rai-
ment, and shelter. The articles embraced in this second
class are usually called articles of convenience, such as
utensils for cooking, contrivances for lighting and warm-
ing houses, couches and seats for repose and rest, and the
like,—constructed for positive use, without reference to the
material or style of fashioning them. These two classes of
articles constitute what may be called absolute or aborigi-
nal trade. From the building of Babel to the present
day, they have been found in every community, pagan or
civilized. Everywhere and always they constitute the
firmest, broadest basis of mercantile transactions. Every
business built upon them has a foundation which no
other department of trade can ever attain. Man must
have food, drink, clothing, and shelter. These are inexo-
rable necessities. His life hangs upon them, and all
that he has will he give for his life. The next in the
rank of his wants are the simple articles of convenience
we have mentioned. These he will have as soon as his
labour has satisfied the first demands of his physical
being. In all ages and countries both these classes of
G
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The Higher Law and
human wants have been and may be supplied by home
production, without one iota of commerce with distant
or distinct communities. When the whole race was
gathered within the mud walls of one city, and their
farming and hunting grounds were probably within
twenty miles of its centre, the supplying of these abori-
ginal necessities constituted a domestic trade of no
inconsiderable extent and variety.
Thus, Trade is two thousand years older than Com-
merce in the sense to which we have limited the latter
term. Commerce, in this sense, has nothing to do with
the absolute, aboriginal wants of man, but with his
acquired wants, with contracted appetites and tastes,
with new perceptions of the beautiful in nature and art.
The Bible history gives us no clue to the number of
years that the posterity of Noah resided in the city of
Babel before the confusion of tongues. But when that
dispensation of Divine wisdom and benevolence came
upon them, they were well fitted for peopling the earth
with the germs of great nations. Each nation-family
went out to establish its name and local habitation with
the same stock of practical knowledge as any other.
They were all respectively equal inheritors of that patri-.
mony of antediluvian observation, experience, and ad-
vancement which Noah had preserved and bequeathed to
them, together with all the progress that had been made
since he stepped from the ark upon the dry land of the
new world.
With this event commenced the era of
Commerce. The various sections of this homogeneous
population took up their lines of march in different direc-
tion, leaving behind them the crumbling monument
:
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83
of the first and last home of mankind as a compact,
unbroken family. "Westward-ho!" was still the favourite
watchword of their migrations, and their vanguards soon
reached the Mediterranean, and, in a few centuries,
planted small communities on the Asiatic, African, and
European coasts of that sea. The Syrian shore was, of
course, first reached and settled by a section most gene-
rally called Phoenicians. Here the science of navigation
was first developed. The first craft that ever touched
salt water with a helm attached to it was doubtless
launched upon that sea. The imagination can only mea-
sure the feeble and uncertain steps by which this great
agency of commerce advanced in the first century of its
discovery. We can only conjecture how slowly the
human mind worked out the successive figures in nature's
model-book. Having fashioned the hull and oars of the
first little vessel after the breast and webbed paddles of
the swan, how long were they in adopting other features
of the graceful model, or in fitting the small fabric with
a plumage to be raised to make the wind it caught a
propelling agency cheaper and more powerful than human
sinews? However slow this progress in ship-building,
it is certain that, in a few centuries, vessels were con-
structed that not only coasted for hundreds of miles
along the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, but crossed
and re-crossed them at their widest breadth, and even
sailed far out into the mysterious and boundless ocean,
exploring distant regions, and bringing back their novel
productions. Every vessel-load of these articles made
the seaport to which they were brought a centre of
greater attraction and larger population. Thus, one by
G 2
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The Higher Law and
one, the migratory tribes of mankind were planted in
populous towns, and brought under the action of that
civilization and progress which nomadic life could no
more attain than the rolling stone can gather moss.
Houses were built not only of brick, but of stone,-
rough hewn, and awkward in proportions, but gradually
assuming more symmetrical aspects and dimensions.
Then followed temples, monuments, and even ornamental
and elaborate architecture. After three thousand years
of apprenticeship in subduing the earth and its elements
to their service, mankind here, on the Phoenician shore
of the Mediterranean, first weathered as it were the Cape
Horn of absolute neccssities, and entered the Pacific
Ocean of what are called the comforts of life. Here, for
the first time, perhaps, they felt the force of acquired
wants, the eager appetite for something that another
country and climate must supply. Up to this date, they
had lived under those local laws of nature which had but
slightly diversified their occupations and tastes, and sup-
plied them with the raw materials of home trade. But
now, for the first time, they entered the circle of those
superior, sublime arrangements which the Creator had
provided to bind country to country, nation to nation, by
relationships that should grow in strength and variety
to the last day that should dawn upon the earth.
We have dwelt upon the physical mechanism of the
human mind, and the living leaves of nature's text-book
opened wide to develop the perceptions and tastes and
supply the wants of the individual man. Nations, also,
have their peculiar phrenology, mental and moral character-
istics which give to each an individuality as marked as
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85
that which distinguishes man from man in every civilized
community. To diversify thus the human race by
planting them in almost isolated populations, until each
should develop a distinctive character for itself, was
doubtless the chief object of the confusion of languages.
As one unbroken community they had lived up to this
event in one and the same climate, and subsisted on the
same productions of the field and forest. But as they
now diverged north, south, and west, they entered upon
different climates and soils and local circumstances, and
these operated immediately upon each nation-family,
giving its mental faculties a peculiar direction and deter-
mining its chief occupations. The camel by land, and the
little oared vessel by sea, began to head in opposite
directions towards the same centres of trade, bringing the
peculiar productions of distant countries. The two fa-
culties of conception and perception began to act upon
society, producing new tastes, inspiring new wants, and
creating new capacities of enjoyment. The patriarchs
of earlier centuries were superseded by princes of populous
tribes, and from these came kings of little nations with
princes for their courtiers. Kings' houses were built,
not so elegant and comfortable as those of many journey-
man mechanics of the present day, but still employing
all the architectural skill of the times. Robes, sceptres,
and regal insignia, and articles of ornament for princes
and nobles, employed all the inventive or conceptive
genius of the country. The designing and manufacture.
of these articles conferred high honour as well as large
pay, and employed a numerous class of what were called
"cunning workmen." Concentrating all their mental
86
The Higher Law and
forces in the faculty of invention, with their eyes poring
over the green or gilded leaves of nature's model-book,
their hammers, chisels, pencils, and needles were busy
day and night bringing out new conceptions in art. The
very sight of these designs developed the corresponding
faculty of perception in the higher ranks of wealth and
nobility, or a capacity to realize, grasp, and enjoy their
superior excellence and beauty. These two faculties,
conception in the artist and perception in the patron,
have worked on, hand in hand, from the planting of the
first hamlet on the Mediterranean to that of the last
Nebraska village on the Missouri, producing designs and
tastes for them by reciprocal action. As there is no
appetite for wine, sugar, tea, or coffee until those articles
are touched by the lips, so there is no mental appetite or
taste for ornamental architecture, dress, or furniture until
they are presented to the eye, and become fair to look
upon, like the forbidden tree of Eden. Thus, the first
vessel that put out from a Phoenician port did not go in
search of bread, water, clothing, or materials of shelter. It
did not bear the flag of these absolute and primitive
wants. Nor was it sent forth for a supply of the second
class of necessities, or articles of sheer convenience, such
as implements of agriculture, utensils for cooking, &c.
All these things the inhabitants of that village possessed
already. It went forth on its first voyage of discovery for
the productions of a different climate or country; things
that should create new tastes, and gratify them when
created; things new and pleasant to the eye, to the
palate, to the ear, to the touch. In a word, as it
felt its way along the coasts of that sea, it cruised only
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87
for a cargo of what we call comforts, which constituted
then, as they constitute now, the first and richest elements
of Commerce. League by league, as these expeditions by
sea, and migrations by land, penetrated new regions in
the north, south, east, and west, they came within the
range of those grand and beautiful economies of nature
ordained in the plan of creation to supply the acquired
wants, the self-producing and self-multiplying tastes of
the nations; to make the desire, the appetite for each
other's productions living and everlasting bonds of peace
and brotherhood. This friendly commerce between
different countries, individualized by peculiarities of cli-
mate, soil, and productions, is not an incidental inter-
course upon which they stumbled in a temporary mood of
good humour. It is a condition provided and established
in the very anatomy of the globe. The earth's orbit, even,
was shaped expressly to produce this condition, or make
it inevitable. All the agencies and arrangements to make
the sun shine more vertically upon one region than
another, to produce different climates and subdivide
them by slight distinctions of temperature, the location
and functions of seas and oceans, the distribution of
mountains, the rise and flow of rivers, the diversification
of soils, the deposition of minerals, were all perfected
before the first created man opened his eyes upon the
new-created world. They were no more designed to
divide and alienate his posterity of nations than were
the nerves, bones, blood, and muscles of his own body
designed to break up the unity of his animal life or
divide and alienate his physical members or mental
faculties. Society is the voluntary intercourse, not the
88
The Higher Law and
stagnant amalgam, of individuals. God broke up the
human race at Babel into different communities, that
there might be a voluntary and brotherly society of
nations, instead of a conglomerate, dead sea of corporate
humanity. These great economies of nature were designed
to co-work with His Gospel of grace and salvation to pro-
duce and perfect that society, to bring in that condition
of peace, harmony, and universal brotherhood described
by the holy seers of old, when "the wolf and the lamb
shall lie down together; when nation shall not lift up
sword against nation, neither learn war any more; when
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their
spears into pruning-hooks; when your officers shall be
peace, and your exactors righteousness; when every man
shall sit under his own vine and fig-tree, with none to
molest or make him afraid."
These stupendous and minute arrangements of the ma-
terial world constitute the physical system of Commerce.
They are its bone, blood, vein, and muscle. With such
a constitution, with such a part to act in the destiny
of mankind; chosen to such lofty companionships, to go
side by side with the angel of the everlasting Gospel from
nation to nation; to preach in the market of Athens
what Paul preaches in the midst of Mars Hill, to head
the ends and ethics of trade with the typified truth that
"God hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to
dwell upon all the face of the earth, and hath determined
the times (or seasons) before appointed, and the bounds of
their habitation;" to minister also to those wants which new
perceptions and emotions of spiritual life have awakened
in the minds of millions; to convey Bibles and all the
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89
rich literature of Christian knowledge and civilization to
populations just emerging from heathen darkness; to
mark every upward step and tendency of island tribes,
and supply them with stepping-stones, with material
helps and suggestions-all this makes a mission for Com-
merce which every merchant and every merchant's
apprentice should study and prize as one of the first
dignities that God has conferred upon human industry.
Every young man who fits himself for this honourable
profession should study the physiology of the globe with
as much assiduity, with as much enthusiasm, as the young
surgeon studies the anatomy of the human frame. The
analogies between the two bodies are not imaginary nor
incidental, but natural, inevitable, and instructive. The
Earth, too, has its spinal column and osteology in the
great ranges of its rock-ribbed mountains. Its rivers
are as numerous and have as much to do with its vitality
as the veins in man. The great palpitating ocean, with
its veins, arteries, and saline properties, occupies the same
position and performs the same functions for the earth
as the human heart does for man. The different soils
that cover the habitable globe have the same diversified
characteristics and purposes as the various muscular
portions of our physical system. This diagnosis of the
Earth should be an important element of Commercial
Education. It will give not only to "those who go down
to the sea in ships, and do business upon the great
waters," but to those who more indirectly take part in
the trade of nations, a system of laws governing Commerce
as well-ordered, fixed, and definite as those that obtain in
the physical constitution of the individual man. It will
90
The Higher Law and
expand the vision of the merchant to a larger compre-
hension of the origin, nature, and dignity of his occupation.
It will supply him with a code of first principles as
precise and infallible as those upon which the most
accurate science is based. With this diagnosis of the
earth's anatomy in one hand, and Paul's sermon on Mars
Hill in the other, he will be able to bring to the solution
of unsettled questions in political economy rules and
standards of higher wisdom than the axioms of Adam
Smith or Horace Say. He will see it written on every
page of Nature's world-book, and prescribed by every
statute in the organic act of Creation, that the Commerce
of nations was designed to be as free as the course of
rivers, or the flow and reflow of seas. He will see that
perfectly Free Trude is the only condition provided for
in the constitution of nature; that it is prescribed by
the political economy of the seasons, soils, and climates;
and that the policy of restriction is and must be a tempo-
rary and exceptional arrangement, for a temporary and
exceptionable object. He may consent to this temporary
departure from Nature's laws; he may approve and
advocate it, to meet a special and abnormal emergency;
just as a physician may administer large doses of opium
to an individual at a certain stage of prostration, although
he knows such drugs run counter to the constitutional
laws of the human system in its normal state.
It is interesting and instructive to observe how Com-
merce has revealed, little by little, the laws that it has
created and obeyed. In spite of all restrictions and
burdens, it is vindicating its prerogative and mission of
universality, as an interest belonging in joint ownership
Mission of Commerce.
91
to the whole family of nations. See how it is knitting
up the rents which the sword and spirit of war have
made between them. The seas and oceans are covered
with white-winged ships working upon this web of
brotherhood by night and day, in calm and tempest.
Every vessel that spreads its canvass-pinions for a foreign
shore, laden, bee-like, with the productions of a different
climate and soil, contributes to that web a silken thread,
both on its outward and homeward flight. Commerce
has no country but the world, no patriotism but an
earnest interest in the well-being of all the nations. Its
genius, in this respect, runs parallel with the genius of
Christianity, though in a lower course, just as subter-
ranean rivers run parallel with those that show their
silver currents to the sun. Commerce repudiates war
as an outrage upon its domain. It will not obey the
laws of war, nor recognise any nation as an enemy with
which it has or may have intercourse. It presses against,
through, and around the chevaux-de-frise of hostile
restrictions, just as rivers press against dams of wood,
hay, and stubble, designed to arrest their currents. It
spurns blockades, and regards war-ships of any flag as
bandits on the highway that God made for its mis-
sion. It claims that highway as its own domain. The
ocean belongs to all nations just as much as the air of
heaven. It is the great heart of the globe that supplies
the air with its most vital elements; that purifies the
waters which its river-arteries bring into its vasty deep,
and sends them back through its cloud-veins to fall in
soft rains and dews upon the earth. In addition to all
these sanitary and germinating functions, it stretches
92
The Higher Law and
out its thousand palms to the sea-divided nations, and
in the murmuring cadence of its waves against their
shores, asks them to join hands across its blue and
palpitating bosom. Commerce, the Prime Minister of
Christianity, in this department of human brotherhood,
lifts up all her white flags of truce against the sacrilege of
reddening the ocean's breast with the blood of those
nations. The late W. L. Marcy, a great man, of un-
ostentatious worth and statesmanship, whose memory
America will yet delight to honour, proposed to the
Governments of Europe to abolish this sacrilege, and
to let commerce have free course upon the sca, with no
war-kites and war-vultures to pounce with bended beak
upon its dove-winged carriers. That magnificent pro-
position may be held in abeyance a few years longer,
but in the end the foremost nations of the earth will
be constrained to adopt it. It must, it will come at last.
Commerce must and will be free, by sea and land, in
peace and war, if war shall still be possible when
Commerce is freed from the last restriction.
In spite
of edicts and Orders in Council, in face of declarations
of non-intercourse and blockaded ports, nations at war
will continue to trade with each other, if the exchange
of their productions has become a recognised necessity.
They will buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest
market, though armies and fleets lie across their path-
way. If gold is worth three per cent. more in New York
than in London, it will cross the ocean, no matter what
mischief its abstraction from the Bank of England may
produce at home. If flour will bring a shilling a barrel
net more in Liverpool than in New York, it will go to
Mission of Commerce.
93
that port, irrespective of the consequence of that ex-
portation to the poor and breadless on this side of the
ocean.
As we have said, Commerce recognises no war, nor any
national predilections. This, perhaps, was never more
fully and forcibly illustrated than during the recent war
with Russia. The trade between that country and
England was comparatively but very small, but certain
Russian productions were indispensably necessary to the
people of Great Britain, and such as they could not well
obtain elsewhere. An interesting struggle of antago-
nistic interests ensued. All the Russian ports in the
Baltic and Black Sea were blockaded by the largest
naval forces ever combined. Russian merchant vessels
were scuttled and sunk by the hundreds. It seemed im-
possible for Commerce to penetrate the meshes of this
terrible embargo. But these allied and embattled navies
might as well have prevented the exhalations from river,
lake, and sea, as to have prevented the trade of the two
countries from finding veins of circulation.
In fact, it
was nearly as large between them at the fiercest stage of
the conflict as in times of peace, though carried on through
circuitous channels. Virtually, the very sails and ropes of
the huge British war-ships before Cronstadt were made
of Russian hemp that found its way to England in spite
of all blockades and steaming cruisers. The British
soldiers in the Crimea were partly fed with Russian
grain which London drew to her market, just as
sun draws rain," to use a familiar phrase. Under
the awful bombardment of Sebastopol, while cannon-balls
weighing one hundred pounds each were battering its
"the
94
The Higher Law and
bulwarks, a bag of Russian corn for every bombshell
stole out towards England by a winding way. But,
what to a young mind must be singular and striking,
Commerce not only held her own against these tremendous
odds, but she made the two countries pay a heavy fine for
blocking up her usual path. Every farthing's difference in
the cost of transporting Russian produce by land through
Germany, instead of by sea through the Baltic and Medi-
teranean, the people of England had to pay themselves.
Their most eminent political economist, Mr. Ricardo,
estimated that this enhancement of the price of Russian
produce cost Great Britain £10,000,000 or $50,000,000
during the war. Nor was this trade a one-sided transac-
tion. In return for hemp and corn to fit British ships,
and feed British soldiers invading that country, there is no
doubt that English manufacturers sent powder, lead, and
muskets to Russia, to enable her to resist that invasion.
Not directly, not intentionally, was this done. It merely
followed the irresistible laws of Commerce, that knows no
patriotism that works or wishes ill to a neighbour. It.
happened that there was a great demand for firearms, salt-
petre, and lead at the neutral ports just on the Continental
side of the British Channel-a very great demand, indeed,.
at large prices. As the sun draws rain, these prices drew
to those ports the implemental machinery of war from
England, to be turned against her fleets and armies. The
British Government endeavoured to prohibit the expor-
tation of these articles by severe and repeated edicts, but.
doubtless found it impossible to suppress the trade. In
view of the immense cost and utter futility of attempting
to arrest the trade of nations even at war with each
Mission of Commerce.
95
other, meetings of political economists were held in
London, advocating the policy of letting Commerce have
its own way by sea and land under all circumstances.
I was present myself at some of these meetings, and
listened to elaborate and complete demonstrations of the
utter folly of endeavouring to nullify laws of trade as
irrepealable and unchangeable as the course of rivers, or
the flux and reflux of the ocean tides. See the working
of the peace-making element of Commerce. Notwith-
standing the Governments of Great Britain and Russia
were engaged in a war to the knife, it was proposed that
the people of these two countries should go on and trade
with each other just as if nothing had happened! And
still the commerce between the two countries is exceed-
ingly small relatively. England sells more goods to the
United States in one month than to Russia in a whole
year. If such a small amount of mercantile intercourse
will produce such bonds of interest between countries
alien to each other in blood, language, and religion, what
mighty cables of connection must hold together two
nations united by such commercial, moral, and blood
relationships as those that exist between England and
America! It is instructive to see the occasional action
of those giant hawsers that connect them on the great
sea of human experience. Like members of even, well-
regulated families, they sometimes fall out with each
other, and for awhile seem to drift off into a hostile
attitude. Ties of blood, oneness of language, the precepts
of their common religion, in a word, all moral and
political affinities appear to give way before the angry
waves of prejudice or jealousy. The wind rises; the
96
The Higher Law and
head-sea of difficulties grows more and more boisterous;
the helmsmen and pilots on both sides are at their wits'
ends. But, at the very moment of the apprehended
catastrophe, the two drifting ships of state feel the giant.
hawsers of Commerce. The great cable of COTTON holds
them fast. Its twisted fibres are stronger than the winds
and waves of passion.
The Father of all the families of the earth has not left
the intercourse and intimacy of nations to the mere
attraction of social or political affinities. He has con-
nected them by vital, life-breathing bonds, increasing in
strength and variety with the distance that divides them.
Permit me to introduce an illustration which will enable
the younger portion of this audience to comprehend more
clearly the nature and operation of this connection.
Let us suppose that the island of Great Britain is the
only tract of habitable land on the globe, and possessing
its present climate, soil, and population. Now, then
imagine a line drawn through the centre from east to
west, and the island cut into two equal parts. The
people on one side of the line can grow just what their
neighbours can produce on the other. There is no table-
tie to connect them. But we will suppose that the southern
half of the island begins to float southward, leaving the
other fast anchored in its present position. It has re-
ceded two degrees, and the sun shines more blandly upon
it, and the morning dews are warmer upon its green
things, and fruits will come to more delicious maturity
upon it than on the other half of the island. In a word,
better peaches, pears, and apricots can be grown in South
Britain than in North Britain. This difference creates a
Mission of Commerce.
97
delicate table-tie between them. It is a mere string, but
it is something which they feel binding them together.
But watch that string, as the southern section recedes
from the other, and you will see it expand into a mighty
cable, which all the swords of the world cannot cut in
twain. South Britain slowly approaches the equator,
and anchors for a season under still warmer skies. The
warm night winds of the south breathe balmily on its
vineyards and orange groves. It can now send back to its
sister island fruits which its people never saw before—
delicious grapes, figs, oranges, &c. The taste and sight
of these products of another clime delight every sense,
and every sense yearns for them. The children ask long-
ingly for them; some of the younger ones, perhaps, cry
for them. And now these beautiful, novel fruits, which
the North Britons never dreamed of, never asked or
wished for before, become an acquired want, almost an
absolute necessary, to satisfy the appetites they have
created. Thus the grape, the orange, and fig, and all
of the other fruits sent by the South Britons to their
brethren, constitute each a new table-tie to be twisted in
with that solitary string which we had before into a rope
which holds the two islands more firmly together the farther
they recede from each other. See how that rope grows
in size and strength, as South Britain nears the equator.
It anchors again for a year in a still warmer clime, and
its fields are covered with the luxuriant sugar-cane,
cotton, coffee, and rice. It now sends back to its north-
ern sister a stock of these wonderful productions, over
and above its oranges, pine-apples, and other aelicious
fruits. The sugar is tasted, and declared the very thing
H
98
The Higher Law and
for the table; and the children wonder how they could
ever have been comfortable without it. Gradually it
finds its way to every table, however frugal, and all at
last declare that it is not only a luxury but a necessary.
The coffee is tried-a little suspiciously at first-but is
soon found to be an excellent substitute for cold water
or beer for breakfast. Hundreds of ingenious people are
set to work making nice cups to drink it from. It soon
finds its way from the tables of the rich to those of the
poor, who drink it from tin, iron, or pewter basins, or
ruder vessels of earthenware. Gradually the people all
begin to feel that they cannot get on well without coffee;
so coffee becomes a necessary, of the second degree, or an
acquired want. The rice is fair to look upon, and at
first is served up delicately to invalids and to people of
debilitated appetites, and then gradually to persons
of common appetites, and is found to be an excellent
article of food; and where a man once bought it by the
ounce at the apothecary's for a child recovering from the
measles, he now buys a pailful of it at a time of the grocer,
for puddings of a family size. At last, mothers and ma-
trons decide unanimously that they cannot get on well
without rice; so rice becomes a necessary, of the second
class. Here, then, we have three more table-ties, each
larger and stronger than the whole cord which connected
the two islands before. But we have another larger still
to twist from the cotton. The arrival of this new pro-
duction is hailed with wonder. Queer ideas are circulated
about it; and many children are of the notion that it
is a kind of wool that grows on wooden sheep. Some
of it is spun into thread and sold in little balls for needle-
1
Mission of Commerce.
99
work. Some is woven with common sheep's wool into
cloth; and even garments are made of it entire, and
found excellent. The next year more of it comes from
South Britain, and machines are made for spinning and
weaving it, until hundreds and thousands of men, wo-
men, and children are employed in working it up for
common use. And soon cotton is voted an absolute neces-
sary to the North Britons. Cotton becomes the first ward-
robe-tie between the two islands-a larger and stronger
rope than either of the table-ties we have described.
Every one of these ties grows larger and stronger every
year. Let us twist them all into one great cable, and
then compare it with the little string that connected
the two islands when divided only by the distance of
two or three degrees. We shall see how clear it is that
"God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to
dwell on all the face of the earth," in just such a way
that the countries most widely divided by distance shall
be the most firmly bound together by the necessity of
each other's productions.
It is a beautiful feature of this economy that the
spontaneous or superfluous productions of one country
frequently rank among the first luxuries of another. For
example, the thick and solid ice, which binds as with
fetters of iron our New England rivers and lakes, and
which has been the complaint of many mournful strains
of early poetry, is becoming not only a luxury but a
necessary of the first water to millions in southern climes.
The mahogany and other precious woods, and the coarse
plants which seem to encumber the ground, and to be
standing evils of those regions, become even necessaries
Uor M
H 2
100
The Higher Law and
to us, rendered almost absolute by the tastes and habits
of these northern countries. Almost every year the
continents and islands of the earth throw to each other
a new line of connection in the form of some new article
of manufacture or agricultural production, which first
becomes a luxury to the rich, then a common necessary
to the poor.
There is another striking feature of this arrangement
which the enlightened statesman as well as merchant
should study and admire. The strongest commercial
ties that connect countries do not run parallel nor
perpendicular to national boundaries. A map of the
civilized world, giving the relative number, size, and
strength of these cables of commerce, would show that
portions of distinct, sea-divided countries are bound to
each other by larger hawsers than parts of the same
nation. For instance, the two sections of the globe
most intimately and vitally connected by these bonds
are not the two halves of Great Britain, nor the two
halves of France, nor the two halves of the American
Union, but they are the Southern States of this Republic
and the manufacturing districts of England. Those States
produce for England a greater value of raw material in
the three articles of cotton, rice, and tobacco than she
imports from the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa
all put together. And you will observe that not one of
these three articles belongs to the first class of human
necessities. Not one of them is absolutely indispensable
for food, drink, clothing, or shelter. Not one of them
was found by mere logical deduction from either of these
four positive and primitive wants. No one ever dis-
Mou
Mission of Commerce.
IOI
covered tea, coffee, cotton, rice, tobacco, or any of the
tropical fruits, as the astronomers discovered the last
planet, by certain aberrations or fluctuations of the
human appetite which could not be accounted for other-
wise. No, every one of these articles was stumbled
upon by sheer accident. There was no pre-existing appe-
tite that set men hunting after them. They themselves
created the appetites which they now gratify.
Another fact is worthy of special notice, as indicating
the constantly-increasing commodities that different coun-
tries are producing for each other, and for which their
new tastes and appetites create a constantly-increasing
demand. The articles which now constitute three-fourths
of all the commerce that floats upon the sea were almost
entirely unknown to the trade of nations two hundred
years ago. Take coffee, for example. It was as late as
1714 when a single plant was brought from Arabia to
Paris as a mere curiosity. That plant became the
parent-stock of all the French coffee plantations in the
West Indies. The Dutch introduced it into the East
Indies, and the Spanish and French into all the West
Indies and most of South America. In 1750 it is doubt-
ful if all Christendom put together consumed so much
coffee as Montreal, or Boston, or Sheffield does now.
But in 1850, Europe and the United States imported
over 270,000,000 lbs. of it. So it is with all the other
articles I have mentioned. Cotton, which now exceeds
in value every other raw production that crosses the ocean,
was almost unknown to commerce within the memory of
living men. In 1801, Great Britain imported about
54,000,000 lbs. ; in 1852, she imported 930,000,000 lbs.
102
The Higher Law and
Luxury and fashion are constantly producing new
articles of commerce_articles which many uneducated
but honest minds can hardly rank among the comforts
of life. I hope I may refer delicately to the new depart-
ment of manufacture and trade which Her Majesty Queen
Crinoline has instituted in these latter days of elegant
habits. I recently visited an establishment in a small
village in New England, which was working up, every
day, about a ton of rolled cast steel into springs for hoop-
skirts. I was told by the proprietor that at least 3,000
tons of this steel were thus manufactured in the United
States alone, and probably ten thousand tons annually in
the whole of Christendom. His own establishment
turned out daily about twenty-five miles of this hooping,
or enough to skirt the solid globe itself in a year, should
Nature be tempted to come out in the ruling fashion.
England must always be the most commercial nation
on the earth, because she must import more of the pro-
ductions of different and distant countries than any other
state or people. She must continue to be the greatest
worker and consumer of their raw materials. In the
first place, every house, barn, and shed, erected on her
island for all the centuries to come, must be built of
timber brought to her from across the sea. Every pound
of cotton, silk, fur, tea, sugar, coffee, rice, and Indian corn,
and every bottle of wine, which her future millions may
consume, she must import from distant lands.
chase for these millions a full supply of these articles, the
God of nature has stowed the cellerage of her island with
a stock of iron, coal, tin, and lime, sufficient to last to
the end of time, besides a large store of copper and other
To pur-
Mission of Commerce.
103
useful minerals. Then, superadded to these rich deposits,
she possesses a vital and boundless wealth in her me-
chanical skill and industrial sinews for manufacturing
and coining all this raw material into values as current
and precious as gold.
In view of all these elements and influences of com-
merce, it can no more fairly be called trade, in the local,
mercenary sense of the term, than the circulation of blood
through the human system can be called a trade between
the veins and arteries. The commerce between England
and the United States, for example, is a vital condition of
their very life and being as nations. It is a mighty life
ligament, like that between the Siamese Twins, once
exhibited in our cities, which would bleed both to weak-
ness and comparative ruin if severed by the sword.
The bonds of this commercial connection can no more
be loosed than "the bands of Orion." The strength and
terms of their compact were fixed in the ordination of the
seasons, soils, and climates, five thousand years before
either nation was born. Every year new reciprocal
necessities and interests are strengthening and multiply-
ing these bonds. Already two-thirds of all Jonathan has
to sell, after supplying his own family, he sells to his
brother John. Thus, two-thirds of the land, capital, and
labour which the United States employ in what is called
foreign trade, are invested in the business carried on under
the firm of Messrs. John and Jonathan. Here, then, is a
bond of immense compass and strength superadded to all
the manifold interlacings of sympathy and fraternal asso-
ciations which connect the two great empires of the
English-speaking race. Here, in the taut and twisted
I04
The Higher Law, etc.
cords of this mighty hawser, Commerce has connected
the two great kindred peoples together by bonds which,
let us hope and pray, will hold them fast under the
sudden strain of angry excitement and passion.
As one who has watched with the liveliest interest
all that makes for the kindly brotherhood of nations,
I am not willing to conclude without adverting to
that new bond of peace which the recent commercial
treaty has established between England and France.
Who can measure, even in imagination, the good that
may flow to the whole family of mankind from this inter-
linking of two great neighbour nations, whose cordial
union and mutual confidence might do so much for the
peace and best interests of the world, especially for
putting down that terrible war-system which is now
devouring the industrial earnings of Christendom, and
bleeding all its populations at every vein?
All hail, then, to the Higher Law and Mission of Com-
merce. Give it free scope and play to co-work with the
sublime verities and vitalities of Christian faith, and some
who hear me now in the golden locks of youth may live to
see as a reality what the poet described as a possibility :-
"Down the dark future, through long generations,
The echoing sounds grow fainter, and then cease;
And, like a bell, with solemn sweet vibrations,
I hear the voice of Christ again say, Peace!
Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals
The blast of war's great organ shakes the skies;
But beautiful, as songs of the immortals,
The holy melodies of love arise."

LECTURE
ON THE
Dignity and Comfort of the Farmer's Life.
DELIVERED AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF A COUNTY
AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY IN CENTRAL NEW YORK,
IN OCTOBER, 1858.
at
IT
Tis with great diffidence that I appear
appear before
before you
this time. When I was first invited to present a
few thoughts on this occasion, I shrank from the under-
taking. I felt myself a mere novice in those occupations
and interests which you have met to advance. Even if
I had been a New England farmer all my days, our
operations in that section of the country are so small
compared with yours, that it would hardly have been
appropriate for me to have ventured any suggestions.
with the expectation that they could be useful or inter-
esting to the owners and tillers of those grand and fertile
farms which constitute the wealth and glory of this great
productive State. How much less could I hope to
interest you by any observations I could present, when
I recollected that I was merely serving the third year
of my apprenticeship in agricultural life, and that all the
farm I owned was a small sterile hill in Connecticut,
106
The Dignity and Comfort
so poverty-stricken and exhausted when I acquired pos-
session of it, that only a few sickly daisies and jaundiced
weeds showed their diminished heads above the stones
which, in many places, covered the ground three deep!
With such antecedents, how could I have the face to
come before the three-hundred-acre farmers of Central
New York, and talk to them about any aspect or interest
of their position? How could I come with a handful of
weeds under my arm, and put on the airs of a wheat-
grower or stock-raiser before such an assembly? Why,
I had been laughed at by my nearest neighbours for my
small and inexperienced undertakings in the farming
line, and that, too, by men whose whole estates would
not measure so many acres as one of your large wheat-
fields. I think I may say, however, especially now that
I am so far from home, that I stood up unflinchingly
against all these jeers and gibes, and put the best pos-
sible face on my rude essays at agriculture. For a year
or more I had but one reply to their wondering ques-
tions, and it was this-that I wished to go into co-part-
nership with Divine Providence in the work of creation;
and that if, by virtue of that co-partnership, I could
make two spires of grass grow where one did not before,
it was as near a work of creation as man could well
attain to. To one, who measured the satisfaction of
farming only with a bushel-basket, I said there would be
no merit in growing corn, rye, and potatoes in the rich
and mellow acres of the valley; for there Nature would
carry off seventy-five per cent. of the merit of the crop,
and I was not willing to allow her such a lion's share.
To another, who pretended to have a cultivated eye for
of the Farmer's Life.
107
picturesque scenery, I observed that some rich men
would pay several thousand dollars for a landscape-
painting looking as much like life as a stuffed bird with
glass eyes.
But compare his costly painting with the
glorious panorama of living, speaking scenery painted
by nature from the stand-point of my stony hill, and it
was a mere cold, lifeless daub. This, then, I would say,
is my picture, painted and framed by Nature, and worth
all I paid for the gallery to see it from. Instead of
hanging this painting to the parlour-wall, I intend to
hang the wall to the painting.
With these ideas I have followed the plough mostly
for the last three years; and while its iron share turned
over the sod, my mind turned up a few thoughts on-
THE DIGNITY AND COMFORT OF THE FARMER'S LIFE.
I know they are crude; and many of them may seem
visionary and impracticable to you. But if such an
association will commend them to your indulgence, I can
truly say that they were all written on the head of a lime
cask in my little barn, with no other editorial chair than
a nail keg, covered with a handful of hay for a cushion.
So I think you will admit that they bear the outward
seal of agricultural life, if they do not contain any of its
practical experience.
Still, it is not in the enthusiasm of a mere amateur or
novice that I venture to present a few thoughts on the
dignity, comfort, poetry, and patriotism of the farmer's
life. They have come from considerable reflection on
human occupations, their moral tendencies and results.
If they are correct, I wish every man and boy who
follows the plough would make them his own.
108
The Dignity and Comfort
=
Persons in certain professions or businesses are full of
what the French call esprit de corps. They pride them-
selves on the dignity of their occupation. There is the
banker see with what self-complacency and self-estima-
tion he stands behind the cashier's counter, or in the
director's chair, and decides, like a grave judge, upon the
value and discountability of that I O U, handed over
with timorous deference and trembling expectancy by
a small trader, manufacturer, or farmer. With what a
grace-dispensing air the money is counted out to the
applicant, as if the ten or twelve per cent. per annum
interest charged him did not diminish his debt of hum-
ble gratitude for such a dispensation! There are the
three grades of merchants,—the Importer, the Factor, and
Retailer. Every mother's son of them is full of the
spirit of his order, and prides himself on the rank of his
position. In all countries, an aristocratic vein runs
through the sentiment of their profession. In the aris-
tocracy of trade, the Importers are the Dukes, the Whole-
sale Dealers the Earls, and the Retailers the Baronets
of the order. You will find traces of this sentiment in
the smallest log-cabin grocery in Nebraska, as well as in
the largest marble-palace warehouse in New York.
Now, I am not going to find fault with this animating
sense of dignity which pervades the classes we have
noticed. But I would say, in the fullest assurance of
belief, that no class of men on earth have a better right
to a distinctive esprit de corps, or to an elevating sense
of the dignity of their occupation, than the owners and
tillers of the soil. To say that, humanly speaking, they
stand at the fountain-head of all sustenance for man and
of the Farmer's Life.
109
beast, that they are the bankers God has chosen for dis-
counting food and the raw materials of raiment and
shelter to all the millions of His children upon earth, may
sound like an old and hackneyed truism. To say that
the productions of their industry constitute the prime
values of the world's wealth, and that, without them,
diamonds would be of no more worth than common
pebbles, would be to run into questions of political
economy, and it would not be proper to run in that
direction on this occasion. But there is a sentiment
that well becomes the honest, intelligent, and industrious
farmer; not an idle pride of order, but a grateful and
gladdening appreciation of the dignity of his occupation,
of its elevating tendencies and surroundings.
There are but three poets in the family of man, using
that term in its literal Greek significance, or that which
conveys the idea of creating. If the intelligent, cul-
tivated farmer is not the first, he is not the last of the
trio. What the word-poet does with the spoken language
of thought, the farmer does with the physical syllables.
of creation, or its green acres given to man. Take the
grandest epic of any language or age, and place it side by
side with the great agricultural poem of the American
continent; contrast the prose material of the one with the
prose material of the other; take the elements that Homer
found ready prepared for his pen, and those the American
farmer found ready for his plough, and then compare the
merits of the two superstructures, and say which of the
two epic poems should rank first in human estimation.
The painter is a poet, in its literal signification, because
he can create as well as imitate a landscape. But what
IIO
The Dignity and Comfort
.
he can do on canvass with his pencil, the farmer can do
on the broad earth with his plough. The best colours of
the rainbow, the softest, choicest dews that come down
out of heaven, sunbeams, moonbeams, and starbeams, and
balmy south blowings, summer showers and lightnings,
come and commingle on his easel of themselves, and make
a picture of his cornfields which the painter, with his
oils and chemical preparations, cannot rival. Look at
Old England. There is landscape-painting for you that
will beat Landseer's "all hollow," the painting of the
plough, done with artistic touches of exquisite beauty.
Look at that hill, declining so gently into the meadow,
with its grass so green, soft, and silky, that the great pied
cows are mirrored in it more distinctly than in water.
What was that hill three centuries ago? What was it
before the artistry of the farmer's broad hand touched it
with his toil ? Covered with coarse brakes or briers,
doubtless the lair of reptiles and noisome vermin. Is it
not a painting now, of as fine order of genius as ever
hung in a royal gallery! See those green hedges running
over it from base to base, breathing and blooming with
sweet-brier blossoms and hawthorn flowers. See the
grouping and contrast of colours, of light and shade,
which those fields present. There is one of wheat,
yellowing to harvest. How the vivid greenness of the
oat-field adjoining contrasts with it! Next comes one in
fallow, with its lake-coloured furrows lying as even and
as straight as if turned by machinery. Then comes a
field of barley, followed by one of English beans all in
their gorgeous flower, looking like a little Eden of forget-
me-nots; then the meadow, with its tall grass so thick,
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III
soft, and green. Every one of these fields, surrounded
by its hawthorn hedge, looks like a framed landscape-
painting, hung against that hill by an artist in a way to
make the whole a gallery of living pictures arranged to
show their contrasts with the greatest effect upon the
traveller. Old England is one continuous gallery of this
agricultural artistry; and she will, doubtless, for a century
to come, be the normal school of the world for the educa-
tion of landscape-painters with the plough.
There is no country in the world that can be made
more picturesque by the artistry of agriculture than New
England, New York, and Pennsylvania, notwithstanding
our long winters; in no country, not in England at least,
are the hills more grand and varied, and the valleys more
extensive and adapted to a greater diversity of vegetation.
Now, in all this, I would not advocate picture-farming, or
the collocation of crops merely to produce an artistic
effect, or a landscape-painting, which people passing may
stop to admire. No farmer in England ever did that, or
thought of doing it. All this scenic effect in that country
is merely an incidental result of profitable industry. It
comes from that rotation of crops that pays best. It is
a gratuitous drapery which nature throws around the
best cultivated fields as a token of her approbation and
co-partnership.
But there is a higher dignity than that of poetry or
painting that attaches to the farmer's profession; a dignity
which should make him walk as erect and look the blue
heavens as proudly in the face as any man who treads the
earth. No industry to which human hands were ever
set since the first pair were made is deserving of higher
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The Dignity and Comfort
estimation than his. For, of all the toilers of the earth,
he stands in the closest co-partnership with Divine
Providence in its realm of nature. See now the con-
ditions of this co-partnership, the capital which each
invests in one summer's crop. Here, for example, is a
cultivated farm of one hundred acres of land. The
Creator might have made that land bear stout crops of
wheat and corn all of itself, without man's help; but He
did not, and would not. He condescended to admit man
to a partnership with Him, in variegating the verdure of
those acres, in covering them with waving grain and
yellow harvests. He would not let nature produce any
crops for human sustenance without the co-working of
human sinews. The wheel of the seasons might turn on
for ever, scattering rain, dew, light, and heat, and every
germinating influence; but, unless it was belted on to
man's industry, it would not turn out a sheaf of wheat
or a loaf of bread. But see what comes of the connection,
when a pair or two of hands and hoping hearts join their
activities to the revolutions of that wheel. How gene-
rously nature divides with man the honour and joy of
the crop! How she works with all the sublime and
minute economies of the seasons in this partnership of
toil! The very shape of the earth's orbit, and all its
million-miled march-stages around the sun, as well as
the fine dew-distillery of the evening sky, are brought to
bear upon the production of those fields. See how the
light and heat are graduated to the growth of those acres
of Indian corn. See the temperature that nurses it into
the blade, then into the stalk, then into the silken settings
of the ear. See what purple curtains are hung around the
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113
horizon; what drying, jocund, fall winds blow; what a
ruddy-faced sun glows upon the ripening ears, reddening
them to Indian summer tints, as they peer from the
white lace drapery that enfolded them! Look at that
sight, and never more let a murmur of discontent stir
your lips when you talk of merchants, manufacturers, or
joint-stock companies, or any other occupation or profes-
sion whatever. Joint-stock companies, indeed! What
company of that sort ever formed on earth can compare
with the joint-stock company that carries on the smallest
farm? What a firm of active partners have we here!
What a diversity of capital is invested in the enterprise!
What sympathy and co-working! Where falls one drop
from the moistened brow of the farmer, there fall a
thousand of germinating dew from heaven; and the
combination touches the life of every plant and blade
with a new vitality and verdure.
There is another quality of the farmer's position which
should be noticed in this connection. Of all the utili-
tarian producers who work for human comfort, he is the
only one who feels an interest in the productions of his
industry above, and independent of, their money value.
The manufacturer sees in his wares the representatives
of so many dollars. They are mostly the production of a
single day, or of a week at longest. In this short period,
twenty-five per cent. of human, and seventy-five of
machine, labour have brought them from inception to
perfection, ready for market, all labelled, packed, cased,
or baled. Doubtless he feels no little satisfaction at the
quality as well as value of his goods, and estimates the
worth which their high reputation may realize to him.
I
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The Dignity and Comfort
To this extent, no further, goes out his heart-interest
towards them. As he walks among his well-corded
bales or banded boxes, the main chance is in his
eye and in his mind. There is no impulse to a cosy
patting, or any expression of attachment to them, by word
or look. Reduce bale, box, or package to its constituent
and positive value, and you have, as the residuum, a
certain number of red cents.
Now let us turn to the farmer and his productions.
Every animal he houses in winter, and pastures in
summer; every crop of grain, grass, or roots of different
names; every tree that flowers for him in spring or
fruits in autumn, radiates outward from his heart in so
many concentric circles of attachment, and it attaches
itself to them by nicely-graduated sentiments of interest.
They are a concentric extension of his family relations;
and they all resemble, in growth and development, the
family characteristics. They all have an infancy to be
nurtured with tenderness, care, hope, and faith. The first
circle of his family relationships, outside the human one.
of wife and children, of which he is the centre, is the
barn-yard community of his horses, cattle, sheep, &c.
Look at the family horse, a little grayish about the eyes
with age, but still called the colt, most likely. He was
young when the farmer set his first baby-boy on his back
for a ride around the yard. For ten years or more that
homely horse has borne the brunt and burden of family
service. His very neigh, as he hears the farmer stirring
in the morning, is a voice half human to every member
of the family circle, and has a speech in it the youngest
child understands. Half a dozen infants, within that
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115
period, have been held up in those broad, thick hands
to "pat pony" on the neck, or dabble their little fingers
in his mane.
What recognitions of sympathy have
passed between him and his master in toiling, burning
hours of summer, or when plunging through drifted
snows towards a common home in winter; in the stable,
in the field, and on the road! Does not the owner of
that horse see in him a worth that copper cents cannot
represent? Then there is that pair of broad-horned
Devonshire oxen. They were born under his roof-his
barn-roof, which is socially a continuation of that under
which his children were born. They are six years old,
of the same age as his second boy. His mother weaned
him and his father weaned them at the same time. How
many morning and evening hours he gave to the work!
And now they are large, staid, dignified oxen, with
necks hardened to the yoke. Their great round eyes
beam with intelligence and honesty. As he unchains
them from the plough, and lets down for them the pas-
ture bars, the uncouth and odd words he utters by way
of benediction may not be in the dictionary, but they
bring a new light to those horned faces, like the sunshine
of gladness. There is something more than the sheer
value of coined copper in those oxen which he sees and
feels. So it is with the remoter circles of his interests
and relationships-with the trees he plants, whose life is
to outlast his own and bear fruit for his children. They
have their infancy and their nursing. Almost next to the
baby's footing the carpet space erect for the first time,
is the ripening of the first apple, peach, or pear on one of
those little trees he has tended and nursed with such care.
I 2
116
The Dignity and Comfort
So it is with the growth, gathering, and enjoyment of all
his crops. The shortest-lived one of the whole requires
three months or more of skilful cultivation. Thus, all
he sows and reaps has a resemblance to the different
stages of human existence, and begets within him an
interest in his productions unknown to the banker,
merchant, and manufacturer.
There is another point of view in which the farmer's
position and occupation may be considered to his advan-
tage. The strongest love of country attaches itself to
the home he makes for himself and his children. Here
the most enduring forms of fervid patriotism have their
birth and culture. What a country would be if it were
one continuous city, and fed from foreign lands, we know
not; for no such case has ever existed. But it would
be impossible to conceive how strong local attachments
could ever be formed under such circumstances; and
where they do not exist, the love of country must be a
weak and uncertain sentiment. Take one of our large
cities, for example, and walk for half a mile along a
street of “brown stone fronts," or of stately brick houses,
all after the same pattern, insomuch that a child born in
one of them could not distinguish it from a dozen others
without the help of its nurse or companion who can read
the number. Here are houses, inside and out, as much
like each other as if cast in the same mould. One may
be a little nearer the end of the street than the other,
and that may tend to individualize it from the rest.
But how is a child to throw the tendrils of its young
affections around such a residence, and cling to it with
growing attachment through life? If travelling in distant
of the Farmer's Life.
117
lands in young manhood, how is he going to individualize
No. 10 from No. 11 or 12, and make it as distinct from
all other earthly localities as his own being is from all
other forms of human existence? What a small object
for his yearning affections that stream homeward over
the ocean is the engraved plate over his father's door,
differing only in one figure from its fellow on either side!
Then add to this faint and undeveloped localization the
contingency of rentage and removal two or three times
in a dozen years to other brick houses of the same mould,
and you have the poorest school under the sun for the
education of home attachments and strong-hearted pa-
triotism. Now, turn to the farmer, wherever he owns
and tills the soil, especially in New England and the
Middle States; go where you will, however few or many
the acres he calls his own, whether they lie in valley, on
hill-side, or mountain, his home is as strongly individua-
lized from that of his neighbour as his own face is from
that of the same man. His homestead stands out dis-
tinct, in prominent features, from all other inhabited
localities on earth. It is marked with rocks, nooks, and
dells that differ from all others ever grouped within a
mile's circuit. The very brook that threads the meadows
with its rippling music runs through his with a different
curve, under differently-jutting banks, making different
coves for the little speckled and red-gilled fishes, which
his children watch with eager-eyed interest, as if they
belonged to the farm as much as the pied calves in the
pasture, or the chickens in the barn-yard, or the honey-
bees by the garden-wall. The very birds and squirrels
that house themselves on the great walnut-tree on one
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The Dignity and Comfort
side and the cherry-tree on the other, are regarded as a
part of the family circle by his boys. The mountain or
valley scenery from his door, or from the opening in his
orchard, is all unlike the view that any other point com-
mands in the whole country round. Here, then, is a
home that the heart, in infancy or age, in joy and afflic-
tion, in all the vicissitudes of human life, can cling to,
with a separate object for every one of its thousand
tendrils to clasp in yearning embrace. Here is a home
that it can individualize, and grasp in its dreams in far-
off countries. His youngest child, before it can pro-
nounce the word, recognises, with its short-sighted vision,
this birthplace of its existence; and its little bead-eyes.
and baby-hands and voice run out after it, beaming and
bouncing and twittering with gladness in its mother's
arms as they return from a visit to their nearest neigh-
* bours. The love of country-that patriotism that en-
dures to the end, though that end be on the scaffold-
grows with the growth and strengthens with the strength
of these home attachments. In view of these results
and characteristics of his occupation, who has a right to
say that the farmer is not entitled to rank himself in the
very vanguard of society?—to feel that he stands as near
as any living man to the great virtues and destinies of
the nation?
-
There is an aspect of the farmer's position seldom
noticed, though it is well worthy of thoughtful attention.
I have already adverted to his co-partnerships. Let me
now ask you to consider those virtuous companionships
of nature, those peculiar surroundings, designed to shape
his character, and make him the noblest work of God,—
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119
an honest man.
It is not a fancy, but a fact, proved by
the character and experience of mankind, reaching back
to that early day when Jacob tended the flocks and herds
of double-dealing Laban. Not only sheep and cattle, but
men, are greatly affected and modified by their surround-
ings, animate and inanimate. In building a house, we
must have base lines, or perpendicular lines, or standards
to square and measure by. In building up a strong, well-
compacted moral character, we must have also a great
variety of outward circumstances to give a shaping bias
to the structure; not only written precepts of unerring
wisdom, and instructive examples of great human lives,
but material measures and models, contrasts and com-
parisons drawn from the lower orders of creation. For
illustration after counting in, at its full value, every
moral element that mingles in the character of the people
of England, it is easy to notice a peculiarity which must
have come from one of these material surroundings.
There is no wood on the face of the earth so enduring,
so iron-hearted, brave, and unbending as the old English
Oak. There is no people in the world so distinguished
for hardy, invincible, everlasting pluck as the English
race, especially in grappling with the elements, in
wrestling down the wrath and fury of the ocean with
their ships, in spanning straits, levelling mountains, and
in other similar enterprises. All their old indomitable
houses have a show of pluck about them, as if they said
to Time, "Now do your worst for three centuries to
come, and see what impression you can make upon us.
You see this pluck illustrated in the very wheels of
pleasure carriages and pony phaetons, which are as broad-
"}
120
The Dignity and Comfort
rimmed and heavy as those of our horse-carts and stage-
coaches. After allowing all that any one ought to claim
for the higher grade of shaping influences, I believe that
this peculiar pluck-characteristic comes, to a large extent,
from the influence of the English Oak upon the mind of
that people, from generation to generation. There it
stands for a thousand years, with its heart of iron, and
its leaves green with the dew of youth-a perpetual
model and illustration of all that is unbending, strong, and
sturdy in tempest and trial. Generation after generation
unconsciously square to it in building up a character.
Their most animating songs refer to its virtues. "Hearts
of Oak!" has been sung or shouted by British soldiers
and sailors in the breach of stormed cities and on the
reddened billows at Aboukir and Trafalgar. "I am a
chip of heart of oak" is another stirring battle-cry in
the conflict with the elements or with human enemies.
Now, can anyone believe that the English people would
ever have had this peculiar characteristic so fully de-
veloped, if all the trees of their island had been poplar,
palm, or palmetto? What heroic inspirations to noble
daring could come out of a song beginning with,
hearts of poplar !" "I am a chip of willow!" Just think
of it! of the effect of such comparisons upon the mind!
Now, then, if the farmer is not the most stable, honest,
truthful, upright man in the community, it is because he
sins against his surroundings, as well as against those
moral precepts and obligations which are addressed to
him in common with his neighbours of other occupations.
In the first place, there are the broad, blue heavens above
his head, with all their glorious purities, from morning
66 Ye
of the Farmer's Life.
121
He
till night, in spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
has more opportunity and occasion to study their features
than any other living man. He ploughs, sows, and reaps
by them. They are his weather-manual, and he peers
into their cloud-leaves for hints and instructions. The
sweep and revolution of planets, and all the sublime
phenomena of the sky-world, are familiarly associated in
his mind with seed-time and harvest. No one has such
a variety of inducements "to look erect at heaven SO
frequently, so inquiringly as he. Then he is out all day,
and returns at night, in the companionship of birds and
bees, that teach and illustrate the happiness of honest
and hopeful industry, and sing him their best songs to
cheer his own. Then there are his horse, cattle, sheep, and
dog, with their large and honest eyes, all illustrating
faithfulness, truth, and patience. These are virtuous sur-
roundings of a human life. They are outside helps to
the formation of that sterling, honest, well-rounded
character which should distinguish the farmer, and raise
him in the estimation of the community.
">
He wears
Let us next glance at his personal comforts and
capacities of enjoyment as compared with those of other
positions. His face is tanned and swart. His hands are
broad and hard, with large blunt fingers.
heavy boots in summer, of cow-hide, stiff and strong,
with heels shod with stout iron nails. Grant that he
may walk a little clumsily in haying and harvest, and his
shirt-sleeves be a little autumnal in shading in hoeing
time. Make the worst of all that, and then compare
these external appearances, at their most unfavourable
contrast, with those of the merchant, manufacturer, and
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The Dignity and Comfort
men of indoor occupation. There is something as an
offset on the page of personal comforts which may be
quoted to his advantage. We have all heard of persons
called epicures, men who make it the study of their
lives to please their palates with the most delicious viands
and drinks; men who would hunt a whole day for a
couple of tender birds, weighing an ounce each when
dressed; who are great amateurs in juleps of different
flavour, and punches iced and seasoned after an élite fashion.
Now compare all the relish with which such men pamper
their appetites with the personal enjoyments of that man.
of the bronzed face who earns and eats his bread by the
sweat of his brow. Why, the fabled deities of Olym-
pus, who breakfasted on ambrosia and nectar juleps, never
knew anything of the pleasure of appetite compared
with the farmer. See him now with his boys on a
cloudless July day in the meadow. See the strong and
graceful sway of those stalwart arms as they swing their
sharp and crooked scythes through the serried ranks of
herdsgrass and clover, tinted with daisies and buttercups,
and moistened by the last drops of dew that shall freshen
them under the morning sun. Listen to the crispy
ring of those long-curved blades, as at each stroke they
gather against their keen edges a three-feet sweep of
standing grass, and lay it down on the clean-shaven
sward, each severed stalk breathing out its life of fra-
grance on the morning air. Of all human activities and
employments, what one compares, for manly strength and
grace of motion, with the mower's steady swing and
tread through his meadows? It is the poetry of labour,
the crowning epic of human industry. Never are dews
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123
so pearly and pure, never is the air of heaven perfumed
with such fragrance, never sing the birds with such
extacy in their little palpitating hearts, as in haying
time. Did you ever note the happy things at this peculiar
season? How they bring out their best songs, and sing
"Sweet Home," "Over the Daisies," "On the Cherry
Tree," "The Bumble Bee's Anthem," "The Bobolink's
Waltz," "The Moss Nest," and other popular bird-airs
from the old masters that sung to Eve in Eden! Master
Bobolink is the Monsieur Julien of the meadow-choir,
and does up the facetious with inimitable grace and
special gusto in haying time. He never flies across the
meadow so many times a day as when he hears the
morning clip and cling of the scythe. He always brings
out his best songs for the mowers, in his most loquacious
and incomprehensible Dutch. Sticking to the court
dress of the middle ages, with the white lappets of his
coat touched up with the early dew,
with the early dew, what a song he pours
down into the farmer's ears, as he swaggers through
the air, playing off, in his roguery, the half-drunken
harlequin !
So much for bird and brook music provided for the
farmer, by which to regulate the beats of his industry.
Now look at him at one of his epicurean enjoyments,
at the half-past nine morning luncheon. Luncheon! I
hope you all know the meaning of that delicious insti-
tution of agricultural labour. If not, you may learn a
little of its significance at the sight under that wide-
spread elm. The farmer and his sons have girdled that
meadow with twenty swaths, and they are now seated in
a circle on the soft, cool grass under that ample shade.
،،
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The Dignity and Comfort
See him now remove the white cloth from the top of that
basket, and spread it over the circular space they enclose.
See him lift out one by one the articles of food and
refreshment the good wife and mother at home has put
up with such neatness and care,—bread and butter, cold
meats, a few pieces of pie, and dried beef cut in thin and
even slices. Then there is a plate of pickled beans or
cucumbers just struck through. Just think of the six
appetites that encircled that basket before it was un-
covered, and of the appetites they became at the sight
and savour of those delicious morsels! Talk of epicures !
of broiled woodcock, and pies of pheasant tongues!
What is all that, with its highest seasoning, compared
with the relish with which three hours' mowing has
seasoned these bits of common food to that ruddy-
browed farmer and his sons? The ambrosia of the idle
deities of Olympus was mere bean-porridge compared
with the dainty luxury of brown bread to the man who
grows and eats it by the sweat of his brow. It is in this
seasoning of toil that Nature and Providence bless the
humblest food to the farmer with a relish unknown to
the epicures of regal courts.
I
Drink is it? juleps? nectarine punches, and other
artistic mixtures to delight the taste? Look into that
deep, dark well, with the cold water just perceptible.
That is a more delicious. drink to the farmer than was
ever distilled from nectar for Jupiter. He wants no
golden or silver goblet to drink it from. The old oaken
bucket, swinging on its iron swivel, is better to him than
all the chased ware of luxury. Sce him at the windlass
or well-sweep, with his face red and dusty, and his
of the Farmer's Life.
125
mouth, eyes, and throat chafed with hay-seed. Hear the
big-bottomed bucket bump against the moss-covered
stones as it descends. There is the splash, and the cold,
gurgling sound at the filling; and now it slowly ascends,
with a spray of water-drops dashing against the wall,
every one giving a new edge to the farmer's thirst.
There it is, standing on the curb before him, and it
mirrors the moistened and reddened face which bends to
the draught. There is a drink for you that nature has
distilled for the farmer's lips the like of which fabled
Olympus never knew.
So with sleep. How many thousands of men clothed
in fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day, in the
most gorgeous abodes that wealth can furnish, would
give half their fortunes for the deep enjoyment of the
farmer's slumber!
Let us now consider that aspect of the farmer's position
which he is most apt to view in a disparaging light, to
his own disadvantage and discomfort. No impression.
has been more hurtful to his mind than the ungrateful
notion that his carnings are small, slow, and hard, when
compared with those of other occupations. The disturb-
ing question often creeps into his heart and comes to his
lips, how many merchants and manufacturers make more
money in one year than he can in ten with all his close
economy and hard toil. Who can tell? He cannot, nor
can we. Their number may be quite large, but not half
so large as the list of merchants and manufacturers, each
of whom has lost more in a single month than all the
farmers in ten miles square for fifty years. There is
something on the other side of the account current of
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The Dignity and Comfort
these occupations. The principle of compensation runs
through and underlies all their issues. In the scrub
race for riches, a few will win the prizes at the end of
the course. They will record their names among the
upper ten or the lower twenty. But the hundreds who
started with them, and swamped their hopes and fortunes
in utter bankruptcy, are hardly noticed by an incidental
mention. If there were not some, if there were not many
men of great wealth in these precarious and hazardous
occupations, the odds against their line of business would
be greatly disproportionate compared with the farmer's.
gains. He greatly underrates the comfort and dignity of
his own position to envy them. Wherein has Providence
ordained that his condition should equal theirs? How
does the compensation principle of nature's laws work in
his behalf, to equalize the long run of his life with their
average career? It does it in this way: it makes his
earnings sure, however slow they may be. Are his yearly
returns smaller than theirs? They are merely less the
discount that Providence charges him as compensation for
guaranteeing to him a safe and steady income; for shel-
tering his earthly all against the sudden hazards and
sweeping ruin to which the merchant is exposed every
year of his business life; for shutting out of his lot the
heart-wearying perils of protested paper, bank payments,
and the thousand annoyances of expanded credit and
fraudulent debtors. Think of that. How can he have
the heart to murmur at the discount he must allow from
his yearly income for all these blessed exemptions? Slow
earnings! small fortunes! O, neighbour Broadback,
never give place to that ungrateful thought for a single
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127
moment. It is unworthy of you. It suggests a most
unjust comparison with the lot of others not half so
favoured as your own. "Did I not agree with you for
a penny a day?" asked the master of the vineyard, in
Scripture, of the envious and complaining labourer.
When a similar murmur nestles among your morning,
noonday, or evening thoughts, realize that Providence
puts the same question to you, slightly altered: "Did
I not engage to protect you against those harrowing
anxieties, those daily perils of property which eat into
the souls of men of other occupations, and enslave them
all their lives long to the fear of poverty and the love of
riches? Did I not invest your little earthly all in the bank
of nature, which never suspended a dividend to a human
stockholder since the first dew-drop fell on the trees of
Eden? When the paper banks of cities contracted or
suspended their issues, when fortunes built upon fictions
crumbled to the dust, and alarm and ruin reigned in all
the great centres of trade, were not your deposits safe?
Did nature contract its dividends to you by a single dew-
drop? by a single sunbeam? by scanting the issues of a
single rain-cloud? Did the disaster that overwhelmed
thousands of merchants, manufacturers, and bankers
touch the sustenance of your family by a single kernel
of corn? Did one blade of it pale and droop in your
field for all the withering of ostentatious wealth you
witnessed at a distance?"
But I am confident that this murmuring at slow
earnings has been largely cured by the experiences of
the past year; that the most complaining farmer, seeing
the sudden crash and ruin to which the mercantile and
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The Dignity and Comfort
manufacturing interests are exposed, has come to a
clearer perception of the comfort and dignity of his
position; that he feels more than reconciled to that
discount charged on his income, as an offset for the gua-
ranty of Providence against the corroding cares, hazards,
and dangers through which a comparative few obtain
larger fortunes by other occupations.
There are a great many kinds of property that con-
stitute wealth, its equivalent or representative.
Take
those fortunes which farmers are most tempted to envy,
and you will find hay, wood, and stubble alternating in
them from bottom to top, or values which are fictitious,
arbitrary, and precarious. A breath of suspicion, a
whisper on 'Change, may wither some of these clements
of wealth in a moment. They are appropriately and
expressively called fancy stocks; and millions of money
and tens of millions of promises to pay are invested in them.
They are soap-bubbles, brilliant with the gorgeous hues of
money of all metals, but they collapse to a sediment of froth
at the first adverse wind. Then there is another set of
securities, ranking higher in the scale of reality, but based
upon mutable values and subject to sudden and sweeping
deterioration. They include shares in joint-stock com-
panies, and in speculating enterprises, in which one stakes
his money almost on a game of chance. In these two
classes of reputed property we have the hay and stubble
of wealth. Next comes the wood element, or the owner-
ship and rentage of city buildings, corner lots, "brown
stone fronts," and the like. This is so substantial and
permanent in seeming, that it is called real estate. But
it is not fairly entitled to that term. It may produce a
of the Farmer's Life.
129
large income to the owner in times of reckless speculation,
luxurious living, and expensive show. But in times of
depression and financial collapse, it may not produce the
taxes upon it.
The whole of it yields no positive or
independent values to the occupant. The rentage is an
outgo to him, a bill of expense, to be charged over against
the profits he may derive from his capital and labour
invested in other species of property. The owner pockets
money entered on the wrong, the unproductive, the
debit side of the debtor's ledger. I repeat, therefore,
that such property is not strictly entitled to the term
real estate, because it is not positively and independently
reproductive. It may be so
It may be so much more substantial
and safe, in the long run, than fancy stocks and paper
bonds of moonshine companies, embellished with beau-
tifully-engraved vignettes, as to be called real in compa-
rison; but the only real property, in an absolute sense,
is that represented by cultivated farms. It is in this
intrinsic value of land, ploughed, sown, and reaped for
generations, that the farmer has the advantage over every
other property-owner in the community. All his hard-
soiled acres are on the right side of the ledger. His
revenues from them are positive values to himself and
to the world around him. They are food for man and
beast; vital sustenance, without which money would
have no value and wealth no existence. The productions
of his farm are real, absolute, and independent, in positive
worth, of all the fluctuations to which mercantile pro-
perty and stocks of every kind are subject. His lands
will not burn nor blow away, nor founder in the tempest.
There they are for ever, softened and moistened by the
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130
The Dignity and Comfort
same rain and dew, warmed to green and exuberant life
by the same sunbeams, ready to give back to the tiller's
hand manifold rewards for his toil. If he and his de-
scendants deal honestly with them, they never weary nor
wane, but wax more abundaut in production for a
thousand years.
Go to old England, to the parts settled
and cultivated by the rural Saxons ten centuries ago. From
the time they first turned the virgin sod with their rude
wooden ploughs to the present moment, those lands have
become more and more productive in their revenues,
until, at this moment, they stand unrivalled on the globe.
A thousand consecutive harvests have not exhausted but
enriched them. There is a real estate for you.
Go to
that old Saxon farm in Sussex, on which some follower of
Hengist or Horsa squatted before the English language
was born; reckon up the value of its thousand harvests,
including that which has just been gathered, and compare
the productive value of those acres to mankind with the
worth of fancy stocks, or the rent of a brown stone front,
or of a marble palace for the sale of calicoes. The only
estate which Divine Providence ordained to be a real and
everlasting value, in the material world, it has entrusted,
as the highest honour of human industry, to the steward-
ship and occupancy of the farmer.
After all that has been said, felt, and secretly mur-
mured of the slow earnings and small properties of
American farmers, after all the disparaging comparisons
with merchants, manufacturers, and bankers, which they
have been in the habit of arraying against themselves,
they constitute, if they did but realize it, the great
aristocratic democracy of the country. Please admit the
of the Farmer's Life.
131
term-an aristocratic democracy—the hoi polloi of even
fortune; the independent owners and tillers of nearly all
the productive acres of this great continent; that fast-
anchored yeomanry that mediate between Providence
and all other classes of the community, and feed them
daily with the productions of their industry. It is for
this mission and position that I would say to them:
Cultivate and cherish a proper sense of your dignity.
Give up the habit of dividing yourselves into individual
atoms, and comparing yourselves, thus isolated, with men
of city wealth and standing, with the Girards, Astors,
and the merchant princes of commerce.
You see what
comes of such comparisons-first, a depressing sense of
disparity of fortune; then a sense of littleness and
insignificance, which is all unworthy of you. Don't take
off your hat in obsequious reverence to the Girards,
Astors, or any speculating capitalists of the country.
Who were they, or who are the men that have succeeded
them, in the ranks of wealth? They are the oligarchy,
are they, that own all the banks, warehouses, factories,
and shipping of the nation? Grant that. But why
should this show of wealth impress you with a sense of
inferiority as a class? Empty the vaults of all those
banks into one great depository, and all the goods in
those warehouses, and all the bales, wrought and un-
wrought, in those factories, and all the value of those
ships, and the worth of all the city lots and edifices from
one end of the Union to the other; take an inventory of
all the real and personal estates of all other classes in the
land, and compare it all with the active, indestructible
wealth of the farmers of America, and see how small it is
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132
The Dignity and Comfort
in comparative value. Why, the whole continent, with
all its millions upon millions of cultivated acres, belongs
to the farmers. See how the plough is breaking up the
measureless solitudes of the Western World. To watch
the movement of one share, the process seems slow. To
watch the growth of one farmer's estate, the accumulation
seems slow.
But unite farmer to farmer, and measure
the furrows they turn, the harvests they reap, the homes
they build, the wealth they win as a class, and you will
have an approximate idea of their relative position in
society. See how these noiseless, industrial hosts are
subduing hill, valley, and prairie from ocean to ocean. I
believe the farmer can still wield the axe who felled the
first tree north of the Ohio. Middle-aged men can
remember when the whole population of Northern Illinois
was gathered at night within one picket-fort for protec-
tion against the Indians; when all the great fertile world
west of the Mississppi was, virtually, an unexplored
country. See how the farmer's plough has turned and
overturned, until millions have followed in its wake, and
planted great and populous states, with cities, towns, and
villages of almost fabulous growth. The plough moves
on in its God-honoured mission and might, turning back
furrows against the Rocky Mountains on either side. All
the vast space between those mountains and the Missis-
sippi is but one land or stetch for the farmer yeomanry
of America; all west of those mountains to the Pacific
is but another. The child, doubtless, lives who will see,
ere his locks are grey, both these almost measureless
intervals turned by the farmer's share, and reaped by his
sickle. What chiefly gives power and position to the
of the Farmer's Life.
133
aristocracy of Great Britain? Why, the ownership of
the land of that island. Well, the farmers of America
own a continent, containing the space and agricultural
capacity of a hundred such islands; and they will own
it to the end of time. Without any laws of primogeni-
ture, all the arable acres of the northern half of the New
World will be their possession and heritage.
Class-feeling is un-American, undemocratic. Still, the
farmers of America, in justice to themselves, should be
animated with that esprit de corps, with that sense of the
dignity of their occupation and position, that shall raise
them above all self-disparaging comparisons with other
classes of the community, measured by any standard
whatever.
We have noticed several distinguishing aspects of the
farmer's position, the dignity, comfort, poetry, and pa-
triotic tendencies of his life and occupation. What he
has been in past years of self-depression as a citizen is
no criterion whereby to measure the mental status and
stamina to which he ought and is yet to attain. Sur-
rounded by such influences, standing in such relations to
Nature, Providence, and his fellows of other occupations;
living and labouring, from morning until night, in such
close companionship with the seasons, with all the beau-
tiful economies and picturesque sceneries of creation;
with all the living literature of its glory-bound volume
turned over by day-leaves before his eyes; with all these
perpetual and gratuitous teachings of the outward world
on one hand, and with all the fountains of human litera-
ture which stream towards him on the other, he sins
against his duty and privilege if he does not reach and
134
The Dignity and Comfort
sustain the best-rounded mental character, the strongest
stature of sterling common sense and general knowledge,
of any member of the community.
Let by-gones be by-gones. "Let the dead past bury
its dead." Let the farmer put off the fetters of its asso-
ciations and measurements as Samson put from his limbs
the hampering cords of the Philistines.
Let him come
forth and stand in the sunlight of this mighty present
that is dawning upon the world, and take his true posi-
tion in its dignities and duties as a man best qualified
to fill them by his large compass of practical and varied
knowledge. Shall the cockney upstarts of fashion,
luxury, and city-life call him a clodhopper hereafter ?—
him, a prime landlord of this great and beautiful crea-
tion, on whom its Almighty Architect has conferred such
high trusts, and such pre-eminent means and motives of
self-culture and elevation ? He a "clodhopper," whom
God has put to the highest school of heart-and-mind
education ever opened on earth? Let by-gones be by-
gones, I say again. Let the obsolete standards of the
past be buried with it as the tomahawk and scalping-
knife of Indian warriors are buried with them. Look at
the educating agencies and influences which the present
has brought to the American farmer. We have glanced
at the schooling which Nature gives him in her three-
quarters' term of outdoor instruction from seed-time to
the ingathering of his year's harvests. When his barns,
cellar, and garret are filled with the produce of his fields,
Nature looks abroad for a few days with the ruddy smile
of Indian summer, as if she said to the Earth, "Well
done; thou hast been faithful to man. Wrap thy white
of the Farmer's Life.
135
mantle around thee, and enter upon thy winter's rest;
while man, whom thou hast so bountifully fed and
clothed for his daily toil, shall enter upon his, and
gather, until spring, intellectual strength and enjoyment
from the living world of thought which the printed page
of its varied literature shall bring to him at his fireside."
To all men the God of Providence and grace has given
one day in seven for rest and religious devotion. To the
farmer, He has not only given this day with a peculiar
relish for its enjoyment, but also the three winter months
of the year, in which to store his mind from those bound-
less sources of knowledge which the Press has brought
to his door. In the first place, the literature connected
with his occupation exceeds, in extent and variety, that
of all other industrial professions in the world,—a litera-
ture to which great and cultivated minds, in all civilized
countries, are contributing their best thoughts and
learning. Doubtless there have been more gifted pens
and tongues employed upon the subject of agriculture
within the last five years than there were, half a century
ago, upon all the other sciences, arts, and occupations
put together. Just glance at the contributions which
these three autumnal months will bring to the storehouse
of this agricultural literature. Think of the thousands
of town, county, state, and national fairs, conventions,
and conversaziones that have taken place in Europe and
America since the first of last September, of the thou-
sands of eloquent orations and elaborate essays these
occasions have brought forth. And " a chiel was amang
them tacking notes," and, "faith, he has printed them,
too," for the farmers of the world. The "chiel" of the
136
The Dignity and Comfort
Printing Press-the man who, with his alternating bits
of inked pewter, gives ubiquitous immortality to human
thoughts-was at them all, and he has printed them.
He has printed for the farmer's library the grand oration
of William Ewart Gladstone at old England's Chester,-
the most splendid orator in Europe; the deep-thoughted
and brilliant essay of Ralph Waldo Emerson, at Old
Massachusett's Concord; and hundreds upon hundreds of
other speeches on the same subject. Glance at the mil-
lions of these new pages contributed to the farmer's
instruction and enjoyment. See how all the "ologies,
onomies, and osophies" of the world of science pour their
treasures into this annual offering to his mind. See with
what gifts they do homage to the first human occupation.
inside and outside of Eden. See how these sciences and
arts-these Oriental Magi of the intellectual world-
bring their frankincense and myrrh to the cradle of the
great primeval industry in reverence for its mission on
earth. See them come, with God's great Bible leading
the procession, and lighting the way. Here is chemistry
with its crucible, geology with its hammer, and astro-
nomy with its telescope, followed by all the ologies both
great and small, each opening its cabinet of jewels for
the general offering.
Thus, the professional literature provided for the
farmer, or that pertaining to his occupation, embraces a
vast range of varied and elevating knowledge. But all
this is merely the literature of his manual, of his hand-
book, which he may consult daily in seed-time and
harvest, just as the mariner consults his chart and navi-
gation-manual while guiding his vessel across the sea.
of the Farmer's Life.
137
The farmer need not give his winter months, with their
long evenings, to this agricultural, this professional read-
ing, but to every department of general literature that
can interest, cultivate, and expand his mind. In this
respect he has an advantage over all who are called
professional men. The lawyer, physician, the college
professor, and even the minister, must each confine him-
self mainly to professional reading, in order to fit himself
for the position he fills. Not so with the farmer. The
rainy days and corner moments of the spring, summer,
and autumn months will suffice generally for the perusal
of those books and periodicals containing the principles
and suggestions he is to apply to his occupation, leaving
his winter for the enjoyment of works of history, poetry,
belles lettres, and general literature. It is for this pecu-
liar advantage that the farmer of the present and the
future day ought to be the best-read man in the commu-
nity, the best fitted, by a wide range of practical know-
ledge, for those civil posts and duties to which such
knowledge is indispensable.
Then there is another circumstance which enhances
the value of this advantage. No man in the community
can establish and maintain such a regular routine of
reading as the farmer. He generally resides at some
distance from the thickly-settled town or village, and is
less subject to those interruptions to which men of the
town are exposed. His books and periodicals are pro-
fitable and enjoyable substitutes for the social life and
entertainments which occupy so many evening hours in
the cities. Evening after evening, for consecutive months,
he can sit down to the companionship of these books,
138
The Dignity and Comfort
and commune with the most brilliant minds of all ages,
and feel his own illumined and enlarged by every even-
ing's fellowship with their thoughts.
I would earnestly press this regular system of reading
upon the farmer as that source of enjoyment which flows
more freely for him than for men of other occupations.
I would say to him: Regulate your business so as to take
full advantage of this enjoyment. Do not let late night
work in the field or on the road rob you of these reading
hours. Make them rank among the first values of your
life. Let the thoughts you harvest from the printed
page rank in duty and worth next to the golden sheaves
of wheat you garner into your barns. Take a lesson of
life from the old adage, “It is the last ounce that breaks
the camel's back." It is the late hour that breaks the
farmer's, and makes the drudgery of his occupation. It
is the extra effort and the extra time that bend his con-
stitution and sap the sinews of his life. It is the last,
extra acquisition of property he cannot enjoy that vir-
tually enslaves him to unrequited toil.
One word in regard to the acquisition of books, and
I have done. Every body is familiar with the saying
of the poor cottage-renter in Ireland, "The pig pays the
rent." The poorest occupant of a mud-walled cabin in
that country manages to buy a young pig, and to feed
it to the value of fifteen or twenty dollars, without
feeling very sensibly the little daily expenditure. I
would say to every farmer: Adopt the same economy
in regard to the ownership or rentage of useful literature
for yourself and family. Do for the God-built temple
of your mind what the poor Irish peasant does for his
of the Farmer's Life.
139
mud-walled cottage. Set apart something that shall yield
a certain revenue every year for books. Adopt his
source of income, if you please, for nothing could be more
easy, convenient, and sure. Take a young pig early in
March or April of every year, and say, what this shall
bring in the market next Christmas shall go for books.
With honest feeding, it will buy at Christmas twenty
volumes of useful and entertaining reading for your
winter evenings. In a few years you will have a li-
brary for your home that would do honour to any pro-
fessional or literary man at the nation's capital. Take in
your children as partners with you in all the enjoyments.
and anticipations which that library-pig will purchase,
and you may be certain that they will feed it with extra
care, to make it buy at Christmas a thousand extra
leaves of literature for their enlightenment and profit.
Is there any young farmer or farmer's son present, just
entering upon agricultural life for himself? Let me urge
him to adopt this simple plan at the outset, and watch the
process and result, and see if he does not realize all I have
predicted. Come, now; just try it at once; try it this year;
commence this very month; and what a library you will
have at Christmas for the evenings of next winter!
In conclusion, let by-gones be by-gones, I thrice repeat.
Whatever the farmer may have been in the past, if the
young generation of North American agriculturalists,
who will soon come to possess the landed estate of this
continent, shall not be men taking the first rauk in
mental capacity and cultivation, it will be for the reason
that they have ignored or trampled underfoot their golden
opportunities for attaining to such a standing in the world.

SPEECHES,
SHORT ADDRESSES, &c.
INTRODUCTION.
As a considerable number of readers of this volume may
be interested in some of the incidents connected with the
author's personal history and experience, he introduces
these "Short Speeches, Addresses, &c.," with those de-
livered at a Testimonial Meeting in Manchester, and
at a Public Welcome given him by the people of his
own native village in Connecticut. The reports of these
meetings are reproduced verbatim, as they appeared in
the newspapers at the time; though the author would
have preferred, if it had been proper, to have modified
or omitted many of the flattering terms applied to him-
self on those occasions. But it is not for these flattering
references to his own labours that they are introduced
here, but to show that the spirit and object of such
labours were regarded with so much sympathy both at
home and abroad. The expression of that sympathy and
approbation which he received from the neighbours and
friends of his youth in his own native town, as the
reader may easily conceive, were especially gratifying,
and the welcome they gave him will ever be held in
his memory as the most precious experience in his
personal history.

ATA
Testimonial Speeches at Manchester,
OCTOBER 5TH, 1849.
Copied from the “Examiner and Times" of October 6th, 1849.
A
MEETING of the friends of peace was held at the
League Rooms, Newall's Buildings, Market Street,
on Thursday afternoon, with a view of adopting a series
of resolutions, to be embodied in an address, or testi-
monial, to the transatlantic advocate of "Peace and
universal brotherhood," Elihu Burritt, on this his final
visit to Manchester, before returning to his native land.
The meeting was most numerously and respectably
attended. Mr. George Wilson presided. Mr. Burritt
was attended by Mr. Amasa Walker, a banker, a member
of the legislature of Massachusetts, but better known as
a writer on political economy in America.
The Chairman said: “ Gentlemen, we are met together
this afternoon for the purpose of presenting to our dis-
tinguished friend, on the eve of his departure for his
native land, some memorial showing the profound in-
terest we have taken in his proceedings since he visited
this country. We are about to take our leave of one of
144
Testimonial Speeches
that class of truly great men to whom humanity, the
cause of civilization, and the human race are more in-
debted, in my humble judgment, than to nine-tenths of
the professed conquerors since the days of William the
Norman downwards. Gentlemen, these men appear
amongst us when least expected, when most needed, and
from places most distant and dissimilar. They show that
human nature, under whatever circumstances, even
under the greatest disadvantages, as of place or birth,-
produces men who, whether coming from the wild
prairies, or the back woods of America, or born in the
back streets of some of the thronged cities of Europe,
spring from obscurity by the innate force of character
within them, to become the great moral pioneers of
civilization, to sow the seeds of intelligence and thought
amongst us, and to incorporate their opinions, after
many struggles, in the laws which govern society and
the world. Gentlemen, I need not tell you that the
present age, above all others, has been prolific of such
men. I need not say in this room that the present
time, above all others, has produced such men and given
them occupation. I need not say that, thanks to steam
and science, the present age has given us facilities for
bringing such men into closer contact, in order that, by
concentrated opinion, their powers might be felt to a
greater extent throughout the world. I need not tell
you that in the first rank of these men stands our friend
Mr. Burritt. And be the information pleasant or un-
pleasant to him, it is my duty to tell him to-day that
he has been arraigned at the bar of public opinion in
this country; it has tried his merits and measured his
at Manchester, October 5th, 1849. 145
strength, and by an irrevocable judgment, against which
there is no appeal, it has decided that he shall take his
place with the Clarksons, and Howards, and Frys of our
native country. Gentlemen, there are people in this
room, as there are many external to it, who agree, in
all probability, with Mr. Burritt in nine-tenths of his
opinions. There are some who take the liberty of
dissenting from him on the abstract principle of peace.
They are under the impression that, do what you will,
occasion will arise when all nations are called upon, from
some cause or other, to apply physical force to the solution
of difficulties. We are not met to discuss this question
now, but I take the liberty of saying this, that I have
scarcely met any person whose opinions did not in some
degree accord with those of Mr. Burritt; and I have
scarcely met any man, whether he agreed with the whole
of Mr. Burritt's opinions or stopped half way, who
hesitated to tell you that he was on the right track;
that whether he should secure a world's convention
which should settle peace for ever, or give us treaties
with arbitration clauses binding all nations to submit
their future differences to arbitration, he is undoubtedly
on the right track, and they cannot refuse to follow
him whom previously they refused to allow to lead
them. Gentlemen, I don't know what were his expecta-
tions when he first came amongst us. I cannot tell to
what extent he expected a return for his labours; how
it was, whether he saw around him the materials
of which he should form those two great Conventions
which he alone almost was instrumental in forming, and
carrying on successfully his pursuits, until he held one
L
146
Testimonial Speeches
of the greatest and most memorable congresses; yes, I
will say, and I can say as a spectator from a distance,
one of the greatest congresses ever held, and that
amongst one of the most brilliant and most martial
peoples in Europe.
"I cannot say what were his impressions when he first
visited this country. Doubtless, like all those who visit
England, he visited St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey,
and beheld two noble structures, erected for the worship
of God, and the propagation of the Gospel of peace, con-
verted into little better than exhibitions, where the
highest efforts of human art had been devoted to sur-
round with glory the death of some of our great warriors;
and if he passed through their aisles, and surveyed them,
he would find how few of these monuments there were
dedicated to that class of men whom he most delighted
to honour. Very little, therefore, would he take from
those places, in my opinion, which would lead him to
expect that the people of England were a peace-loving
and a peace-seeking people. From Westminster Abbey,
in all probability, he crossed to the House of Lords,
where were assembled the finest aristocracy,' as it is
described, in the world. There he found amongst the
representatives of the highest offices of religion, and the
highest officers of law, the Tudors and Plantagenets
scattered around him; there he would find the highest
man in the whole House of Lords, the man most re-
spected, the man who had possessed the greatest political
power in that house, perhaps in Europe-that man was
a soldier. Gentlemen, he then passed to the House of
Commons. 'This,' says he, 'at all events, this is the
C
at Manchester, October 5th, 1849. 147
people's House; here I shall find the representatives of
the great manufacturing and commercial and agricul-
tural classes of the country.' He makes inquiry, and
finds that 148 belong to the two branches of the pro-
fession. It happens to be the supply night, and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer brings forward his Budget
of Ways and Means for the year; he says, £46,000,000—
£28,000,000 for interest on the debt, £18,000,000 for the
army, navy, and ordnance. 'Rather more than usual
this year,' says the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but
these are not times, you know, to reduce any of our
armaments.' The House cheers the sentiment, and the
Chancellor sits down. In five minutes, some honourable
member, seeking economy, rises in his place to propose
some economical measure, and there is a general rush
towards the door. That is his experience of the people's
House. In all probability, he went home. Next day he
takes up the daily papers. He sees five columns of names
before him the Queen has had a levée. He looks over
those names, and finds, here and there, a stray mayor or
two; here and there a few others are looking out, per-
haps for promotion, and the great bulk of these names
are comprised in the army and navy lists. Well, Gentle-
men, I say, after he looked at this superstructure of
society, this higher part of society, the Corinthian capital,
as they call themselves, his heart must have been sick if
he ever expected, in this country, with such materials, to
build up the mighty fabric which he has erected. But,
Gentlemen, Mr. Burritt looked further and deeper, and
knew better; he knew that these were the ornamental
parts, and the ornamental parts alone; he knew that
L 2
148
Testimonial Speeches
they might be the Corinthian capital, but that the plinth,
the base of the column, were sound to the heart's core,
and he found it so. And it was from these classes-the
shop-keepers and the manufacturers, the men who dig
your docks and your mines-who make your railways
and your machines-it was from the merchants and
traders, and, if you will, agriculturalists of this empire,-
it was to that class he appealed, and from them he found
support in his noble mission. Gentlemen, at all times
such a visit as Mr. Burritt's would have been delightful;
but at this time to us, as financial reformers, it is
peculiarly so. He knows very well that the struggle is
coming on, deny it, and try to escape it, as they will,
and that very soon it must come to close quarters. He
knows that there is a large class in this country who are
heart-sick of war taxes, and heart-sick of paying them;
and that it is their intention, be they right or wrong, to
apply the pruning-knife with very little mercy whenever
they get the opportunity. They have never disguised
their sentiments, and I see no reason why they should
disguise them on the present occasion. Now, on all their
applications, they have been invariably told that this
is not the time to reduce our armaments. 'You would
not leave us unarmed, subject to the mercy of any tyrant
in Europe?' 'Why,' Mr. Burritt says, 'follow me,
Gentlemen: I will provide you a remedy. There are, if
you like, the financial reformers to provide you a remedy,
by which you shall settle your differences; by which you
shall, if you like, simultaneously procure a disbandment
of the forces; by which, without sacrificing one iota of
the protection you at present enjoy, you shall get other
at Manchester, October 5th, 1849. 149
countries to join with you in reducing their armaments.'
Under these circumstances, I say, the visit of Mr. Burritt
is to us particularly gratifying, and as financial reformers,
as friends of humanity, aye, as friends of civilization in
every shape, we welcome his visit to this country.
Gentlemen, to me it looks nothing more than a dream.
I recollect when he announced his coming by what he
called his Sparks from the Anvil. Why, since he has been
amongst us, he has struck off many sparks, not material
sparks which glitter and expire in a moment, but sparks
from his soul's anvil within him-lights, if you like, and
corruscations of true genius, which shall burn as the
lights of truth, brighter and brighter, and unextinguished
for ever. Gentlemen, he leaves this country, I will say,
much improved by his mission and by his visit; and
when on winter's nights he shall sit by his own fireside,
reviewing his labours, and seeing good seed springing up
and taking root, let him take this consolation to himself
-that, although no great column has been erected to
celebrate his visit, no Gazette has chronicled his career,
there are thousands whose thoughts will follow him across
the Atlantic, and who will have already erected him
within their own hearts monuments far more noble, far
more enduring, than any of those splendid works of art
he leaves behind him."
John Bright, Esq., M.P., then said: "I have, on very
many occasions, been permitted to offer observations in
this room to gentlemen who have assembled here. But
I know not that on any past occasion I have felt a more
perfect sympathy with the objects of our meeting than I
feel at this time. We are called together for a very
150
Testimonial Speeches
interesting purpose, that of testifying our sympathy and
regard for our friend Elihu Burritt, from the United
States; and by that act also to show how strong is our
reverence and regard for that great principle of universal
peace of which he has become so distinguished an apostle.
Mr. Burritt came to this country about three years ago. I
had the satisfaction of hearing him the very first time he
spoke in public, which was in the presence of a considerable
number of persons in the employ of my brothers and
myself, at Rochdale, and who were gathered together on
that interesting occasion, when we celebrated the total
abolition of the Corn Laws. I don't know that there was
anything in Mr. Burritt's position which should have led
us to expect such results as have followed from his visit.
He was not a native of this country; and yet, I believe,
amongst Englishmen, we never consider Americans to be
foreigners. I never heard the term 'foreigner' applied
to an American, and I hope it never will be. But
Mr. Burritt came here a stranger. He was not a native
of the country; he was not a man whose reputation for
his public actions had much preceded him; he was not
a man of reputed wealth. He came as 'The Learned
Blacksmith,' and we found out, not that he had all the
learning he was reputed to possess-though we never had
any reason to doubt it but we found that he had that
which was much better than learning-a disinterested
and unquenchable zeal for the advancement of those great
principles with which his name is now for ever identified.
I confess I am myself much surprised at the results of his
visit. The conference at Brussels, and the conference at
Paris, are events of no ordinary kind. They show that,
at Manchester, October 5th, 1849. 151
notwithstanding the ridicule which ignorant or evil-dis-
posed persons wish to throw upon this movement, it is now
one in which a large class of intelligent and excellent in-
dividuals in all countries take a deep and lasting interest.
The Paris Congress has had its speeches, its documents,
and its resolutions published in all parts of the world, and
it was attended by men from various countries, who must
necessarily, in after years, exercise a great influence upon
the populations amongst which they reside. In this
country, more especially, we all know that, wherever we
travel, we find a number of most excellent persons who
are becoming absolutely enthusiastic on behalf of this
question. It is now beginning to be discussed at the
fireside, as all other great questions have been discussed
before they have finally triumphed; and it is obtaining a
hold amongst the people, which certainly gives us the
strongest ground for believing that it not only cannot
die, but it must grow and grow until it becomes ultimately
successful. I spoke of the ridicule which has been thrown
upon this question. But every good thing since the
world began has had ridicule to contend with, and
nothing had more than Christianity itself; and there is
nothing which has succeeded in our own times for which
the same up-hill fight has not had to be made. Yet,
if true, and if laid hold of and worked out by earnest,
zealous, devoted men, we find that ridicule dies away,
and sometimes those who were most loud and constant
in their ridicule have afterwards been loudest in their
acclamations and praises. But they tell us that war is
of so very great antiquity. We know that, and so is
vice of every kind; and it would be an equally good argu-
152
Testimonial Speeches
ment that we should not endeavour to extirpate vice,
because it had existed for so long a time, as that we
should allow war to exist because of its great antiquity.
But all these fleets that are afloat, and all the armies
that are now enrolled, are not arguments against the
peace movement, but in its favour. The most which
those who advocate their continuance can say in their
favour is, that they are 'necessary evils;' but if they
are evils at all, surely we ought to do our best to support
those who are trying to remove them. Now, the Eng-
lish have been a very warlike people, and I confess the
details of their wars are the page of history which I least
like to peruse, and which I derive the least profit from
reading. But there are no reasons why, if we have been
warlike in past times-that is, approximating to the
savage state—why we should not, since we are improv-
ing in other things, make ourselves less savage than we
were; and having paid so much for war, and finding so
little as a result, there is good reason for all men to take
up the cause of peace in future.
1, (6
Now, I maintain it is impossible to have peace in Eu-
rope with two millions of men in arms. It is impossible
to avoid squabbles and conflicts, where you have ships
of war, with petty despots on their decks, traversing
every ocean, and coming into contact with foreign fleets
about one matter or another. It is impossible to avoid
this if you have light-headed, hot-headed men—as we have
had as envoys from one country to another, who, by
foolish expressions or irritating language, provoke the
same in return. When quarrels are bred, the honour of
the nation is said to be at stake, and war and bloodshed
at Manchester, October 5th, 1849. 153
are the only mode in which they are to be settled. But
war destroys everything that is good-national credit,
national prosperity. The world never saw a devastation
equal to that which war produces; while, on the other
hand, industry and peace are the circumstances under
which everything that is good on earth grows and be-
comes distributed amongst and enjoyed by the great
mass of our fellow-creatures on the earth's surface. Now,
I believe our friend Mr. Burritt is not here to-day,
strictly, upon any other ground than as a missionary in
the great cause of universal peace. He came from the
United States to this country, and he has devoted three
years to the most disinterested and arduous labours,-
arduous, because he was fighting against all these ob-
stacles which interested and selfish men offer to any
movement like this; and I think the results of his la-
bours during those three years must have equalled his
expectations, unless they were indeed unreasonable; for
they have exceeded any expectations that I could have
formed as to the amount of success with which he was
destined to meet. He is now going back to the United
States. He is not, it is true, Envoy Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary from the Court of St. James's
to the capital at Washington; but he may be said to be
an envoy from the people, and the hearts of the people
of this country to the peace-loving people and the hearts
of the people in the United States. And he may tell
them that there is growing up a strong and a constantly
accumulating feeling against the barbarities of the past,
and in favour of peace, love, and harmony, which we hope
will, some time or other, prevail all over the world.
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Testimonial Speeches
"I can say, on behalf of this meeting,—and we speak
on behalf of vast numbers in this country,-that we
hope Mr. Burritt's voyage will be a prosperous one, and
that, on his arrival at home, he may find that the prin-
ciples which he has done so much to spread are growing
up beyond the Atlantic with tenfold vigour. I have
been requested to take an active part in the proceedings
of this meeting, and to ask Mr. Burritt's acceptance of a
testimony to the opinion which we entertain of him;
and, if the meeting will allow me, I will read the resolu-
tion which it is proposed to present to him :—
"At a meeting of the friends of peace, held in the
League Rooms, Manchester, October 5th, 1849, it was
moved by John Bright, Esq., M.P., seconded by Sir
Elkanah Armitage, and resolved unanimously,―That
the heartfelt thanks of this meeting are due to Elihu
Burritt, whose great intellectual powers and high moral
faculties, regulated and directed by a deep sense of reli-
gious duty, have been devoted, regardless of his own
ease, and health, and worldly prospects, to promote the
principles of peace; and whose eloquent utterance, by
speech and pen, has placed before the nations of the
earth, in attractive beauty, the doctrine that war is re-
pugnant to the spirit of the Gospel, and destructive to
the best interests of mankind. That its thanks are
especially due for his recent indefatigable and successful
labours to bring together, in the capital of a warlike
and powerful nation, a great Congress at which arbitra-
tion, instead of war, in the settlement of disputes between
nations, was recommended with a force of truth and
eloquence which could not fail to carry conviction to the
at Manchester, October 5th, 1849. 155
millions hitherto looking for no wiser or better arbitra-
ment than sanguinary conflict. That, regarding the
influence he may continue to exercise in promoting peace
on earth and goodwill towards men as the great promised
result of the Christian dispensation, this meeting rejoices
that he is now about to enjoy, in his native land, and
amongst his early friends, some relaxation from his
exhausting labours, and expresses its ardent hope that he
may soon be enabled, re-invigorated in health, and en-
dued with fresh energy, to resume the good work in a
field of world-wide usefulness to which he has set his
mind,'
Sp
This expresses, in very moderate language, the feel-
ings which I entertain with respect to Mr. Burritt and
his mission; and I have great pleasure in proposing to
the mecting that that resolution be adopted.
Sir Elkanah Armitage, fully coinciding in the views
expressed by the Chairman and the mover of the resolu-
tion, begged to second the motion.
James Kershaw, Esq., M.P., said he might perhaps be
allowed to say a word on this very interesting occasion.
Enough had perhaps been already said, but certainly too
much could not be said, in commendation of the motion,
and of the exertions of their friend Mr. Burritt. Until
he came to this country, the question of peace amongst
nations was very little studied and understood, at all
events by the great majority of the people.
But now
Mr. Burritt had raised up a degree of attention to the
subject which could never hereafter cease to operate on
the minds of nations. Until this discussion arose, he
(Mr. Kershaw) did not very distinctly know what his
156
Testimonial Speeches
own opinions were upon the subject; but now, having
given the question his best consideration, he was pre-
pared at all times, and upon every opportunity, to give
in his adhesion to all these objects which should tend
to promote peace amongst the nations of the world.
Christianity has been referred to, and he thought, if
they had faith in Christianity, they must have faith in
the principles their friend Mr. Burritt had endeavoured
to propagate in this country. He firmly believed that
the time would come when those principles would pre-
vail, and when the nations that had quarrelled would
"learn war no more.'
""
Since they had the clear testimony of prophecy that
that time would come, they ought to do everything in
their power to aid the accomplishment of the Divine
prediction. He heartily joined in those expressions of
earnest sympathy towards Mr. Burritt to which his
friends the Chairman and Mr. Bright had given utter-
He admired the man, he admired his mission, and
he admired the manner in which he had conducted it.
ance.
There was not a man in this country who could lay his
finger on a single act in Mr. Burritt's life during his resi-
dence in this country, and say that it was at all inconsistent
with the principles which he had advocated. Mr. Burritt
came to England as a Christian man, as a messenger of
peace and mercy to this and other countries, and he
had conducted himself in such a manner as to call for
the expression of the gratitude of the people of this
country, and he was glad to find that in that room such
testimony was now to be publicly borne to his character
and his mission.
at Manchester, October 5th, 1849. 157
Mr. Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham, said he had
enjoyed the privilege of Mr. Burritt's acquaintance
almost ever since his arrival in this country, and he was
therefore extremely gratified at being able to bear testi-
mony to the manner in which he had filled his high
and holy work of peace. He (Mr. Sturge) wished to
take that opportunity of saying that if they wished to
do anything which, more than another, would gratify
their friend, it would be to aid him in his scheme for
the establishment of an Ocean Penny Postage. He was
very much gratified to see that the Manchester Chamber
of Commerce was likely to take it up, for though it
might seem little in itself, he doubted whether there
was any means in the present state of society by which
national and universal peace could be more promoted.
Although Mr. Burritt might shrink from the acceptance
of this testimony, he trusted he would look upon it as a
testimony to the great principles which he had advocated,
as well as a tribute personally to himself.
Mr. John Watts said he did not feel at liberty to
let the present occasion pass over without addressing to
the meeting a few words. The difficulty with him had
always been to know how people could approve of war
at all, more especially when we considered this and the
other European nations as professedly Christians. One
thousand eight hundred and forty-nine years ago, when
the birth of Jesus Christ was announced, we read that
it was announced by the singing of angels, and the
burden of their song was, "Peace on earth, and goodwill
towards men." And if there was one thing in the life
of Christ which shone to us brighter than another, it
158
Testimonial Speeches
was most certainly when He was engaged in the work of
peace. He (Mr. Watts) did not know a more beautiful
sentence than that which followed the representation of the
storm at sea, and the waking of the Saviour, when He arose,
and said to the waves, in the calmest language, “Peace,
be still!" And if he wished to point to another picture,
he would refer to the raising of the dead man Lazarus
from the grave, to his being called forth and restored
to his family, and thus, as a matter of course, there was
a restoration of peace where there had been before time
of great trouble. It was, therefore, difficult to conceive
how nations, knowing that the principal mission of Christ
upon earth was peace, could go to war. And yet upwards
of 1800 years had elapsed, and we found speculations
afloat at the present day as to the probability of a
European war, while most of the nations likely to be
involved in it professed a religion of peace. However,
he (Mr. Watts) did not believe in the possibility of any
such thing. At the present day the desire for peace was
taken up and felt by the majority; the objectors to peace.
were not the masses, but the governors of the people,
those who supposed themselves to be directly interested
in national squabbles. It appeared to him somewhat
strange at the moment when Mr. Bright spoke of the influ-
as the first
ence of war, he mentioned "national credit
thing which it destroyed. It savoured somewhat of
pounds, shillings, and pence, and seemed hardly high
enough ground to commence upon. Yet, upon considera-
tion, it was proper, because whatever held good in
political economy would hold good also in morals; and
when we say national credit is destroyed, we may say
>>
at Manchester, October 5th, 1849.
159
national morality is destroyed, and national good of
every kind is withheld from the country. He (Mr. Watts)
had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Burritt deliver his first
lecture in England, and he had now great pleasure at
assisting in the presentation of the address which had
been read, and in expressing his heartfelt wish that
Mr. Burritt's mission might not be in vain. Indeed, he
felt convinced that the seed which Mr. Burritt had sown
would spring up and grow until it covered the earth
even as the waters covered the deep. He trusted that
those waters would give him a safe passage to his native
land, and that at some not distant day we might see him
again, and that he would everywhere be hailed as the
harbinger of the universal peace which was to arise in
the world.
Mr. Archibald Prentice said he thought Mr. Burritt,
having only attended meetings for the purpose of giving
expressions to peace principles, did not know the exact
feeling of the people of this country upon that great
subject; but he (Mr. Prentice) had, within the last few
months, had opportunities of incidentally observing the
working of the peace principle. He had held a great
number of meetings for financial reform, at which were
present almost all classes of the community, from the
large capitalist to the humble workman, and although
he often made them a promise of a saving of ten millions
in the public expenditure as a sort of reward for their
labours in the cause of financial reform-he found that
that appeal to the pockets was not half so successful as
the peace principle.
The people were no doubt glad to think that a saving
160
Testimonial Speeches
of ten millions per annum could be effected by a partial
disbandment of our forces; but they were more pleased
to hear that that would be followed out by a disarma-
ment of other forces in the world, and lead to the accom-
plishment of the promise that the nations of the earth
would at last learn war no more, and turn the sword into
the ploughshare, and the spear into a pruning-hook. He
mentioned this as an encouragement to Mr. Burritt, for
he believed he had not seen the full power of the peace
principle in this country. The people were well-informed
upon the point, and now, if any effort was made to go
to war, we should not see, as on former occasions, the
working classes coming forward, with their vulgar love
for novelty, and their desire to hear of bloodshed, to
urge on the ministers, who were always too willing to
go into the work of destruction; but, instead of that,
we should have a universal protest from the people of
this country against entering into any war with any
nation on the face of the earth.
The Chairman then put the resolution, which was
unanimously carried, and followed with great approbation.
Mr. Bright then said it was his duty, as well as his
sincere pleasure, to offer to Mr. Burritt the resolu-
tion which had just been past, as a testimony of their
appreciation of his character. Mr. Burritt had come
into this country a stranger; but he would go back
to his native land bearing with him the respect and love
of thousands to whom he had been formerly unknown.
Elihu Burritt rose and acknowledged the testimonial
in a tone expressive of much feeling. He said: "I can
assure you, Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, that I am
at Manchester, October 5th, 1849. 161
deeply affected at this token of your goodwill and esteem.
I beg you to accept of my most grateful thanks for the
distinguished and unexpected honour which you have
conferred upon me on this occasion. Indeed, I shall
carry back with me to America this testimony of your
sympathy and approbation as the choicest souvenir of
my experience in this dear old fatherland.
С،
Every circumstance associated with this mark of your
consideration will enhance its interest. In the first place,
it has been so unexpected-and perhaps I ought to add
so unmerited-on my part; then, coming to me as it
does, the free expression of the heart of the Anti-Corn
Law League, which has done more than any other asso-
ciation that ever existed to demonstrate to the world the
irresistible might of associated mind and moral pur-
pose, these are conditions that impart a precious value
and significance to this expression of your favour and
regard. But, Mr. Chairman, there is one consideration,
above all those that may be personal to myself, which
invests this tribute of your esteem with a higher import-
ance than can attach to any token of personal regard—
that is, the expression of the sympathy of this great and
influential body with the sublime and sacred cause with
which my humble labours have been connected since I
have been in this country; and it is this consideration
which breathes a soul and a spirit into this occasion,
which, I trust, will expand it into an event of permanent
and vital importance to objects which involve all the ma-
terial and moral interests of individuals, communities, and
nations. Gentlemen, the idea, permanent and uni-
versal peace,' has passed through the feeble and flicker-
M
162
Testimonial Speeches
ing state of its inception; it has descended from the
little upper-room condition, and it has become a move-
ment which the innate sympathies and combined acti-
vities of earnest men of different countries will ere
long propel into expansion and power which must affect
the mutual relations and dispositions of all governments.
and peoples of the civilized world. And no body of men
could more fully comprehend the interests which depend
upon the fixed prospects and conditions of universal
peace than the Council of the Anti-Corn Law League.
No Association could do more to organize peace into a
fixed and permanent system of international society than
yours. And, in conclusion, may I not ask on behalf
of the friends of humanity on both sides of the Atlantic,
who have laboured in this cause, through days of small
things up to the present time, may I not ask if the time
has not come when they may hope that the men of
Manchester, that you, the champions of the Anti-Corn
Law League, will join the movement which has been so
recently and so magnificently inaugurated at the Peace
Congress at Paris, and bring into it the whole force of
your combined energies, and of your unrivalled expe-
rience? Again, Gentlemen, I offer you my heartfelt
thanks for this precious testimony of your sympathy
and approbation. I accept it with the liveliest scnti-
ments of pleasure as a proof of your willingness to re-
cognise in me a humble co-worker with you in the
promotion of unrestricted commerce, friendly intercourse,
and fraternal relations and dispositions between all
nations and governments of the world. In that capacity
I hope to labour in my own native land, and to aid in
at Manchester, October 5th, 1849. 163
the adoption of those principles of free trade which you
have taught the world, and which should be carried into
the completest practice between these two great nations
which God hath made not only of one blood, but of one
language, lineage, and religion, so that they may not
only excite others, but themselves become an example of
peace and fraternal concord,—the two great benefactors
of the human race,-blessing all the people of the
world with the combined activities of their genius and
philanthropy."
This terminated the proceedings, which lasted about an
hour and a half, and after a vote of thanks to Mr. Wilson
for his services in the chair, the meeting separated.

te
M 2

Sporty OSENSEISEBEDEY
GY
Reception Speeches at New Britain, Conn.,
U. S., A.
From the "New Britain Advocate."
O
N Friday our village was honoured by a visit
from her distinguished son, Elihu Burritt,
known the world over as "The Learned Blacksmith
and Christian Philanthropist. The cordial reception
given him by our villagers was only exceeded by the
hearty response of the distinguished guest. The prepa-
rations made by the New Britain people for this inter-
esting occasion were almost unlimited, and reflected the
greatest credit upon our villagers, as well as upon the
gentlemen who constituted the committee of arrangements.
At two o'clock in the afternoon Mr. Burritt was
introduced to a densely-crowded assemblage at the North
Church, where he was listened to with the closest atten-
tion for the space of about three-quarters of an hour, upon
his favourite theme-Peace.
""
This meeting afforded to every auditor "a good sea-
son;" yet it was but a slight foretaste of what followed
in the evening. Our splendid new Town Hall was bril-
liantly illuminated from basement to attic, and most
tastefully decorated with evergreens woven into webs of
Reception Speeches, etc.
165 ·
rare beauty by the hands of the New Britain ladies.
The arrangement of the upper hall as well as the lower
was indeed beautiful. On the wall immediately at the
back of the speaker's stand was formed an arch of ever-
greens, with the inscription-"Quisque suæ fortunæ
faber," the English version of which is, "Every man is the
architect of his own fortune." On the north side of the
hall stood forth in conspicuous letters the pacific motto,
"Arbitration versus War," which was most appropriate
for the occasion. The gallery, perhaps, was the most
imposing portion of the hall; especially was it rendered
so by the dense crowd of ladies who resorted thither,
and whose beaming countenances lit up the whole area
below. On the south side wall was ingeniously wrought
from evergreens the motto, "Ocean Penny Postage;"
and in the centre of the hall was suspended a splendid
chandelier, which was also entwined with evergreens,
and which added to the gorgeous appearance of the room.
Every window in the house bore unmistakable marks of
the ladies' handiwork, and was trimmed in the most
exquisite manner with evergreens richly interspersed
with bouquets of artificial flowers which would almost
bear comparison with the inimitable productions of na-
ture itself; and the intervening walls, as well as the ▾
panels in the gallery, were ornamented with the most
finished works of art.
Before the hour of seven, hundreds of ladies, gentle-
men, and children congregated on the side-walk and near
the entrance, impatiently awaiting the time for the doors.
to open, that they might secure a place inside. Not till
near eight, however, were their desires gratified, when
1
!
毋
​166
Reception Speeches at
the throng poured into the hall like a resistless flood,
entirely filling it, and excluding hundreds from admission.
About this time an accommodation train arrived from
Hartford, bringing some of her most distinguished citi-
zens, to whom our villagers are indebted for no small
share of the interest and hilarity which attended this
enthusiastic meeting.
The grand-marshal on the occasion, James N. Lewis,
Esq., called the meeting to order; and after quiet had
been restored, Marcellus Clark, Esq., our highly-esteemed
postmaster, stated, in a brief and pertinent address, the
object of the meeting, which in substance was as follows:--
"Will the audience give their attention?
"Ladies and gentlemen, fellow-citizens, and you who
have favoured us with your attendance from abroad.
You all probably well know the object of this assemblage :
it is to greet with social and festive welcome our distin-
guished fellow-citizen, Elihu Burritt, Esq., who is of us,
has long been from us, and, I rejoice to say, is now, in
person, with us.
"Order is heaven's first law;' and to the end that
such system and regularity shall be observed on this
occasion as shall prevent confusion and enhance the
enjoyment of the same, the gentlemen whose names I am
about to mention have been selected to preside, and have
kindly consented so to do, viz., Professor E. A. Andrews,
President, assisted by Messrs. Seth J. North, Noah W.
Stanley, and Horace Butler, Vice-Presidents. These are
your officers for the evening."
Our worthy and distinguished fellow-citizen, Professor
Andrews, then welcomed the gentleman for whom this bril-
New Britain, Conn., U. S., A.
167
liant demonstration was made, in behalf of the villagers
of New Britain, in the following appropriate language :—
"Friends and fellow-citizens,-Before adverting to the
great purpose for which we have this evening assembled,
and for which all the tasteful preparation which we see
around us has been made, permit me, for a few moments
only, to allude to one or two other topics of mutual
interest to which our minds must naturally be drawn on
this occasion.
“And first, the welcome presence of so many of our
friends from the neighbouring capital reminds us that an
object long cherished, amidst alternations of fear and
hope, the object of securing for ourselves an easy and
rapid communication with the wide world from which,
by our retired situation, we have been in so great a
degree excluded,—has been at last successfully accom-
plished. How much in regard to our prospects of future
prosperity is comprehended in this single announcement!
"The place, too, in which we meet reminds us of the
accomplishment of another cherished purpose. We have
long desired to open wide the door of education to all the
children and youth of our industrious and teeming popu-
lation. In this enterprise also discouragements have
sometimes sorely tried us; but at last we are standing
within the massive walls of a building reared with
special reference to this great object. Nor is this all.
For many weeks past we have contended with earnest,
but, I trust, with fair and generous, rivalry for the
honour of furnishing to the State a location for its
projected Normal School. This object, too, has been
accomplished, thanks to the noble liberality of our fellow-
168
Reception Speeches at
citizens, and especially to one who, first in means, gained
by his own enlightened enterprise, is ever first in
generous impulses and in liberal beneficence to his fellow-
citizens. The magnetic needle seldom indicates the true
meridian, and even the polar star wheels in its daily
course and circles around the earth's true pole; but
though the needle has its variations, and the mariner on
the ocean and the traveller on the trackless desert may
often hesitate in regard to their proper course, we are
never at a loss when seeking to find the true North.
((
But, ladies and gentlemen, I come now to that which
is our great purpose on this occasion. We have met to
welcome the return of one of our townsmen, who in other
States and in other lands has conferred lasting honour
on the humble village which gave him birth—of one who
has evinced that the attainment of literary eminence is
not inconsistent with the daily routine of labour in the
shop, and at the anvil. We have, in a word, met this
evening to take once more by the hand our friend and
fellow-citizen, Elihu Burritt, the Learned Blacksmith,'
the Friend of Freedom, and the Friend of Peace.
6
"Mr. Burritt: Your fellow-citizens here assembled
have authorized me, as their representative, to express
to you their most cordial welcome on your return once
more to your native village, and to the scenes and com-
panions of your early life. You will see, sir, in the
circle which surrounds you, not a few of those who here
commenced life with you, whose childhood was inured
to similar toils, who shared in the same active sports,
and who daily resorted to the same humble school-room
where your literary ardor, which ever since those days
New Britain, Conn., U. S., A.
169
In the
has burned so brightly, was first enkindled.
name of each of these, and of all your old associates and
early friends here present, and, above all, in the name
of your fair friends, who in such numbers grace this
large assemblage, and by whose hands these rooms have
been so beautifully adorned for this occasion, I bid you,
sir, a hearty welcome, after long absence, to your native
land, and to these scenes endeared to you by the memory
of kindred and of home. These all, in common with
distinguished friends here present from other towns, men
to whom our State looks for counsel, and on whom its
freemen ever delight to bestow their highest honours,
rejoice in this opportunity of manifesting their respect
to one who, by eminent success in the pursuit of know-
ledge, in circumstances of unusual difficulty, has reflected
so much honour upon his native land. Arduous indeed
is that student's path, who, trusting to his own unaided
efforts, firmly resolves to win for himself that wreath
of fame, which, like the crown of Israel's first king, is
bestowed on those alone who tower in stature far above
the surrounding multitude. Such a path, sir, we have
seen you tread; and with mingled emotions of joy and
pride we now congratulate you upon a success so com-
plete, that it may well satisfy the loftiest ambition.
We especially rejoice that a literary reputation so well
earned is now fully known and recognised, not in our
own country only, but equally so in foreign lands.
"But, sir, we would not, in our admiration of intel-
lectual cultivation, forget the still more important culture
of the heart. We have witnessed with the highest satis-
faction, that, while eagerly devoted to the pursuit of
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knowledge, and while ministering to your own necessities
by labouring daily with your own hands, you have cheer-
fully devoted your powers and attainments to the task
of elevating the social and moral condition of mankind.
To do this, and to do it wisely, is the greatest problem
of this and of every age; a problem to be solved in no
other manner than by following the teachings of unerring
Wisdom. Amidst the conflicting views of mankind, in
relation to the proper means for the attainment of this
great end, we can still rest in the assured confidence,
that the long night of error will at last draw to its close,
and the dawn of that better day will beam upon the
nations. To co-operate with the plans of Infinite Wisdom
in hastening forward this consummation, is the proper
mission of man. The day, we trust, may even now be
near, when organized systems of oppression and violence
will vanish away; when the feebler shall find in the
more powerful, not oppressors, but friends and pro-
tectors; and when the controversies of nations-if such
controversies shall then exist shall be settled, not by
violence, but by the eternal principles of justice.
"We are gratified, sir, that your efforts have been
directed, with such flattering success, to the means for
removing from the minds of men a belief in the necessity
of a final appeal to arms in adjusting national disputes.
In this enterprise the wise, and good of all nations will
bid you God-speed; and surely the blessing of the Prince
of Peace will rest on those who, in imitation of His
example, seek to promote 'Peace on earth.'
"We are happy to believe that on your return, after
so long an absence, you find your fellow-citizens, each in
New Britain, Conn., U. S., A. 171
his own department, labouring, not unsuccessfully, to
advance the prosperity of our native village. Where, at
a period which many here present can well remember,
stood only six plain farm-houses, you now see a large
and still increasing village. As you now pass along its
streets, where but recently the ploughman pursued his
labour, or the harvest waved in the field, you witness
the ceaseless activity of a busy population, and hear the
rumbling of machinery, impelled by the untiring giant,
steam, the lineal descendant and sole heir of the magic
powers of the far-famed genius of Aladdin's lamp. As
you stand musing upon the past, you are startled from
your reverie by the shrill whistle of the locomotive, as,
with resistless speed, it hurries forward its long train of
railroad cars through meadows, fields, and groves, where
recently was heard only the rustling of the leaves, or the
carols of the birds.
"But turning from all these indications of prosperity
and of increasing wealth, we think you will especially
rejoice at the cheering prospect that this village may
soon become not less distinguished for its love of literary
and scientific pursuits, than it now is for its manufac-
turing skill and industrial enterprise. We trust, sir,
that the privileges of a thorough education will soon be
offered freely to every child inhabiting these our native
hills and valleys; and that, from the Normal School
established here, an impulse will be imparted to the
cause of education throughout the State.
"Once more, sir, in the name of my fellow-citizens,
and, may I be permitted to add, in my own name also,
I bid you a hearty welcome to your native town. We
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regret that your visit is to be so brief, but hope that,
short as it is, it will serve to impress the conviction still
more deeply upon your heart, that whatever honours
may await you abroad, in the society of the learned and
the noble of other lands, you can nowhere be regarded
with more sincere affection than by the people of this
village, and by the circle of the friends by whom you
are now surrounded."
After Professor Andrews had concluded, all eyes were
directed towards the great "Peace Advocate," who spoke
in a feeling and audible manner as follows :-
"I can assure you, friends and fellow-citizens, that
I know not how to find words to express the emo-
tions inspired by this remarkable occasion. I cannot
realize that I am the special guest of these magnificent
hospitalities, the subject of this overpowering demon-
stration of welcome. I can hardly realize my own ex-
perience, which has been crowned this evening with the
most memorable and precious incident of my life. It
seems like a dream to me to find myself in the midst of
the neighbours and friends of my boyhood under these
wonderful circumstances. While listening with deep
emotion to the warm and flattering words which have been
so feelingly addressed to me in your behalf, and while
reading in your faces the evidence that these were the
expression of your sentiments towards me, I have been
trying to think what I have done or been, since I left
my native village, to have merited, in the slightest degree,
this brilliant, bewildering testimonial of your respect and
goodwill. And can all these beautiful and touching
circumstances, and these faces, so familiar to my boy-
New Britain, Conn., U. S., A. 173
hood, and now beaming on me with lively expressions
of welcome; can these magic symbols, these fair-wrought
illustrations of Peace and Brotherhood; can all the
dazzling and affecting features of this spectacle be a
reality? And who am I, and what was my father's
house, that you have assigned to me such a place, such
a part to act, and such a condition to enjoy, in this
splendid scene? It seems to me but as yesterday that
I went out from your midst, a timid young man, with
the meekest aspirations and humblest hopes. I went
away pensively on foot, carrying under my arm all I
owned in the world, tied up in a small handker-
chief. So far as I can recall the thoughts which passed
my mind during the long walks of that pedestrian
journey, I can truly say that a life of contented and
obscure usefulness was the height of my earthly am-
bition. My anticipations had this extent, no more.
And I can say with equal truth and sincerity, and I
desire to say it gratefully, on this the most distinguished
occasion that I have ever seen or ever expect to see in
life, that if my course has diverged from that condition
in which I had expected to pass my days, not unto me be
the merit or honour of the change, but to that kind and
overruling Providence which has led me, by a series of
almost imperceptible stages, into a field of labour and
experience of which I had no conception when I left
New Britain in 1837. When I look back over some
of the passages of my experience for the last twelve
years, and dwell upon the succession of apparently trivial
incidents which gave direction and impulse to my course,
I can
see revealed, in distinct manifestations, that
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guiding Hand which has bent my path to its purpose
from my youth up, and to which I would commit the
conduct of my future days. I can see how all my settled
predilections and purposes were changed by these inci-
dents, and concentrated upon objects of pursuit which
I had never contemplated with special interest.
"For the first five years of my residence in Wor-
cester, I devoted all the leisure hours which occurred
in the intervals of manual labour to the study of lan-
guages, and to other literary pursuits, rather as a source
of enjoyment than as the means of future usefulness.
When my tastes for these recreations had strengthened
almost to a passion, my mind was biased in a new di-
rection by an incident which impressed it with the con-
viction that there was something to live for besides the
gratification of a mere curiosity to learn; that there
were words to be spoken with the living tongue and
earnest heart for great principles of truth and righteous-
ness, as well as to be committed to a silent memory
from the dead languages of the ancient world. To that
conviction I yielded the literary predilections and pur-
suits which had engrossed my hours of leisure, and
nearly all the thoughts I could divert from my daily
avocation.
"In 1844 I commenced the publication of a weekly
paper in Worcester, devoted to the advocacy of Peace,
Human Freedom, and Brotherhood. A new field of
labour gradually opened before me, and introduced me
almost to a new life. The principles and conditions of
permanent and universal Peace and Brotherhood gra-
dually enlisted my convictions and sympathies, and I
New Britain, Conn., U. S., A. 175
gave myself to their advocacy with increasing interest
and devotion.
"After labouring in this field for two years, an incident
connected with the Oregon controversy between this
country and Great Britain brought me into com-
munication with several devoted friends of Peace in
England. It was this circumstance which led me to
visit that country in 1846. I designed to be absent
only four months; but on my arrival in England most
unexpected opportunities of useful labour were opened up
before me; and here again all my pre-arranged plans
were changed. I had formed, as it were, a programme
of operations in the mother-country before I left America,
which I most resolutely determined to carry out. One
of the plans was to travel on foot through the kingdom,
and meet small circles of the labouring classes of the
people in small upper rooms, in the different villages
through which I passed. And after having spent two
or three weeks in Manchester and Birmingham, I buckled
on my knapsack, and started on my pedestrian tour. I
walked about one hundred and fifty miles in this way,
holding these social conversational meetings at night. But
I was soon induced to come down from these little upper
rooms, and to address large audiences assembled in public
halls. Everywhere I met with the kindest reception, and
found kind and generous friends.
“A year rolled around, and wider doors of successful
labour opened before me. A series of remarkable inci-
dents transpired to create new opportunities, not only for
indoctrinating the public mind in England with the prin-
ciples of Peace and Human Brotherhood, but also for
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disseminating those principles on the Continent of Europe.
It was one of these incidents which suggested the idea of
a Peace Convention in Paris; but how small was that
idea at its inception compared with the result!
"It was in Manchester, the next day after the recent
French Revolution, that, in conference with a few indi-
viduals in that city, it was resolved to try the experiment
of holding a little upper-room meeting in Paris, of such
friends of Peace from different countries as should be
disposed to attend it. At that time we dared not aspire
to call the proposed meeting a Peace Convention, but a
Peace Conference. That idea resulted in the Peace Con-
gress at Brussels in 1848, held in the most magnificent
hall in that city, under the immediate auspices of the
Belgian Government. Perhaps it is not too much to
say that no human hope ventured to expect such a
result from the first attempt to raise the white standard
of Peace on the Continent. It was a grand demon.
stration, which made a deep impression upon the public
mind in Europe, and gave the Peace Movement a new
phase and impetus. Distinguished men of different
countries came into it, and operations on a grander scale
were instituted, to press the subject upon the attention
of all governments; and last August ushered into the
world the grand Peace Congress at Paris, which has been
accepted as an illustrious event in the history of nations.
This impressive and august demonstration is to be fol-
lowed by another of greater importance still, in the
month of August next, at Frankfort on the Main in
Germany; and we are now endeavouring to secure at least
a hundred delegates from the United States, to represent
New Britain, Conn., U. S., A. 177
this country in that great Peace Parliament of the World.
We are holding two or three State Peace Conventions
every week, for the purpose of appointing these dele-
gates. Yesterday the friends of Peace met in conven-
tion at Hartford, and there voted that you, sir, should
be requested to represent this State in the Peace Con-
gress at Frankfort. And I trust, sir, that no unpropi-
tious circumstances will constrain you to decline this
noble mission; but that the high moral principle, the
profound attainments, dignified urbanity, and mature
judgment, which render you an honour to our native
village, will at Frankfort redound to the credit of this
State and nation, and to the advancement of a cause with
which you were so early identified.
"Friends and fellow-citizens, neighbours of my youth,
what shall I say to you for this most wonderful and
unexpected manifestation of your generous esteem and
sympathy? I am sure that no words of mine are needed
to enable you to understand the emotions which I experi-
ence at this moment. There cannot be a mind, within
the circle of these happy circumstances, that could doubt
for a moment that this is the happiest, the proudest
moment of my life. I have received many flattering
testimonials of consideration and esteem in Great Britain;
but the little village of New Britain is the world of my
childhood, the birthplace of my first hopes and aspirations,
of my first affections; and all the tendrils and fibres of
my young and earnest love are thrown around it, and
all its interests, and all its inhabitants, with all the
glow and warmth of its first strength. Think you not
that it is a crowning moment of rejoicing to my heart,
N
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that the course of life and labour which Providence has
made for my feet has elicited from you, friends of my
childhood, this remarkable testimonial of your approba-
tion and esteem? I cannot form into words the feelings
of gratitude and gratulation with which this scene and
occasion inspire me. I know you will accept the senti-
ment for the expression. I can only say, that in that
future of life and labour which may be reserved for me,
I shall remember this evening, and try, by Divine help,
so to act as not to tarnish this illustrious token of your
favour, or give New Britain cause to regret or forget that
I also was her son."
Next in order was the reading of the letters from the
absent invited guests, which was done with much spirit
by our enterprising newly "adopted citizen," Dr. Philo
Rockwell. We subjoin a number of them, and would
gladly give publicity to the whole, were it not for their
prolixity :-
"KENSINGTON, March 22nd, 1850.
"GENTLEMEN,—I feel grateful for your invitation to
me and my family to attend the festival to be given this
evening by the citizens of New Britain, in honour of
their fellow-townsman, Elihu Burritt. Though, for
reasons which need not be detailed, I cannot be personally
present, yet I am with you in spirit, and in appreciation
of the object you have in view.
"It is a just and noble purpose to celebrate, in an
appropriate manner, the achievements of industry,
intellect, and philanthropy. Our townsman, Mr. Burritt,
presents a remarkable instance of these attributes, and
we are all proud to know that they have given him a
New Britain, Conn., U. S., A. 179
world-wide celebrity. Though I have scarcely the honour
of a personal acquaintance with him, yet my admiration
of his achievements in virtue, knowledge, and usefulness
is intense. To show our respectful attention to such a
man, is to do credit to ourselves.
"Gentlemen, your village, adorned by art, and enriched
by mechanical ingenuity and manufacturing enterprise,
will be still more distinguished hereafter, as the place
where Smalley preached; where E. Burritt was born and
reared, and laid the foundation of the immense stores of
his erudition; where his scarcely less able brother,
E. H. Burritt, mapped out the heavens; and where a
scholar, whom delicacy forbids me to name, is spending, in
his native place, the evening of his days, in classic retire-
ment and useful studies.
"Let such trophies of genius and goodness, as are
recognised on this occasion, be ever the distinction of
our beloved New England. May here be verified more
fully than it now is the flattering eulogium not long
since pronounced by Ex-Governor Seward, of New York,
viz., that though vice and irreligion might advance else-
where, yet they will wither in the atmosphere of
Saybrook, and die on the rock of Plymouth.' Yours,
with great respect,
"ROYAL ROBBINS."
↓
"NEW YORK, March 20th, 1850.
"GENTLEMEN,-It is with pleasure that I acknowledge
the receipt of your kind invitation to myself and family
to join you at your festival on the 22nd instant. Nothing
N 2
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+
short of the sad and irreparable loss I have sustained, by
the death of my beloved wife, could have prevented.
"It is a mark of attention which I have considered
fully due Mr. Burritt, and already too long deferred. I
rejoice that talent and industry are appreciated. In the
years 1819–20 I took charge of the school in the same
district where Mr. Burritt then lived. Upon recording
the names of the scholars on opening the school, I called
up a comical looking lad of some ten years of age, and
demanded his name. He told me that some of the boys
called him Tow-Head, and some of them Now-Dad, but
that his mother called him Elihu. I soon perceived that
he had an inquiring mind and retentive memory. At the
end of the second season he stood the best scholar in his
class. At the end of the term he told me he did not expect
to attend school any more, but had concluded to learn the
blacksmith trade. I said to myself, the lad is to be turned
afloat upon the world; and sure enough he did float.
Soon after, I had a flattering account of him from
Governor Lincoln. Shortly after, I received a letter from
himself, stating that since he left my school he had
become acquainted with fifty different languages. I after-
wards heard of him afloat upon the seas-then in Europe,
where he was esteemed by the good and by the learned.
"I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, very respect-
fully, your friend and fellow-citizen,
"O. R. BURNHAM."
"HARTFORD, March 20th, 1850.
"GENTLEMEN,-I feel highly gratified by your invita-
New Britain, Conn., U. S., A. 181
tion to attend the festival to be given by the citizens of
New Britain in honour of their fellow-townsman, Elihu
Burritt, on Friday, the 22nd instant; and I deeply regret
that other engagements will deprive me of the pleasure
of being present on an occasion of so much interest.
"Since Mr. Burritt left the place of his birth, he has
not sought distinction in the pursuits which, in the
estimation of most men, lead to honour and happiness.
He does not return to his native village covered with
glory won on the field of battle. It is not for high official
promotion, nor yet for great success in the acquisition of
wealth, that you tender him this festival; but because he
has, in the silent lapse of the long years since he went
out from among you, acquired, under circumstances of
great disadvantage, vast stores of knowledge, and has
devoted his great acquirements to the good of the human
race. For this you honour him; and, in honouring him,
you equally honour yourselves.
"Permit me, Gentlemen, to offer you the following
sentiment :— The State Normal School of Connecticut ;
the birth-place of Elihu Burritt is its most fitting location.
May his example raise the aspirations, encourage the
hearts, and stimulate the exertions of its pupils.'
"I am, with great respect, your obedient servant,
"JAMES DIXON."
•
"FAIR HAVEN, March 21st, 1850.
"GENTLEMEN,—The card of the Committee, inviting
myself and lady to be present at a festival to be given
by the citizens of New Britain in favour of their fellow-
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townsman, Elihu Burritt, on Friday, the 22nd inst., at
the Town Hall, was received yesterday.
"I should be proud to honour myself by attending a
festival in honour of New Britain's distinguished son-
one whose name is not more familiar in that place of his
nativity than in the fatherland, and among the men of
other languages. As a man, and as a minister of the
Prince of Peace, I have watched the disinterested and
devoted career of our fellow-townsman, in our own land,
and in other lands, in behalf of Peace and Universal
Brotherhood,' with no slight degree of sympathy and
enthusiasm. In the warm welcome which greeted him
on the shores of England, among the homes where our
fathers knelt of old, and in the high honour which
hailed his presence when he stood up among the men of
Germany and France, I, as I have no doubt you all did,
seemed also humbly to share.
"It would be a pleasure to me to meet Elihu Burritt
on the occasion referred to, as well as the other citizens
of New Britain, among whom are many old friends whom
I value, did not other engagements prevent. Accept, with
my thanks for your invitation, the assurance of my
continued regard.
"BURDETT HART."
The slight confusion which succeeded the reading of
these somewhat lengthy epistles, caused by the restless-
ness of a portion of the audience, was immediately hushed
by the sweet voice of Miss Booth, in a song, which we
believe was selected expressly for the occasion. Then
followed the addresses.
Mr. Chapman, of Hartford, being called on, arose and
New Britain, Conn., U. S., A. 183
addressed the audience in a strain of eloquent remarks.
He alluded, in a beautiful manner, to the wonderful
growth of the place, and contrasted its present condition
with its past, in such a way as brought to the minds of
the old residents, in the most vivid manner, all the
improvements which had been made. He alluded also to
the character and intelligence of the population, and
spoke of the moral effect of such a demonstration as the
present. He supposed that there had never been wit-
nessed upon the continent a similar scene, of an individual
going out from the home of his childhood unnoticed and
almost unknown, and, in the lapse of years, returning
crowned with the honours won by his achievements in
the field of philanthropic effort. It was not that
Mr. Burritt had come home laden with stores of gold;
it was not for his learning, talent, or genius, that this
great testimonial of your regard is bestowed, but it is to
his moral worth. You honour him for what he has done
and is doing for humanity, and in honouring him you
honour yourselves.
Mr. Chapman sat down amid great applause, and
Dr. Woodward, of Middletown, then addressed the
assemblage. He was glad to be present upon an occasion
like this. It was something new in the history of the
times to see a whole population rising up as one man to
do honour to one whose career had been marked by no
exploits upon the battle-field, who had not striven for
success in the usual paths of distinction, but had laboured
as a man with his whole heart, mind, and strength, for
the elevation of the whole world of humanity. He
(Dr. W.) was not accustomed to make speeches, but upon
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the present occasion, though there were those present of
all parties and sects, he must say a word or two as a
politician. In other words, according to the current
phraseology of the day, he would "define his position."
And first, then, he would say that he was a great admirer
of nobility. He loved, admired, and reverenced a noble
man, and when he saw one, he was always ready to do
him homage. But there were three kinds of nobility.
One was the nobility of birth, of which he would not say
much here; another was the nobility of accident, of
wealth, &c.; and the third, and what he conceived to be
the highest nobility, was that by the possession of which
the individual could elevate himself to a level with the
highest. It was nobility of soul which he reverenced
and recognised as the true nobility, which takes its
attributes from the Creator Himself. It was because of
this love and admiration of this kind of nobility that
himself and many other citizens of Middletown had come
over to-night to welcome, with a hearty grecting, their
friend, and the world's friend, Elihu Burritt.
It was
indeed a joyful occasion, and they all felt it good to be
here.
Professor Andrews, the President of the evening,
then remarked that public consent and the common
custom of mankind had arranged the learned professions
in the following order: first, Law; second, Physic;
third, Divinity. We had heard from the two former,
and now he hoped that the Rev. Dr. Bushnell, of Hart-
ford, would speak for the latter.
The Rev. Gentleman then came forward, amid the
cheers of the audience, and spoke in his usual felicitous
New Britain, Conn., U. S., A.
185
manner.
He congratulated the citizens of New Britain
upon the circumstances under which they were assem-
bled, and expressed his high admiration for the devotion,
earnestness, and untiring zeal with which Mr. Burritt
had laboured in the cause of peace and human brother-
hood. The scene before him at this time carried him
back to that day, near two thousand years ago, when the
angel-messengers of God, above the plains of Bethlehem,
That
sang, "Peace on earth, and goodwill to men."
same song was now being taken up and reproduced in
the ears of all the nations of the world by one whom
God has raised up from a lowly sphere in life to accom-
plish His work. Your little town of New Britain is
perhaps little known abroad, but who shall say that what
she has given to this cause, in the person of her illus-
trious guest, will not make her famous among the cities.
of the world? It was a noble mission, this beating of
swords into ploughshares; and he knew of no one so
competent to do it as the blacksmith who is here to-
night.
After the conclusion of the Rev. Dr. Bushnell's ad-
dress, the vast concourse of people-estimated at about
two thousand-repaired to the dining-hall below, to
partake of the refreshments which the ladies had pro-
vided in such endless profusion. Here the ladies had
not only displayed their great good taste in decorating
the hall, but evinced their practical knowledge of one
of the principal branches of housekeeping by the elegant
and tasty manner in which the tables were arranged and
furnished with every variety of delicate edibles. The
principal objects of attraction in this apartment, aside
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from the fair preparers, were at the head of the provi-
dent tables, where stood a large and beautiful pyramid
of flowers, surmounted by a dove holding in his beak
an olive branch; and on either side of this significant
design were two other pyramids of smaller magnitude
exhibiting equal skill and ingenuity in their construc-
tion.
We must not fail to notice, in this connection,
the huge Johny-Cake which appeared in the distance
like a small mountain of copper, and which occupied a
territory something less in extent than the free soil of
California. It bore at its peak the quaint motto,-
"Yankee, not English, Johny-Cake!" This emphati-
cally "used-up" corn-field was undoubtedly the product
of some one of our Yankee farmers who glories in his
inclusion in the numerous family of "Brother Jonathan."
On the east side of the house, directly opposite the
entrance, we noticed an exemplification of the ladies'
skill in the art of printing. Here were two excellent
mottoes neatly lettered with evergreens, which read,
"Peace and Penny Post". "Brotherhood the World
Over." We presume that other portions of this hall
were equally ornamented; but the dense crowd that
thronged the centre completely hid them from our view,
and almost totally eclipsed the beauty of the whole.
After regaling themselves with the luxuries which co-
vered the tables, the multitude again assembled above,
where they were addressed by the Hon. J. M. Niles.
The speech of this gentleman is highly spoken of, and
we should like to give a synopsis of it, if nothing more;
but we unfortunately lost the train of his remarks by
our absence from the hall when he commenced speaking.
New Britain, Conn., U. S., A.
187
After this gentleman had taken his seat, a song was
loudly called for from Mr. Page, of Hartford, who made
the whole house echo with his powerful voice in the
song, "Pilgrim Fathers." The sentiment in this beau-
tiful piece of music always inspires the descendants of
this Puritan band with the most patriotic emotions, and
the effect produced throughout the assembly was indeed
pleasing. We almost imagined that we could see the
twigs of evergreen beat time to his enrapturing strains.
He was succeeded by Madame Bothe, of Hartford, a
German lady, of rare musical attainments, in an appro-
priate ode, in the performance of which she exhibited
great compass and power of voice.
Thomas Drew, Esq., the editor-associate of Mr. Burritt,
being called upon, was introduced to the audience by the
latter gentleman in a most complimentary and happy
manner.
"Mr. President and Ladies and Gentleman,-I cannot
express to you the feelings which pervade my heart upon
this joyous occasion. I can find no words to convey to
you the grateful emotions inspired by this cordial greet-
ing to myself, which I feel to be all unmerited and
undeserved in consequence of the too kind and flattering
mention of my humble labours by your friend and fellow-
townsman whom you have this night met to welcome.
Not unto me but to him belongs all the honour and all
the praise you have to bestow for the success which has
crowned his labours. Mine has been a more humble
sphere of duty, and I have no claim to such favourable
regard.
"Since I have been here to-night, and witnessed the
188
Reception Speeches at
happy scenes which this great gathering presents, while I
have looked upon these happy faces and bright eyes, I
have wished a thousand times that I, too, was a citizen of
New Britain; for the spirit which pervades this meeting
is the highest indication that the hearts of your whole
population are deeply imbued with the spirit of human
brotherhood. But, fellow-citizens, if I have not the
honour to be a native of your thriving village, I can at
least claim this perhaps equal honour: I learned my
trade of a New Britain man, who was, I believe, the
very first in that department of industry,-the only one
I have ever heard of or read of who has undertaken the
literal fulfilment of prophecy as a business. I have
always felt it to be an honour to be the first apprentice
in such a calling as this, of beating swords into plough-
shares and spears into pruning-hooks. In the letter
which has been read from the schoolmaster of our friend,
we have been told that, on his first entrance into the
school-room, when asked his name, he answered, with
characteristic candour, that the boys called him 'Tow-
head,' but his mother called him Elihu. This little
anecdote reminds me of a circumstance in my own expe-
rience. Shortly after the departure of our friend across
the Atlantic on his mission of peace and goodwill, as
I went to the post-office one day, I heard a stranger
inquire of one of our prominent citizens (alluding to me)
who that little fellow was. 'Oh,' exclaimed the person
inquired of, that is Elihu Burritt's striker, the bellows-
blower for the Learned Blacksmith.' Fellow-citizens,
you may well believe that I felt proud of the title,
though it was put upon me in scorn; and to the latest
New Britain, Conn., U. S., A.
189
day of my life, while it will be the source of the highest
satisfaction that I have had opportunity to fill such a
position in this great and good work, I shall also feel
that I could leave no more priceless legacy to my children
than the approbation and regard of your distinguished
townsman, earned by co-operating with him in some
humble manner for the furtherance of peace on earth and
goodwill to men. All that has been prophesied by the
holy men of old will surely be fulfilled; and when that
day comes,-
'When the drums shall beat no longer,
And the battle-flags are furled,'
when there shall be no more war or preparation for war,
and when the world over every man shall sit under his
own vine and fig-tree with none to molest or make him
afraid, then will pious pilgrims, who love God and love.
humanity, perform their pilgrimages to this spot; then
will the path to the cottage of the humble shoemaker,
up on yonder hill, be worn with the footsteps of those
who will wish upon such a shrine to lift up their voices
in holy thanksgiving to Almighty God for what He has
accomplished by humble instrumentalities for the regene-
ration of the world."
Mr. Pierce, of Norwich, being invited to speak, arose
and made some very interesting remarks respecting our
village and the objects of the meeting.
Mr. Chapman was again called for, and, on coming
forward, said, that amidst all that had been said in
honour, and well-deserved honour, of men, of this great
man and of that great man, and the greatest of all, their
190
Reception Speeches at
illustrious guest, not one word, as yet, had been heard
in honour of women. He then paid an eloquent tribute
to the ladies present, and went on to say, that woman
was the great arbiter and former of man's destiny. After
all that, few, if any, among all the great spirits who
have stamped their impress and image upon the world's
history, could be found who would not, upon inquiry,
turn out to be the sons of noble mothers, no matter
who might be the father. It was the mother who
made the man; and he would venture to say, that the
plastic hand and noble spirit of a mother, applied in
infancy, and breathed into the soul in youth, had been
chiefly instrumental, under God, in casting the character
and forming the career of the world-renowned and illus-
trious guest of this festive gathering. But he did not
rise for a speech, and would only take the liberty of
saying, that he should retire from the ring; and after
the example in country wrestling matches, would call in a
better man in his stead.
Mr. Morgan was thereupon vociferously called for,
and came forward. He said he was taken by surprise
by the gentleman last up, for he came here with no ex-
pectation of contributing to the interest of the occasion,
further than to make a note of the passing events for the
eyes of others. If it be true, said he, as the eloquent
and facetious gentleman who so unceremoniously dragged
me before you, has said, that the great characteristics of
the man, mental and moral, are impressed upon him by
the mother, and in the great features of his mind he
bears her lineaments, what a prodigy of wit, humour,
and eloquence combined must the mother of that gen-
New Britain, Conn., U. S., A. 191
tleman have presented, and what a tongue, too, for its
utterance!
He would take occasion to say, however, since he had
been thus forced up, that the words he had then listened
to, and the spectacle he had that evening witnessed, had
moved all the nobler emotions of his soul to their pro-
foundest depths. To him it was the sublimest scene he
had ever contemplated on earth; and as he had listened
to the fervid words of others, and looked at the great
mission of the great man before them, he had seen more
clearly than ever how God-like man might be, not only
in moral image, but in his works and aims; and as in
the beginning the great Creator spoke the word over
chaotic darkness-"Let there be light," and there was
light, so now, the great Creator creates in the same
image, with His eye and His heart stretching over the
same world, beholding the darkness of ignorance and
passion and war and rapine which shrouded the world in
sorrow and gloom, had sounded forth again the same
mandate "Let there be light," and there shall be
light. Nay, I think we do not any of us as yet at all
appreciate the full meaning of all that we see here and
around us. It is beyond our feeble powers of com-
prehension, how Providence, by the humble instrumen-
tality of such means, is yet surely and rapidly working
out great ends, and fulfilling the glorious promise that
a day shall come when, all over the earth, the lion
shall lie down with the lamb, and the nations of the
earth shall learn war no more. Nearly two thousand
years ago, a choral song of angels was heard over the
little village of Bethlehem, in the Old World, and a
192
Reception Speeches, etc.
voice-"Peace on earth, goodwill to men." And here
in our day, before our eyes, in the little village of New
Britain, in the New World, one of us, a blacksmith, of
humble origin, has caught, at last, the full import of
those glorious words, and has uttered his note responsive,
and echoed back to Heaven the glorious chorus, "Amen!
Peace on earth, goodwill to men;" and the whole earth
is not only listening to the sublime echo, but becoming
itself vocal with the glorious chorus.
The closing addresses were made by our townsmen,
Messrs. Clark and Rockwell, who were very enthusi-
astic in complimenting the New Britain ladies; they
were not, however, too lavish in their praises, and be-
stowed upon them no more compliments than they really
merited.
The festival closed up near the "little hours" with
six hearty cheers for the ladies, a circumstance which
proved that the "lords of creation" appreciated their
untiring efforts to administer to the conviviality of the
occasion.

buye

O
Speech at the Peace Congress at Brussels,
September 21st, 1848,
ON THE QUESTION OF A CONGRESS OF NATIONS.
T
HE first great object which is sought to be obtained
by a Congress of Nations is a well-defined Code
of International Law. This has been acknowledged by
eminent jurists, and proved by centuries of painful expe-
rience to be a prime necessity in the community of
nations. A forcible writer, in demonstrating this neces-
sity, says,
"Few persons are aware how unsettled and
imperfect is the present law of nations. We have, in
truth, no such law; and what passes under the name is
of recent origin and insufficient authority. This code,
scarcely recognised at all by Greece or Rome, or little
heeded or known in Christendom itself till after the
Reformation, owes more to Grotius than to all other
writers put together. He was its grand architect. He
found it a chaos of clashing precedents and princi-
ples; but his learning, and his powers of analysis and
combination, reduced its heterogeneous materials to a
system which has won universal admiration, and exerted
a benign influence over the intercourse of all civilized
0
}
194
Speech at the
nations. Still, neither Grotius nor his commentators
have furnished a Code of International Law. They
possessed not the requisite authority, and they have
given us only a compilation of precedents, opinions, and
arguments. It is the work not of legislators, but of
scholars; no law-making power was ever concerned in
enacting any of its statutes, and all its authority has
resulted from the deference spontaneously paid to the
genius, erudition, and wisdom of its compilers. It is not
law, but argument; not decrees, but rules; not a code,
but a treatise; and the nations are at liberty, except
from the force of custom and public opinion, to adopt or
reject it as they please. A Code of International Law
is still a desideratum; to supply this deficiency would be
one of the first and highest duties of the tribunal which
we propose."
In asking for the creation of this tribunal and fixed
Code of International Law, we do not necessarily ask for
any serious innovation upon the established usages and
acknowledged principles of nations. We do not directly
ask that what is now called unconstitutionally the law
of nations should be modified by a very material altera-
tion. We do not propose to set aside the system of
maxims, opinions, and precedents which Grotius and his
successors or commentators have produced for the regu-
lation of international society, or to weaken the homage
which the world has accorded to that system. But if it
is to continue to be the only recognised basis of inter-
national negotiation, treaties, intercourse, and society, if
it is to be accepted in the coming ages of civilization as
a universal common law among nations, then we do
Peace Congress at Brussels.
195
insist that it shall not only retain the spontaneous and
traditionary homage accorded to it by the different
Governments of the civilized world, but that it shall
also acquire the authority which the suffrage of nations
can only give to it through the solemn forms of legis-
lation. That legislation cannot be secured in this con-
stitutional age without an International Legislature, or a
Congress of Nations, in which each shall be equitably re-
presented.
The first great work of this International
Assembly would be to revise and reconstruct the pre-
sent Code of International Law, and present it to the
National Legislatures which they represent, for their
adoption and ratification. Is there anything Utopian,
visionary, or impracticable in the supposition that such
a task might be satisfactorily performed by a body con-
taining, we might assume, the aggregated wisdom of the
world? Or, in the language of a lucid writer, “If a
single man, like Hugo Grotius, was able in the early
part of the seventeenth century, by his unaided talents,
to create from the chaos of the past an almost perfect
system of international jurisprudence, and, by the mere
force of his genius and learning, to give to that system
almost universal authority, have we not every reason to
believe that a chosen body of wise and learned men,
selected from among many nations, enlightened by all the
experience of the past, and by the lofty principles of the
present age, and devoting their combined energies to the
great work, would give to the result of their labours such
perfectness of finish, such clearness of reasoning, such
force of illustration, as would at once render the work of
universal authority and obligation?"
Dor M
0 2
196
Speech at the
But let us reduce our proposition to a present reality,
and suppose that we have already carried all the pre-
liminary stages of the measure; that we have poured a
flood of light upon the public mind throughout the civi-
lized world in regard to the guilt and ruin of war; that
we have roused the millions of the people to pour their
united voices upon the ear of Parliaments, National
Assemblies, and Cabinets, until statesmen and legislators.
have been constrained to take up the work in earnest.
Let us suppose that the basis of national representation
has been fixed, and that it assigns a representative in
the Congress of Nations to every million of inhabitants.
If all the nations of Christendom accept this basis, and
elect their representatives, then we have an assembly of
about three hundred and fifty members, or one about as
large as the average British House of Commons. But if
only Great Britain, France, Germany, the Italian States,
and the United States accept it at first, then we have an
assembly of about one hundred and sixty members,
embracing the most profound statesmen and jurists that
these five nations can produce. They meet at Frankfort
or Brussels, or at some convenient point on the Con-
tinent of Europe, a few weeks before their own National
Legislatures open their sessions for the year. The first
work of this august Senate, after its proper organization,
is the appointment of a Committee on International Law,
composed of the most profound statesmen and jurists
from the different countries. This Committee sit down to
the examination of all that Grotius, Puffendorf, Vattel,
and others have produced on the subject. They apply to
the work all the legal wisdom of the world, all that the
Muall
Peace Congress at Brussels.
197
light of the world's experience can reveal, all that the
world's wants and future necessities can suggest. One
by one they present to the Congress the statutes of
that common law which it is expected to provide for
the nations. One by one these statutes are discussed,
amended, and adopted, and then transmitted for dis-
cussion and adoption to the National Legislatures in
session at London, Paris, Frankfort, Turin, and Wash-
ington. The popular mind throughout Christendom is
fixed with deep interest upon the proceedings of this
International Senate, and the journals of all countries
are filled with the reports of speeches made in that and
in their own Legislative Assemblies on the ratification of
the different clauses of the new Code of International
Law. At the end of six months, perhaps, the last clause
has been discussed and ratified at London, Paris,
Frankfort, Turin, and Washington, and we have a fixed,
well-digested code, created, sanctioned, and solemnized
by all the moral prestige and authority that can be
acquired from human legislation. No law ever enacted
on earth can surpass this in the vital attributes of moral
obligation. Into no law on record has there been so
much suffrage of the public mind compressed as into
this new code of nations. The Congress that elaborated
and adopted it was a Constitutional Congress. It was
called into existence by the people; it was composed
of the people's representatives. They sent to it their
greatest and best men, -the most profound statesmen
and jurists that their countries could produce. They sent
them there for the express purpose of preparing this
code; they empowered them with full authority to give
198
Speech at the
it all the force that legislation can give to law. The
august Senate assembled, and, under a solemn sense of
the responsibility and magnitude of their mission, they
performed their task. The most sublime Legislative
Assembly that ever met on earth, they gave the result
of their deliberations to their respective National Legis-
latures for examination, amendment, and ratification.
Here, again, the people participated in the enactment of
this code. Here, again, they affixed to the statutes the
seal of their suffrage, and it was finished. It is the
common law of the people; it bears the superscription
of their sovereignty; it is the chef-d'ouvre of consti-
tutional legislation; the sublimest manifestation of the
public mind that can be achieved by the representative
principle. It is the law of nations in every popular,
legislative, and moral sense; and in each of these senses
it is the particular and popular law of each of the nations
that participated in its enactment. Then have we not
every reason to believe that the constituent people would
not permit any of its statutes to be violated without their
energetic reprobation?
But let us return to our Congress of Nations. The
code which they produced as the result of long and serious
deliberations has been accepted by all the nations
represented in the assembly. It has received its last
seal of authority. The illustrious Senate now enters upon
the second department of its labours, and provides for
the erection of a Grand International Tribunal, or per-
manent High Court of Nations, which shall decide all
serious questions of controversy between the nations
represented, according to the code thus adopted. After
Peace Congress at Brussels.
199
mature deliberation, they provide for the appointment,
for life or otherwise, of three jurists from each nation, to
compose the Bench of Judges forming the High Court of
Arbitration, Honour, and Equity. If it is deemed neces-
sary that this tribunal shall immediately replace the
Congress that created it, then the latter, we will suppose,
continues its sessions, until the Judges are appointed by
the different National Legislatures entitled to a represen-
tation in the Court. Having accomplished the two great
objects for which it was called into existence, it is
instructed to apply its deliberations to minor matters of
international interests, until the Judges shall arrive to
open the High Court. For instance, they digest a plan
for establishing a universal and permanent uniformity of
weights and measures throughout the civilized world,
which would be a great boon to mankind. In effecting
this object, the Congress will do what individual nations
have frequently essayed to achieve without success.
Many other obstructions to international trade and
intercourse may occupy its attention while waiting for
the High Court to open its tribunal. The opening of
this High Court of Nations, with the imposing solemni-
ties befitting the occasion, must open a new era in the
condition of mankind. A seat for life or for any period
on this bench of judges is the highest appointment
within the capacity of any nation. It is a post of duty,
honour, trust, and dignity, which has no parallel in the
presidency of a republic, or in the office of ambassador to
any foreign Court. Still it cannot be the place for the
ambitious politician, factious diplomatist, or reckless
200
Speech at the
demagogue; consequently, we may believe that three
profound statesmen or jurists have been appointed by
each nation to represent it in this grand tribunal. Filling
the sublimest position to which the suffrage of mankind
could raise them, we may presume that they would act
under a proper sense of the dignity and responsibility
of their vocation. Constituting the highest Court of
Appeal this side of the bar of eternal justice, they would
endeavour, we might hope, to assimilate their decisions,
as nearly as possible, to those of unerring wisdom. Link-
ing the great disconnected circles of human society into the
chain of universal order, they would watch with jealous
eye all that could disturb the harmony of nations, the
links of which that chain is composed. Such a body, in
several senses, would be to the great orbit of humanity
what the sun is in the solar system; if not in the quality
of light, at least in that of attraction. A presentiment of
union would pervade the nations, and prepare them for
a new condition of society. Whenever a question arose
between two of them, the thought of war would not
occur to either. The note of martial preparations would
not be heard along their coasts. The press would not
breathe thoughts among the people calculated to stimulate
sentiments and presentiments of hostility. Each party
would say to its Government, "There is the Law; there
is the Court; there sit the Judges: refer the case to
their arbitrament, and we will abide by their decision."
Instead of the earth being shaken with the thunder of
conflicting armies, and deluged with blood, to settle a
question of right or honour, we should see reported,
Peace Congress at Brussels.
201
among other decisions of this Supreme Court of Nations,
the case of England versus France, Prussia versus Den-
mark, or Mexico versus the United States. Thus, all
those cases of war, under the old regime of brute force,
might be settled as legitimately and satisfactorily as any
law case between two sovereign States of the American
Union. The Supreme Court of the United States is
frequently occupied with a law-suit between two States;
and cases entitled New York versus Virginia, or Ohio
versus Pennsylvania, will often be found on the list of
cases presented for trial. A resort to arms never occurs
to the inhabitants of either of the litigant States, how-
ever grave may be the difference between them. The
first results, then, of the erection of this High Court of
Nations would be the expulsion of the idea of war from
the popular mind of Christendom; and all preparations
for war would disappear in like manner. All the Conti-
nental Governments are now undergoing the process of
renovation or reconstruction upon a popular basis. New
political affinities have already been created between
nations. Freedom of the Press, right of public meeting,
of association, and other great popular prerogatives, have
been acquired. The community of nations is slowly
approximating to the condition of the family circle.
Now is the time to organize these social tendencies and
national affinities into a fixed system of society. Every-
thing favours the proposition. The great obstructions
that would have opposed it a year ago have been
removed. Nations are gravitating into union, not giving
up any essential qualities of independence or individu-
202 Speech at the Peace Congress at Brussels.
ality, but confederating with each other under the
attraction of mutual affinities. Then, why may we not
link these large circles of humanity into one grand system
of society, by creating for it a common centre and source
of attraction in the establishment of a High Court of
Nations?


1921
1420
Speech in the Salle du Jeu de Paume, Versailles,
August 25th, 1849,
AT THE CLOSE OF THE PEACE CONGRESS AT PARIS.
RICHARD COBDEN IN THE CHAIR.
Μ'
R. CHAIRMAN,-I am happy to resume my
character as an American citizen, and to add
my testimony to the lively sentiment of pleasure which
all my countrymen must experience who have to-day been
specially honoured with the generous and delicate ameni-
ties of their English brethren. Every circumstance
which could impart interest to this token of their good-
will, and enhance its appreciation, and endear its memory,
has contributed to the felicity of this novel and interest-
ing occasion. The place of this meeting, the parties here
assembled, and all the incidents and emotions of the last
great week in the history of the world—a week of years
a week crowded full of those bright realities which
even the most hopeful heart in our midst had deemed
the inaccessible and inalienable heritage of a distant
future; all these are circumstances which give a precious
significance and value to this hour of kindly fellowship.
I regret that so few of my countrymen are present, to
participate in the enjoyment of this happy occasion, and
204
Speech in the
to respond to those generous and brotherly sentiments of
esteem on the part of our English colleagues. But there
are enough of us to accept this expression of their good-
will on behalf of all the Americans who were prevented
from assisting at the great Peace Congress in Paris, by
obstacles which they could not overcome. And I am
sure we may go further still, and accept it as an evidence
of that kindly feeling which is entertained by the whole
people of England towards the people of the United States.
And what more appropriate time or place than this could
we find for connecting with a new bond of brotherhood
the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon family divided
by the Atlantic? or, to use those familiar personations
which a long and friendly custom has sanctioned, where
and when could John and Jonathan more becomingly
shake hands before the world, in token of their brotherly
love, than on this very spot, and under that standard of
universal peace which we have assisted to raise aloft in
the great metropolis of European civilization, to signal
a better era to all the peoples of the earth? What time
or place more fitting than this to unlearn the lessons that
were taught them in the old years of that mutual aliena-
tion which made enemies of nations which God had made
of one blood, to dwell upon all the face of the earth in
the bonds of peace and amity? Among these ruinous
estrangements, perhaps the most unnatural of all was the
one between England and her colonial children on the
other side of the Atlantic. In the course of the long
struggle that ensued, the young Anglo-Saxon nation
became intimately connected with France by strong
bonds of friendship and alliance. The remembrance of
Salle du Feu de Paume, Versailles. 205
that connection, with all the affecting circumstances under
which it was formed, has perpetuated a profound senti-
ment of goodwill towards France in the heart of the
American nation. But it is to me a sad reminiscence
that the original basis of that friendship was a common
hostility to England. But, if such a lasting amity could
be established on such a foundation, what a condition of
brotherhood may we not expect when the bands of
France, England, and the United States shall be united
in fraternal embrace, and when they shall go forth
together to vanquish the insane and unnatural enmities
which divide and embitter other nations! How it would
accelerate the advent of the good time coming if the
Peace Congress in Paris should result in the union of
these three great peoples, not against the rest of the
world, but for its pacification, prosperity, and progress!
And which of the nations which have recently submitted
the highest interests of their existence to the sanguinary
and unreasoning arbitrament of the sword, will lift up its
bleeding head from the dust and forbid the bauns of this
union, and say that might shall continue to decide the
right of the people? For myself, I believe that a few
more Peace Parliaments of the people, like the one we
have just terminated under such happy auspices, will not
only unite England, France, and America, but all the
civilized nations of the earth, in the pacific dispositions
and relations of one vast commonwealth. The hand of
America is ready and warm for such a union, and we
may pledge its best activities to promote a consummation
so devoutly to be wished. And I beg to say, on behalf
of the friends of peace on that side of the Atlantic, that
206 Speech in the Salle du Jeu de Paume.
no efforts within the compass of their ability will be
spared to ensure a large and respectable delegation to the
next Congress on the Continent. It is our intention to
return to the United States in the course of a few weeks,
and to commence forthwith to canvass the country for
delegates, whose principles, talents, and position shall be
worthy of their important mission to Europe. One or
two of us will make the tour of the free States for this
purpose; and with the prestige and precedent of the
magnificent demonstration just brought to a close in
Paris, we may promise ourselves and you a good measure
of success. In conclusion, let me say, that we hope that
most of those present on this interesting occasion may
meet again next year at some town on the Rhine, to raise
our white standard of Peace in Germany, and to rally to
its support our brethren of that portion of Europe.


Speech at the Peace Congress at Frankfort,
August 24th, 1850.
ΜΕ
R. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,-
I deeply regret that the task has devolved
upon me to present to this assembly a proposition which
has been denominated American, from the attention
which the friends of peace in the United States have
given to its development and advocacy during the last
twenty years. I refer to the convocation and establish-
ment of a Congress and High Court of Nations for the
regulation of the intercourse and for the adjustment of
the difficulties which may arise between them, according
to the principles of justice embodied in a well-defined
code of international law. I had hoped that some one
of my countrymen would have been prepared to bring to
the discussion of this question a force of argument and
clearness of illustration befitting a subject of such grave
importance. But as no other member of the American
delegation is thus prepared to develop the proposition,
I beg leave merely to state, as succinctly as I can, the
principal points and considerations which it involves.
208
Speech at the
In the first place, then, permit me to say that the
measure proposed is not American, either in origin or
argument. It had taken shape and form in the public
mind before America was discovered as a world, or born
as a nation. It is as old as the idea of international
law; and, with that idea, it has come down to us from
the earliest times, expanding as it descended, through
Egyptians and Persians, through Greeks and Romans,
through the chaos of the dark ages, through confedera-
cies and councils, leagues and diets of later periods, down
to the congresses and conferences of the last century.
In 1622, before a single English colony was fairly estab-
lished in North America, and nearly one hundred years
before the Abbé de St. Pierre had written a word upon
the subject, a French author, in a work entitled "Le
Nouveau Cygne," elaborated the proposition which is
submitted to your consideration to a fullness of develop-
ment far surpassing the limits which the present advo-
cates of the measure would prescribe to its operations.
He proposed the convocation and establishment of a
great International Senate, composed of a representative
from every recognised kingdom or Government in the
world,- —a body which should not only serve as a per-
petual Court of Equity and Arbitration, but also as a
standing convention or congress to project and propose
great international works of improvement, such as the
connection of rivers, seas, and oceans by ship-canals, and
enterprises of a similar character.
About a century and a-half after the publication of
this work, a higher authority and more distinguished
name than that of the anonymous writer to whom I have
Peace Congress at Frankfort.
209
referred, invested the proposition with all the dignity
that profound legal erudition and experience could confer
upon it.
The name of Emanuel Kant is identified with
it, and it would be an act of injustice to the memory of
that remarkable man to ascribe to the American mind a
plan which he had presented to the world with such
clearness and force before it was ever mentioned on that
side of the Atlantic. He says, "What we mean to pro-
pose is a General Congress of Nations, of which both the
meeting and duration are to depend entirely upon the
sovereign wills of the League, and not an indissoluble
union, like that which exists between the several States
in North America, founded upon a political covenant.
Such a Congress and such a League are the only means
of realizing the idea of a true public law, according to
which the differences between nations would be deter-
mined by civil proceedings, as those between individuals
are determined by civil judicature, instead of resorting
—a means of redress worthy only of barbarians.”
Other distinguished authorities might be cited to prove
that the proposition is not an American idea. To France
and Germany belongs the joint honour of its paternity;
to France and Germany belongs the joint duty of expand-
ing it to the full stature and perfection of a world-em-
bracing reality. Here is a sublime work for the united.
energies of their mighty mind. Whatever we have done
in America in reference to this question, we have done.
as their disciples. For twenty years we have wrought
upon their idea, and endeavoured to induce our Govern-
ment to propose its adoption to all the other Govern-
ments of the civilized world. Large public meetings
to war,-
P
210
Speech at the
have been held from year to year for its consideration.
More than fifty essays have been written to demonstrate
its necessity and practicability. The Legislatures of se-
veral of our States have addressed memorials in its
favour to the General Congress and Government at
Washington. The resolutions adopted by the Legisla-
ture of Massachusetts in 1844 embrace the propositions
almost exactly as defined by Emanuel Kant in 1794.
This is its language :—
"That it is our earnest desire that the Government of
the United States would take measures for obtaining the
consent of the powers of Christendom to the establish-
ment of a General Congress of Nations for the purpose of
settling the principles of international law, and of estab
lishing a High Court of Nations to adjudge all cases of
difficulty which may be brought before them."
This scheme proposes, to use the terms of that distin-
guished writer, "to realize the idea of a true public law,"
by the only process by which such an important object
could be attained; first, by defining and settling the
principles of international law; and then by establishing
a High Court of Nations, which should interpret and
apply those principles to the adjudication of such ques-
tions as should be submitted to its arbitration. Here,
then, are two great and distinct steps to be taken to
organize the society of nations upon a basis of fixed law
and order. The resolution before us limits our delibe-
rations to the first of these steps; and to that I will
confine my remarks, feeling assured that the one must
inevitably follow the other in quick succession. The
sole object of a Congress of Nations, according to the
་
Peace Congress at Frankfort.
2II
language of the resolution, is to provide the world with
a well-defined, authoritative code of international law.
This has been acknowledged by eminent jurists, and
proved, by centuries of painful experience, to be the
great want of the commonwealth of nations.
* *
The resolution before us seems to invite rather timidly
the friends of peace in different countries to prepare the
public mind for the adoption of such a code, and for the
condition which it involves. It seems to intimate that
this preparation is a work yet to be commenced, or, at
least, in the incipient stage of progress. Now, all the
signs of the times that I can distinguish indicate that
this preparation is already far advanced. The morning
light of the good time coming is everywhere breaking
upon the eyes of those who are looking and longing for
its appearing. Everywhere new hearts and new hopes
are gained to our cause. Everywhere new agencies and
tendencies are combining to propel it forward. The great
necessities and interests of the age unite to make peace
the first want and predilection of the nations. The fa-
therhood of God and the brotherhood of men are coming
to be recognised by civilization and science, as well as by
Christianity. This great central principle of Divine
revelation is taking effect upon the peoples of the world.
The bristling barriers of nationality, which once divided
and estranged them, are gradually disappearing, and they
are beginning to fraternize across the boundaries that
once made them enemies. The great transactions of
nations, the mightiest works of human skill and energy,
are becoming international, in origin, operation, and
ownership. Is it a canal that is proposed? It is a
P 2
212
Speech at the
great channel for the ships of all nations across the isth-
mus of Panama or Suez to shorten the passage to India.
Is it a railway that is projected? It is one 4,000 miles
in length, across the continent of North America, to open
to all the nations of Europe a north-west passage to
China of thirty days from London. Is it an electric tele-
graph? It is one to reach round the globe, crossing
Behring's Straits and the English Channel, and stringing
on its nerve of wire all the capitals of the civilized world
between London and Washington. Is it a grand display
of the works of art and industry, for the encouragement
and development of mechanical skill and genius? It is
a magnificent Exhibition opened without the slightest
distinction to the artists and artisans of all nations, just
as if they belonged to one and the same country, and were
equally entitled to its patronage and support. Is it an
act affecting navigation? It is to place all the ships that
plough the ocean upon the same footing as if owned by
one and the same nation. Is it a proposition to cheapen
and extend the facilities of correspondence between in-
dividuals and communities? It is to give the world an
Ocean Penny Postage, to make home everywhere, and all
nations neighbours. These are the material manifes-
tations of that idea of universal brotherhood which is
now permeating the popular mind in different countries,
and preparing them for that condition promised to man-
kind in Divine revelation. They are the mechanical
efforts of civilization to demonstrate that sublime truth-
"God hath made of one blood all nations of men." They
represent the preparation of the public mind of the world
already accomplished for a Congress of Nations to elabo-
Peace Congress at Frankfort.
213
rate for the regulation of their society and intercourse a
well-defined and authoritative code of international law.
All the tendencies of the times, the grandest ideas and
instrumentalities developed by science and civilization,
combine to favour this consummation. The means are
adequate; the necessity is urgent and universally felt;
the sentiment of the age is in sympathy with the propo-
sition; a flood of energetic influences is setting in at
full tide in favour of the undertaking. Let us seize this
happy juncture with faith and courage, and I am con-
fident that the great idea and institution which we have
so long laboured to see established may soon be realized
to the full of all the beneficence to mankind which we
have anticipated.


GYSCYS
CSCSCSC
G
DevenevevevedeDevCULM
Extract from a Speech at Birmingham,
IN 1851.
σε Ι
agree with him (Mr. Cobden) in thinking that there could
not, perhaps, have been a more appropriate time than the present for
a demonstration of this nature, because we have now converted this
country, I may say, into the Temple of Peace of the whole world."
-Lord Palmerston.
TE
HERE! that will do pretty well. And who could
have expected so much, so soon? There are a
scope and compass of significance, of the Crystal Palace
order, in this sentence. Among the most auspicious and
important of the coincidences that transpire in human
affairs, is fitness of time and place to a great event or
undertaking. "Time," said the eloquent Abbé Deguerry,
in his grand and powerful speech in the Peace Congress
at Paris, "Time is the Prime Minister of God's Provi-
dence." And, surrounded and over-arched with the
bright manifestations of Providence in these latter days,
with all the signs that betoken, and the songs that are
greeting, the dawn of a new era, there are thousands and
tens of thousands of prudent, far-seeing persons, standing
Speech at Birmingham.
215
with their backs to the future, and warning the friends
of Peace that time is not with them,—that the time has
not come to favour their efforts and realize their aim.
Look into the columns of the London Times, which
arrogates to its unstable temporeity some of the minor
attributes of Time. What has been its standing charge
against the advocates of Peace, and their efforts? Why,
that they were "counting without their host;" that they
were working in advance of time, and expecting and
trying to realize the practicabilities of a distant age.
And many sincere, Christian men have gone further still,
and said that our endeavours and expectations were out-
running the prophecies; that, in labouring to bring in an
era of permanent and universal Peace, we were seeking
to realize, prematurely, one of the prime conditions of the
Millennium. It is a pleasant thing, and full of promise,
therefore, that a statesman in Lord Palmerston's position,
acting as janitor to the Temple of Janus, so far as its
custody is consigned to Great Britain, has turned his face
to the future, and read its auguries, and the indications
of the present, with such clear-sighted and liberal inter-
pretation, that he has not hesitated to arise in his place,
in the foremost Parliament of the world, and say that, in
his opinion, "there could not, perhaps, have been a more
appropriate time than the present for a demonstration of
this nature." What a full and unequivocal testimony this
to the fitness of time! "There could not, perhaps, have
been a more appropriate time than the present for a de-
monstration of this nature." Of what nature? Why, an
effort to induce the British Government to adopt one of
the measures advocated by the Peace Congress last year;
216
Speech at Birmingham.
to lead the leading nations of the earth, by simultaneous
induction, into the path of mutual disarmament, and reci-
procal confidence and amity. And is not the approach-
ing Peace Congress "a demonstration of this nature?"
Come, now, all you hesitating and doubting, who profess
to be as sincere friends of Peace, at heart, as its warmest
advocates, let us reason together. You say, what you have
said for years, that no one could be more honestly opposed
to war than you, and that you intend to do something
for its abolition, "when the proper time comes.
But"
hold there !-no but, please. Are you really willing to
lend a hand to this great work, even on the eve of its
final consummation?-to thrust in your silver-mounted
sickles, and reap the rich sheaves of a harvest which
others, in patient faith, sowed almost in tears, in the
midst of the sneers and jeering obloquy of the world?
Are you willing to come in, even at the hour of triumph,
and share the brilliant and bloodless spoils of the great
victory of Peace?—to say and sing with the advocates
you have contemned, "God hath gotten us this victory.
He hath established the work of our hands, and given us
the desire of our hearts over the great destroyer of man-
kind?" After having stoutly abjured all sympathy or
association with these premature enthusiasts in their
efforts to banish war from the earth, are you willing to we
yourselves with them, as they are bringing into the har
bour of humanity the Golden Fleece, for whose tressed
blessings they struggled for years, with tempest and
flood? Then listen to Lord Palmerston. Does he not
say to you, as plainly as language can speak, that "there
could not, perhaps, be a time more appropriate than
Speech at Birmingham.
217
the present," for you to participate in "a demonstra-
tion of this nature?" for you to attend the Peace
Congress, and take an honest and active part in its
proceedings; to identify your sympathies and convic-
tions with the spirit, principles, and objects which it
will illustrate, teach, and attain? Can you wish better
or safer authority than this clear, emphatic testimony
of the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the fitness of the
present time for your full and sincere adhesion to the
cause of Peace?
So much for the felicitous appropriateness of the pre-
sent for " a demonstration of this nature." Nothing could
equal the fitness of time, save the peculiar adaptation
of place, for this demonstration. And the last feature
of this happy harmony is portrayed by the noble Lord,
in language more elysian than even the very sanguine
and poetical of the friends of Peace are wont to employ,
in describing the reality of their aspirations.
Let us
listen to him again. The reason why the present is such
an appropriate time "for a demonstration of this nature,”
he says, is “because we have now converted this country,
I may say, into the TEMPLE OF PEACE of the whole
world." There now! what do you think of that? How
hampered and halting are the best conceptions which the
prosy and plodding workers in the cause could form of
the fitness of place for the coming Peace Congress com-
pared with this brilliant illustration of the British
Minister! It mirrors the reality as through the Crystal
Palace itself. Full of clustering images of blessedness
and beauty as is this comprehensive and splendid figure,
who can say that he has invested the vista and signifi-
218
Speech at Birmingham.
cance of the facts spread out before him with a colouring,
compass, or a meaning which they do not deserve? Yes,
Lord Palmerston, the sober, unpoetical judgment of the
world shall not check the exuberance of your faith nor
limit its expression, though expanding and warming into
the poetry of enthusiasm. You may say that "we have
now converted this country into the Temple of Peace of
the whole world," for is not this true in almost every
sense and direction? As a place of mere congregation
and social fellowship, is not the Crystal Palace as much
a centre and source of attraction to all the nations of the
earth as Solomon's Temple was to the twelve tribes of
Israel? Do not the people of ali lands and languages
hie and home to it as the doves of Judea did of yore to
their windows in that Temple? Do not they remain as
long together at its shrine of peace and concord as did the
Jewish worshippers that assembled beneath the arches of
that hallowed edifice? In this sense, then, Lord Palmer-
ston may say that this country has now been converted
into a temple. But, if it be a temple, what less or else
can it be than the Temple of Peace, universal and per-
manent? At the inception and end of the work, was
there any ambiguity or reservation in regard to its design
and dedication? No; Peace was enthroned, like a living,
speaking, and heavenly presence in the highest place in
that temple, with an inauguration such as a world, with
its potentates and peoples, could only offer in homage to
her sceptre. It were an easy thing to construct some vast
edifice, and surmount it with a cold master-piece of
marble statuary, and call it Peace or Freedom, or Plenty.
But such is not the Crystal Palace; such is not the
Speech at Birmingham.
219
""
Temple of Peace into which this country has been con-
verted, in the language of Lord Palmerston. It is a
living temple, and not an Oriental monument, crowned
with dead, idolatrous sculpture, in honour and glory of
Peace, like the Athenian image dedicated to "The Un-
known God." Peace is in her Industrial Temple; not in
the cold personation of worshipped marble, but as a
moving, speaking, animating presence; as a life, in the
highest, widest, and warmest condition of activity and
inspiration. Peace is "at home here; magnificent
beyond the most gorgeous pageantry of earthly poten-
tates, but not in state; not overawing; benignly "at
home" to all her multifarious and multitudinous Court of
Industries; blandly and blessingly "at home" to all the
ingenious artists and hard-handed artisans of the world;
alike "at home" in the suavest benevolence of her
countenance, to the sons of toil of every clime, kindred,
and colour, who have crowned her brow and hung her
neck with the choicest jewellery of their genius; who,
with labour patient and hopeful, have made the wildernesses
of the world to blossom as the rose, have dompted and
domesticated the winds and lightning to message-birds
of business and friendship; bridged seas, linked continents,
subdued elements, and co-worked with God in bringing
back beauty to the earth, and unity to the scattered
families of His creation. Peace is "at home" with
these, and these with her, not as the object of their
worship, but of their love and mutual fellowship.
Then there is another generous admission in the
language of Lord Palmerston in his recent speech on
Mr. Cobden's Peace motion. He says,
"We have now,
220
Speech at Birmingham.
I may say, converted this country into the Temple of
Peace of the whole world." It is something hopeful
when a statesman in his 'position, speaking for a great
Government, or for himself, is disposed to say we with
the workers in a great cause. Nothing is more patent to
the world, in connection with this Great Exhibition, than
the fact that it did not originate in the British Parliament,
but was an undertaking of individual enterprise. Neither
was it a sudden and brilliant conception, bowled in among
the events of the age, like an unpredicted comet. It
came in its due time and order, in the right line of suc-
cession of great ideas. The still small voices that uttered
thoughts of peace and human brotherhood among the
people, whether they would hear or forbear; the men of
faith, who stood up and took twenty years of the world's
ridicule for the sowing of these principles; the harmless
enthusiasts who persevered in the enunciation of these
doctrines against satire keen and bitter; these prepared
the way, and hastened the coming of this event. The
friendly and fraternal addresses from the towns of
England to the towns of the United States and France;
the international visits which succeeded; then the great
Congresses of the friends of peace, of different nations ;-
these have done their work in bringing in this grand
consummation of the influences they set in motion. The
achievement is made to occupy time, as well as to include
a vast range of co-operation, by the language of Lord
Palmerston. "We have now converted this country into
a Temple of Peace." Now, after so long a time, after so
many years of labour in changing the habits and disposi-
tion of the country, "we have converted it into the Temple
Speech at Birmingham.
221
of Peace of the whole world." Looking at the long educa-
tional process by which this change has been effected,
tracing back the august demonstration to the tributaries
of public sentiment which produced it, we cannot think it
is too much to regard the Peace Congress as the parent,
and not the parasite, of the Great Exhibition.

THERE ARE NOT RE
H
ps

MANONAM
Extract from a Speech in the London Peace
Congress,
July 24th, 1851.
Τ
IME and Providence, in all the vicissitudes and
events which mark the experience of individuals,
or measure the progress of nations, bring but one now
to man, or to any human enterprise. Every great
event or undertaking that has blessed the world with
its beneficence has had its own peculiar now; its own
providential preparation of the popular mind for its re-
ception and fruition; its own contemporaneous coin-
cidence of auspicious circumstances, co-working to faci-
litate its realization. And if the present year is not
the now which God has given us for the consummation
of the hopes we entertain and the measures we propose,
that now will come "for the mouth of the Lord of
Hosts hath spoken it." It will come; but not by obser-
vation. It will come; but the star of its advent will
be recognised only by a few shepherds longing and
looking, with skyward eye, for its appearing. It will
come; but the faith of the few will only discern and hail
its approach, while the million will persist in their incre-
Speech in the London Peace Congress. 223
dulity, and ask in derision, "Where is the promise of its
coming?" What was true in regard to the great event
of this year, will be true in reference to the more august
reality towards which we look and labour. Who dis-
cerned the fact that this year was the now of the Great
Exhibition? Was it the spontaneous and universal con-
viction of the public mind, that the set time had come for
this magnificent demonstration in the Crystal Palace?
No; its advent was comprehended by the faith of the
few. Even to them it did not come by observation.
They did not walk by sight or certainty. They had no
pathometer wherewith to test the sentiment of the world
towards their proposition. It was not in their power to
feel the pulse of the divided populations of the earth, to
ascertain whether their multitudinous heart beat in sym-
pathy with the idea of this grand gathering of the
nations. And without this spontaneous sympathy of
the people of different lands and languages, without
the animated, consentaneous co-operation of their best
will, genius, and activity, no human legislation could
have produced the event which now fills the mind of the
world with delight and admiration. How, then, did the
princely author of this monarch-thought of the age, and
his dauntless coadjutors in the conception, ascertain that
its now had come? that the mind of the world was ripe
and ready for its realization? that the predilections of
peoples and the pathway of Providence were in happy
conjunction for this brilliant consummation? The cir-
cumstances under which they put out their great thought
are full of instruction and encouragement to our faith.
Ten years ago, there were no interests in the common-
224
Speech in the
wealth of nations so mutually antagonistic, so jealous of
competition, so adverse to reconciliation, so ambitious of
precedence, or determined to rise on the ruins of another,
as the mechanical and agricultural industries of the diffe-
rent populations in Christendom. Years of elaborate
legislation had arrayed these interests against each other
in lynx-eyed and tireless hostility. The artisans of one
country were taught to regard their brethren of the spin-
dle, hammer, and spade of another as their natural
enemies in the battle of life and labour. They were
taught to conceal their skill; to lock away their me-
chanical genius in close, dark laboratories, lest it should
be purloined by foreigners. "No admittance here except
on business" was written, in barking, bull-dog capitals,
over their factories and workshops. Abundant admit-
tance to buy, but none to learn, was the meaning of this
threatening monition. Even to the first day of 1851,
the jealous tariffs of different countries seemed "like
lime-twigs set to catch" and cripple the thought of bring-
ing the arts and sciences of all nations into one Central
Palace of Peace and Concord. In addition to this cir-
cumstance, a deluge of angry agitation was rolling over
the Continent of Europe. During the last months of
1850, thousands and tens of thousands of the well-skilled
artisans of Prussia, Austria, and other German States
had laid down the peaceful implements of their handi-
craft, and were training their fingers to the bloody trade
and weapons of war. And was this the time? was this
the juncture of favouring opportunities for the Great
Exhibition of the Arts and Industries of all nations?
So its originators believed. Against the mind of the
London Peace Congress.
225
million, they believed it steadfastly. To their faith, the
now had come for the complete realization of the magni-
ficent conception. Unaided by legislation, with no go-
vernmental power or authority to lean upon, they sent
out their idea, dovelike, among the divided populations
of the earth. It dropped into the hearts of peoples like
a still small voice of Divine inspiration. It permeated
the minds of the masses, and touched their sympathies
to the finest issues. It worked upward into the highest
ranks of human society, and downward into its lowest
conditions; and pervaded and united all with the com-
mon sentiment, that the great day of UNIVERSAL LABOUR
had come, when it was to be crowned with glory and
honour, and the homage of potentates and peoples. Away
upon the sea, to distant islands and continents, flew the
summons of that thought; and the sons of toil of every
handicraft, and clime, and colour opened their hearts
to its message; and it thrilled their fingers with such
ingenious activities as never before wrought in the
mechanical creations of human skill. The great day of
LABOUR had come. The queen of all the earthly con-
ditions of humanity was to be brought to her throne,
with kings and queens as her train-bearers, with shout-
ings of grace and glory to her sceptre from the many-
tongued myriads of her subjects. Labour, patient, peaceful
Labour, that from the closed gates of paradise went forth
weeping into the wilderness of life, and tracked it with
the red pathway of her bleeding feet; Labour, that had
made bricks without straw in Egypt, and lain pale and
hungry, and begged for crumbs on the door-stones of
palaces, which her blistered hands had filled with dainties
Q
226
Speech in the
which the eye and appetite of ungrateful luxury could
not enjoy; Labour, that had walked and worked her way
through the barbarisms and feudalisms of the past, with
the fetter-prints of bondage still fresh and crimson around
her limbs; meek, lowly-minded Labour had come to her
immortal now, to the day of her august coronation. And
her lowly men of might, who bore in their sunburnt
foreheads and in their horny hands the dusky signets of
their loyalty, felt that her day was come. And with a
new sentiment of dignity, the pearl-divers of distant seas,
with strong and downward beat, descended to deeper
fathoms of the ocean's depths, and searched its shining
bed for "gems of purer light serene" than ever shed their
lustre on regal courts; the diamond-diggers of different
zones hunted with new ambition for the costliest stones
of the earth's treasury to stud the coronation jewellery of
Labour; and the trappers of frozen regions, and the
fishermen of the Poles, the men of the mines of deeper
fathom than the sea; the diggers and workers of all
the precious and useful metals and minerals which the
earth contains; the workers of the spindle, shuttle, and
needle; the artisans of hostile countries forgot their
nationality in the sentiment of the dignity of their
common condition, and all wrought, with the highest
enthusiasm of their genius, to bring the master-pieces of
human art to the crowning of Labour. And the kings
and queens of the earth felt that the first jewels of their
crowns owed their lustre to Labour, and they brought
them forth to shine among the gems of her coronation,
in the great Temple of Peace and Concord. And the
first queen of the world acted as bridesmaid at the royal
London Peace Congress.
227
robing of Labour, and in sight of the congregated nations
she set the tiara of the world's homage on her brow, and
gave her, a glorious bride, to the dignity of universal
humanity, as the first-born and fairest of the earthly
offspring of Omnipotence. And who among the thou-
sands that filled, or the exulting millions that surrounded,
the Crystal Temple on that august occasion, could doubt
that its illustrious now had come, with its world-full of
the finger-prints and finger-guidings of Divine Provi
dence; with its favouring sympathies beating fellowship
in the bosoms of nations; with attractions and unpre-
cedented opportunities for the realization of this magni-
ficent scheme of peace and human brotherhood?
But the result of this grand experiment has a bearing
upon our efforts and expectations far beyond the value
and significance of an illustration. The wonderful de-
monstration which has congregated the peoples of the
earth in fraternal fellowship in yonder Crystal Temple
of Peace is not a mere collateral event, by which we
may prove the existence and force of a current of public
sentiment running parallel with that which this Congress
represents. Great as are its triumphs, immeasurable as
may be its consequences, it did not transpire on a line of
human progress
which may,
may, in some dim, distant future,
converge into the road which we are pursuing. No; the
lines of the Great Exhibition and the annual Peace
Congress of Christendom have already merged into the
same highway of peace and human brotherhood. It is
not our doing. It is the work of Divine Providence,
and it is "marvellous in our eyes." It is not our saying.
Let no one charge us with the ambitious assumption of
Q 2
228
Speech in the
this fact. Others have said it for us; others of the
highest authority, and in the audience of the listening
world. At the grand inauguration in the Crystal Palace,
on the 1st of May, Prince Albert declared to the assem-
bled thousands of different kindreds and climes, and to
the millions of Christendom who caught responsive the
echo of his words, that "the undertaking had for its end
the promotion of all branches of human industry, and
the strengthening of the bonds of peace and friendship
among all nations of the earth." Peace, permanent and
universal; peace, rooted in the well-being of nations;
peace, with its tendrils clasping all the sensitive and
nourishing fibres of human industry; peace, interwoven
with the mutual affections and interests of the peoples of
the earth, is the object of the Congress of Nations, now
holding its pacific sessions in the Crystal Palace. All
the ideas and associations connected with the event
merge into this grand object and result. The originators
of this demonstration, and those who glory loudest in
its triumphs, claim for it, as its highest honour, this
result. Their fervid orators, in the glow of enthusiastic
eloquence, point to the Great Exhibition, and say, this is
the true Peace Congress. They claim for it the character
and object of our annual Peace Parliament of the People.
They promise to realize the result for which we labour;
to be first at the goal, and carry off the prize. They do
not say that they are against us, or competing with us in
a parallel race-course, but that they are far in advance
of us, on the same high-road toward the object of our
efforts and aspirations. Then, what becomes of the
charge that we are going too fast and too far, when
London Peace Congress.
229
the originators of the Great Exhibition are almost boast-
ing that they have taken the cause of peace out of our
hands, and are carrying it forward to its final consum-
mation with railway speed, because that our expectations
and progress are so slow? The world, almost without a
dissenting voice, admits that the set time had come for
this event; that the preparation of the popular mind of
Christendom was complete for the realization of this
scheme, even beyond the boldest expectation of its ori-
ginators. And it had but one single end from the
beginning, and that was peace. Let us grant it gladly
and gratefully. That is the only end of our annual
Peace Congress. Then will not the sympathies and
activities of nations, and the co-operation of Divine
Providence, which have crowned their undertaking with
such mighty success, accrue to the realization of our aim
and efforts? If their now has come, with such a super-
abundance of happy circumstances, can ours be far off?
We trow not.

DGY

Speech at the Annual Meeting of the American
Peace Society, Boston,
May, 1861.
Р
EACE, said one who made the saying sound like
a Divine axiom, peace has its victories as well as
war. It might be said with equal truth that peace has
its heroism, too, as well as war. When the wrathful
spirit of uprising nations is at its flood, when the foun-
tains of the great deep of human passions are broken up,
and the rush and the roar of the deluge seem to over-
whelm and silence all the still small voices of charity
and human brotherhood, it requires a courage more
elevated and dauntless than that of the warrior's to go
out into the storm and rebuke the tempest, to put
against the tide of the world's opinion the quiet remon-
strance of reason and humanity. The last five years have
been an ordeal-period for the friends of peace, the like
of which was never before concentrated in an equal space
of time. The order of the old hopeful adage has been
reversed the darkness has been deepest just after the
break of day. In the five years beginning with 1848,
peace, permanent and universal, seemed on the eve of its
:
Speech at Boston.
231
coronation as the reigning condition among men. Its
advocates of different countries, voice, and language-
met in the first capitals on the Continent of Europe, and
urged upon the peoples and Governments principles and
measures which, if adopted, would for ever banish the
barbarism of war from the civilized world. At each
succeeding Congress, new and distinguished adherents
to the holy cause came in and rallied to its standard.
The great masses of society began, to give the suffrage of
their sentiments to the policy of perpetual peace and
goodwill among men. The tide of the world's national
interests and the social intercourse of nations set in
in the same direction. The Great Exhibition of 1851
seemed the very efflorescence of all preceding efforts to
establish a lasting and universal brotherhood.
But the last five years, with their momentous and
startling events, have brought back the deluge of the
war-spirit even beyond the high-water mark of its inun
dations in earlier epochs of civilization. First came the
terrible contest of the Crimea; then, ere yet the rains
and dews of a single year had blanched its battle-fields
of the blistering crimson of human blood, the horrible
uprising in India startled the world with its murderous
and malignant conflicts. Before its sanguinary records
were closed, the war in Italy burst upon the world, and
such armed hosts as were never before marshalled in
Europe met at Magenta and Solferino, and reddened
them with a carnage unknown to Austerlitz or Waterloo.
Then, with scarcely a month's breathing-space of peace,
the war in China followed, and, ere that was fully closed,
arose the new war in Southern Italy, the achievements
232
Speech at Boston.
of Garibaldi, and the exciting events and the excited
hopes predicated upon the result of the struggle. Never,
since the first organization and associated efforts of the
friends of peace, has such a deluge of antagonistic events
and dispositions overwhelmed their labours, hopes, and
faith as during the past five years. Especially have our
brethren and co-labourers in Europe been subjected to a
testing-furnace of trial seven times heated beyond the
pressure of any preceding experience. Each of the wars
mentioned came with a peculiar temptation to many who
felt themselves well-grounded in the principles of peace.
What one war left unshaken, another swept into the
current of popular sympathy and opinion. Thousands
who stood firm against the conflict in the Crimea yielded
to Garibaldi's struggle in Italy. Still, a brave, heroic
band of good and true men in our mother-land have
stood the sifting of these successive trials, and, through
them all, have borne aloft, with steady hands and steady
hopes, the white, pure banner of peace, like the morning-
star of Christian faith among the red and fiery planets
of Mars.
And now we, who have enlisted under that same
white banner, have come to our trial-hour; and who
shall be able to stand? Thousands in our country have
felt and acted with us, to a certain degree of interest and
activity, when the skies were fair and tranquil over our
own land, and when the great evil of war seemed a
distant and foreign eventuality. But now our turn has
come with a pressure of trial which our friends abroad
never experienced. The very structure of our repub-
lican institutions makes this test of our faith and duty
*
Speech at Boston.
233
the more intense and perilous. Here the people rule;
their sentiment and will are the great governing power
of the land. He who opposes that power, when it lifts
itself up in its might, as in a crisis like the present,
rushes against the thick bosses of the strongest force
this side of Omnipotence. I say it with reverence :—
this people-power, somewhat resembling Omnipotence,
pervades all our nation's space, listens unseen, operates
unspent, and presses to the earth the man who dares to
lift his opinion against the morality and justice of its
rule. He who ventures to enter his protest against this
awful conflict, now about to engulf our country in the
carnage and desolation of a civil war, becomes instantly
subject to the charge, if not the punishment, of treason.
He finds the enemy and avenger of his sentiments in his
own house or his neighbour's house. His own familiar
friend, with whom he took sweet counsel and walked to
the house of God in company, rises against him as a
member of the great Government of the people, and
taunts him with treason to its authority.
In a time like the present, where shall we go to find
a rock on which to stand unmoved in the sweeping flood
of public sentiment roaring around us, like the voice of
many waters, for the wild tempest of war? The strong-
hold of our faith, the guide-lights of our duty, the
panoply of our principles, are in the spirit and the teach-
ings of the Christian religion. If these teachings do not
condemn war, and make it a sin against God and man,
where shall we go for arguments against the bloody and
delusive arbitrament of the sword? Shall we be turned
out of the doors of the Bible, to find those arguments in
234
Speech at Boston.
the lower moralities of commerce, or of political economy,
or of material or humanitarian interests? To my mind,
one of the most painful phases of the present conflict in
our country is the attitude of Christian Churches in the
two sections towards each other. Three years ago, in the
great revival of 1857, they were one in the unity of
spirit and the bond of Christian faith and love. Then the
lightning fingers of the telegraph, now busy with the
plans and doings of war, transmitted from sea to lake,
and from river to mountain, intelligence of noonday prayer
meetings in the various towns and villages of the Union;
of the conversion of thousands and tens of thousands
among all classes and ages of the people. Now, thousands
of those converts, fresh from the affecting memorials of
the sacramental table, are marching towards each other,
not to the music of that hymn sung by their Saviour and
His disciples on the Mount of Olives, but to the sound of
the fife and drum, with fixed bayonets and lighted
matches, to the work of mutual slaughter. And the
Churches to which they belong are cheering them on,
blessing their banners, and praying for their triumph.
How sad and saddening is all this! Is Christ thus
divided? Are His teaching, His spirit, and His life sus-
ceptible of such antagonisms as these? How completely
unanimous are all the Christian Churches, of all denomi-
nations, in the Southern States, in the conviction that
their cause is holy, just, and true, and that they can ask
God, with a clear conscience, to crown that cause with
triumph! Witness their fast days, and especial seasons
of public prayer for the sympathy and aid of the Almighty.
The whole Christian Church in the North, without a
+
Speech at Boston.
235
dissenting voice, is equally unanimous and united to sus-
tain the war, and in every place where prayer is wont
to be made, in town, village, and hamlet, there is earnest
supplication that the Divine power may side with the
Federal Government in the struggle. This shows how
much remains to be done, and how long it will take to
do it, to bring the conscience of the Christian Church to
one common, fixed, and unchanging standard of sentiment
and duty on the subject of war.
Until those who pro-
fess to be actuated by the spirit and live by the rule of
Christian faith shall be enlightened to see that it excludes
them from all participation in war, we shall see, when
the trial comes, just such a scene as the country now
presents.
But, strong as is the Christian foundation of our cause,
it does not rest exclusively upon what some may please to
call abstract principle or benevolent sentiment. It is
also based upon a policy sustained by arguments and
interests which we may urge in season and out of
season upon the Governments and peoples of Christen-
dom. It is the policy of universal law and order; it is the
policy of equal and impartial justice and equity; it is
to banish lynch law between nations, and to make them
amenable to the jurisprudence of reason and humanity
in their dealings with each other. What constitutes
anarchy in a community? Is it anything more or less
than the taking of the law into their own hands by
the individuals of that community, or making the rule
and impulse of their passions and prejudices the law of
their action towards their fellows? Do not Govern-
ments exist for the purpose of preventing this sway of
236
Speech at Boston.
private passions and interests among men, for trans-
ferring their controversies to impartial tribunals, whose
decisions shall not be biased by any personal favour
towards one of the parties to the detriment of the other?
Well, the first and distinctive aim of our Peace policy is
to apply the same rule to Governments themselves; to
induce them to set a good example of law and order to
their own subjects, not by taking the law into their own
hands, not by arrogating to themselves the right of being
their own judges and executioners in cases of controversy
with each other, but by submitting those cases to the
arbitrament of impartial justice, equity, and reason; it is
virtually to place all the nations of Christendom, both
great and small, on the same footing in regard to their
rights and interests; to give as strong a guaranty to the
weakest as the strongest.
This policy embraces three distinctive measures which
have been developed and urged with great force for
many years by able men on both sides of the Atlantic.
Of course, we can only re-state them here, to justify the
hope within us to see them at some future day adopted
by the leading Powers of the civilized world. First in
the rank of these measures, it may be proper to place
Stipulated Arbitration. This plan may be stated in a
few words. It merely proposes that the leading Powers
of Christendom, in a time of goodwill and mutual confi-
dence, when no mote of irritation is chafing their sensi-
bilities, shall enter into a special and solemn treaty to
refer to the arbitration of disinterested parties the adju-
dication of every question of controversy that may arise
between them in the future, which they cannot settle
Speech at Boston.
237
amicably by the usual process of negotiations. Now,
one of the first and best results anticipated from this
measure is this, that when any serious difficulty shall
arise between the two countries, an honourable provision
for its ultimate settlement would be pre-existing and
available; consequently we believe that the people of the
two nations who sanctioned or approved this provision
would rest quiet in the opinion that it would afford a
satisfactory solution of the question; and they would,
therefore, not yield to that excitement of the war-spirit
which, more than any other influence, is calculated to em-
barrass and thwart the ordinary process of negotiation.
Thus the very existence of such a treaty of arbitration,
without directly invoking its interposition, would pro-
bably render simple negotiation effective and satisfactory
between the two Powers.
Such is one of the measures contemplated in our policy
of Peace. We are not afraid to submit it to the most
rigid examination of the most astute and casuistical
statesmen and diplomatists of the world. The second
measure in order of application is based upon the same
practical common sense. It is easy, simple, direct, avail-
able, and effective at any moment that it shall be adopted.
It is what we call Simultaneous and Proportionate Dis-
armament of nations. It proposes merely to reverse the
process by which they have brought themselves to the
threshold of bankruptcy by constantly increasing military
armaments. The proposition is based upon one of the
clearest principles of Euclid. If from equals you take
equals, the remainders will be equals. In other words,
if by treaty stipulation England and France agree to
238
Speech at Boston.
reduce their navies by so many guns and their armies by
so many regiments, the remainders will be equals, or bear
precisely the same proportion to each other as they do
now. Thus, by a series of equal reductions, their amount
might be safely brought down to one-tenth of their
present expenditure. We propose that the same policy
of reduction should be adopted by all the Powers of
Christendom.
The last and third measure is a Congress of Nations,
to construct a code of international law, and to establish
a High Court to apply these laws to all difficult cases of
controversy that may be referred to its adjudication.
This is peculiarly a proposition of American origin or
adoption, and is based upon the structure and functions
of the Supreme Court of the United States. Here, then,
are three practical measures for the abolition of war be-
tween nations, which the friends of peace have pressed
upon the attention of the Governments and peoples of
Christendom for more than a quarter of a century. Can
any man of common sense say that these measures are the
chimeras of visionary enthusiasts? They have stood the
severest analysis and criticism of statesmen, and the first
powers of Christendom have done homage to their wisdom,
by applying some of their vital principles to the solution
of great and perilous controversies. There is an aspect
of these plans of pacification which gives a distinctive
character to the aims and efforts of the friends of peace.
They are all preventives of war. They are measures de-
signed to intercept the first uprising of the war spirit
between nations.
Now, many persons misapprehend our position entirely.
Speech at Boston.
239
They frequently ask, in a kind of triumphant tone,
"What would you do in such and such a case, when two
nations, aroused to the highest pitch of the war-fever, are
clutching at each other's throats?" As well might you
ask a physician what he would do when he is first called
in to a patient nine days gone with the most malignant
fever, which has been set on fire by poisonous liquor,
until the pulse is at the rate of 150 a minute. If he
can do nothing for the recovery of such a person, does
it tell against his professional ability? Whatever he
might attempt to do in such a case, it is quite certain
what he would say: "It is too late; you should have
called me in sooner. I have no medicines that will
break this fever." That is a parallel case with ours.
The measures I have described are our "medicines for
the mind diseased" of nations. They are preventives.
If adopted when the pulse of reason beats steady and
even, the two parties will never clutch at each other's
throats on the battle-field. Such an extreme emergency
will never transpire.
There is another feature of these measures which it
may be well to make prominent at a time like the pre-
sent. They are designed to be applied exclusively to the
settlement of controversies between independent and
sovereign nations; between powers which, at the fiercest
stage of hostilities, recognise each other on the same
footing as independent sovereignties. Indeed, it is only
the hostile collision of such parties that can be legi-
timately called war. It may be said with much force
and propriety, "Your measures are all very well for
preventing or arresting war between nations, but what
240
Speech at Boston.
have you to meet the case of revolution in a nation
against an oppressive Government? What plan have you
for the settlement of such a difficulty between the ruling
power and its subjects? I think we must say frankly
that we have no specific and direct measure to interpose
between a Government and the people it has wronged
to the extremity of revolution. In asking a Govern-
ment to accept arbitration to settle a difficulty with
another Power, we recognise and honour its complete.
independence. We touch not a single prerogative of its
jurisdiction over its own internal affairs. We do not
ask it to modify a single domestic function, to change a
single feature of its own policy towards its own subjects.
But when we step in between it and a portion of those
subjects in open revolt or revolution, to propose that
their respective relationships shall be changed, that it
shall forego certain prerogatives, or modify certain poli-
tical institutions, we immediately touch to the quick its
sovereignty; we contravene the very principle which we
recognise and honour when we ask that Power to settle a
difficulty with another Government by arbitration. Thus,
as I have said, we have no direct plan to interpose be-
tween a Government and a portion of its subjects who
have resorted for redress to that ultima ratio gentium,
the right of revolution. But we have much that is in-
direct and effective to meet such cases. It is one of
the fundamental conditions of tyranny, that with the
oppressors there is power, that with power there is the
disposition to use it despotically. This is illustrated in
the character of individuals and sectional communities.
For instance, when it was the custom for civilians to
Speech at Boston.
241
wear side-arms, daily murders and homicides were the
commonest occurrences. Quick tempers were aroused to
strike fatally at the first impulse. With the hasty will
there was power to destroy life at even trivial provoca-
tions. Take the slaveholders of this or any other country.
Nearly all the atrocities and iniquities of the system
come from the fact, that with the oppressors there is
power; and the very possession of this power stimulates
its exercise to any degree of cruelty or lust. Thus, as all
the world knows, the slaveholder becomes overbearing
and irrascible, not only towards his slaves, but towards
his equals. The same is true of Governments. Those in
possession of the greatest military armaments are always
and everywhere the most despotic towards their own
subjects. The very means they possess for oppression
make them tyrants at home. Now, then, by reducing
their armaments as proposed, we relieve their subjects
just in the same measure from their liability to oppres-
sion. When a Government takes the law into its own
hands, and follows its own revengeful impulse to its
utmost bent in warring with another Power, it educates
itself to be overbearing and irrascible towards its own
people. In making that Government amenable to law
and equity, and impartial justice, by our system of stipu-
lated arbitration, we just to that extent dispose it to
treat its own people with equity and moderation. By
our plan of a Congress and High Court of Nations, we
make, to a certain degree, all the Governments repre-
sented constituents and subjects of the most august tri-
bunal ever erected on earth. Now, we can insist, without
straining any inference, that all these measures are better
R
442
Speech at Boston.
calculated than any other projects that could be devised
to prevent revolutions, by taking away all just cause
for them.
Such, then, is our programme, and such our principles
and policy, for putting an end to the stupendous wicked-
ness and folly of war between civilized nations. It would
almost be irreverent to the great and solemn crisis of the
hour, if I closed without reference to its origin and
issues. Before saying a few words upon this exciting and
difficult question, I would earnestly disclaim any desire
to commit this Society, or any other member of it, to the
slightest sympathy with the opinions I may advance. I
may be perfectly alone in these views, and I put them
forth deferentially, as those I have been led to entertain.
For fifty years and more men of the highest intelli-
gence, both in the Northern and Southern States, have
had a foreboding that the system of slavery would even-
tuate at some future day in some great catastrophe to
the nation. Thousands in both sections of the country,
without believing the system to be inconsistent with re-
ligion and humanity, have entertained this presentiment.
For the last quarter of a century, the portents of this
disaster have thickened upon the country. This tempest
that has blackened our heavens has been the steady
gathering of fifty years. I think the nation should not
have waited until the storm burst over our heads with
such a rain of ruin. As the North is so deeply impli-
cated in the planting of slavery on this continent, it
would have been an act of moral duty on its part, as
well as enlightened policy, to have come forward and
made a generous and magnanimous overture to the
Speech at Boston.
243
Southern States, to compensate them honourably, from
the national treasury, for the emancipation of their slaves.
If this offer had been made five or ten years ago, I am
confident that we should never have come to the present
crisis and complexion of affairs. In making this offer,
we should have divested the anti-slavery sentiment of the
North of all ambiguity in the view of the Southern
States. The offer once made as a standing proposition,
would constitute the ultimatum of that anti-slavery senti-
ment. It would be saying to the South, "However we
may grow in power and population, even if we should
number fifty free States against your fifteen, and how-
ever opposed to slavery we may all become, we will never
go any further towards the extinction of slavery than by
holding out to you this generous offer of Compensated
Emancipation. Nothing would have been more calculated
than this overture to banish the strong and honest
apprehensions of the Southern mind that the political
ascendancy of the North would lead to the disastrous
overthrow of slavery. The animus of such an offer, the
disposition that would precede and produce it, its direct
and reflex influence, would all tend to reduce the anta-
gonism of the two sections, and to the final removal of
the only source of their dissensions. Thus, this old
alienation might have been healed and our great Republic
have become the most illustrious and beautiful example
the world ever furnished of peace, prosperity, and
brotherly concord.
R 2

CAESARENGS
626 CSG
Speech at the Annual Meeting of the London
Peace Society,
May, 1863.
I
HAVE been requested to make a few remarks
on this occasion. But the circumstances under
which we meet to-day are so extraordinary, the Past,
Present, and Future seem to converge at the present
moment into such cross-tides of momentous events and
startling apprehensions, so many thousands of men, whom
we once counted in our ranks, have been washed from
the moorings of a great principle at which we believed
they were fast anchored; there has come over Christen-
dom such an inbreaking flood of the old animus of the
dark ages, and the war spirit has so overwashed the highest
water-mark of its ancient inundations; in short, looking
in every direction, across both hemispheres, and at all the
salient aspects of the present crisis, it is rather difficult
to find words that shall be appropriate to the conditions
of this anniversary hour. Truly the times have changed,
and many have changed with them. About ten years
have elapsed since our last great Peace Congress. The
decade just closing never has had a parallel in the
modern history of the world for the succession of distinct
Speech at London Peace Society, 1863. 245
and wide-raging wars. In this narrow space in the life
of nations, the great, bloody Abaddon of our race has
swept with its black and blighting wing all the conti-
nents of the earth. Within this short period it has
belted the Globe with its track of fire and blood. The
conflict in the Crimea seemed to unlock the pent-up
furies upon which the Great Destroyer rides forth to the
desolations it works among men. From the Crimea,
they flew eastward and westward. Their fiery tongues
hissed for the nations; and the nations rushed into the
battle-field with all the new and terrible death-reapers
which human science could invent. One by one, every
first rank nation, and every considerable people of the
earth, has passed under the chariot-wheels of this heathen
Juggernaut. England, France, Austria, Italy, Spain,
Russia, Turkey, India, and China, bloodied their hands,
red and dripping, in this work of human slaughter. Then
the fiery tide rolled back from the eastern shore of China,
and broke, with all the accumulated impetus of its ground
swell, upon America; and a vast continent is engulfed
in the tremendous maëlstrom. There, the area of a
great republic, which had boasted that civil war had
never reddened a square inch of its soil with human
blood, is now the scene of the most terrible and sangui-
nary conflict that ever sundered and desolated a people
of the same race, tongue, and country. All the mutinies,
rebellions, and revolutions of past ages, put in one
struggle, could not compare with the dimensions of this
fearful conflict. And the end is not yet. What that
end shall be is hidden, deep and dark, in the unrevealed
dispensations of the future.
246
Speech at the Annual Meeting
Here, then, we stand to-day, looking back to such a
Past, confronting such a Present, and overbrowed by such
a Future. Truly the out-look is not animating to the
friends of Peace. But the greatest days in human history
are the days in which the few walk by faith. This is the
great trial-day which is to test our faith in the principles
we have espoused. Solomon was a wise man above all
his predecessors; but the least in the kingdom of heaven
is greater than he in that wisdom which was not re-
vealed to him. He enumerates a long series of seasons
for certain sentiments and actions; a time to plant, and
a time to pluck up; a time to love, and a time to hate.
But he omitted one time from his list, which the man of
Christian experience can only supply. That is, a time to
believe when the multitude doubt; a time for a man to
gird up his loins and stand firm and strong in the sturdy
valour of a great faith; a time to plant his foot more
stoutly upon the rock of a great principle, and feel its
everlasting strength against the winds and floods that
sweep thousands, on the right hand and left, from their
sandy foundations; a time to wait as well as to advance;
to wait to see our judgment brought forth as the noon-
day; to see the mighty and immortal truth on which we
stand justified against a deriding world, even by the
logic of these stern and terrible events.
Courage and faith! let us strengthen our hearts, for
this trial season, with these words of cheer. Courage
and faith! We need both, in great measure, to carry us
over this great gap in the ages; to carry us across the
shadow of these dark, Middle-Age years that have been
resuscitated from ten centuries of slumber, and hurled
of the London Peace Society, 1863. 247
across the pathway of human progress at a time when
that pathway seemed brightening with a most glorious
promise. We shall ere long reach the shore of a better
future if we faint not. There has been a great falling
off in the number of nominal adherents to our cause.
Hundreds and thousands who walked with us, when our
white banner seemed to be upborne by the breath of
popular favour, have gone away backward before the
influences of these untoward events. Still, I would say,
courage! We have been thinned, but not weakened, by
their secession. The band of Gideon was not weakened
by the test that thinned its scanty ranks, nor shall ours
lose strength or activity from this severe winnowing.
What is the lesson of these trial years to us? What
else than this-that all our strength is in a great, an
everlasting principle,-a principle permeated and pul-
sating with all the precious vitalities of the Christian
religion,-a principle as immutable and immortal as the
attributes and doctrines of the Saviour of the world,—
a principle which He gave to His followers to enter
into the very life-work and structure of their faith, to be
a living power in their belief and practice which should
win and crown one of the grandest victories of His
kingdom on earth? The experience of the last ten years
has taught us how little we can trust to men who base
their adhesion to the cause of peace on the sandy foun-
dation of policy or expediency. When the adverse wind
and flood of public sentiment come, they are washed
away into the current of popular emotion. We must
dig down to a deeper and stronger foundation than this
ere we can expect to see that great victory won which is
248
Speech at the Annual Meeting
to bless the world with permanent and universal peace.
We must get a stronger hold upon the consciences of
Christian men, and make them feel that war is a heathen
usage, that it is a thing to be put under the everlasting
ban of a Christian's faith, to be put in the same moral
category as idolatry, or as oblations to heathen deities
in which he cannot participate even by indirect acqui-
escence or toleration.
Can we bring Christian men to this full and steady
conviction, to incorporate the great principle upon which
our cause is founded into the very letter, life, and soul
of their religious creed, so that they shall no sooner
countenance war than they would assist at the immola-
tion of a human being to the idol of some pagan can-
nibal? Through many years of labour we have worked
to this end on both sides of the Atlantic, and we can
to-day almost ask with the prophet, "Who hath believed
our report?" It is a slow work, for it is a work against
forty centuries of adverse influences, against the educa-
tion and habits of the popular mind through all the
foregone ages. But other works are slow, and they who
bear their heat and burden have equal cause with us for
discouragement. Let us remember that intemperance
and slavery are as old as war, and that the awakening
of the Christian conscience to the sin and wrong of these
two great cognate evils was slow in both hemispheres.
The transformation of the opinion even of the Christian
world in reference to these great moral evils is wrought
out by almost imperceptible degrees, "line upon line,
precept upon precept, here a little and there a little."
Six days were long enough for the Almighty hand to
of the London Peace Society, 1863. 249
build a world and launch it all perfect in its physical
laws and functions. But six thousand years will be too
short a space in which to heal the desolations that sin
has wrought, to shake down from their power these stu-
pendous systems of wickedness and folly, and to erect
upon their ruins that glorious kingdom of righteousness
and peace predicted by the holy seers of old.
Again let me say, courage and faith! It is not the
time to measure the permanent and even tide-mark of
the sea when some unprecedented tempest is dashing its
waters far inland upon wheat-fields never before moist-
ened with the brine of the ocean. It is not the time to
measure the actual progress of our cause at this moment
of temporary reaction. It is the language of unmanly
despair to say that the fields we have cultured and sown
with hope shall never be green again, because, for a
moment, the sudden tempest of human passions has
blown over them the corroding spray of the dark ages.
In the closing chapters of Divine Revelation, it was
given to the saint of Patmos to see that, for a certain
season, Satan should be unloosed among men, and have
the full swing and sway of his malignant will. But
that period of mischief was to be his last on earth. So
war has been unloosed, with all its sharp-teethed blood-
hounds, to prey for a period upon all that is most pre-
cious in the moral world. Its bloody and unbroken
reign lacks but one year of a full decade. But one year
let us take hold of the great hope that this one
remaining year shall be its last in the Christian world;
that, when the last of these intervening months shall
have finished its record, this great Red Dragon shall
250 Speech at the Annual Meeting, etc.
be gagged and bound to go no more abroad for
ever.
Courage and faith! we may be within twelve months'
distance of a future rich with the best realities of our
brave hopes in these days of darkness. When, after ten
years of terrible experience, the great Governments of
the world shall make up the balance-sheet of these bloody
wars, depend upon it they will find an immense disparity
between the debit and credit sides of the account; that
the beggarly gain against the tremendous loss will im-
press them with a deeper conviction than they ever had
before of the utter unreality of any seeming good attained
by the sword. Then we may reasonably hope that a
reaction of the public mind will set in favourable to our
cause. Let us all be up and waiting to take that tide
at its flood, to make the most of the new and terrible
lessons which these ten years of wars must impress upon
the people of Christendom. What a new volume of
pungent teaching these years will fill! What an array
of text-facts and vivid illustrations, all alive with recent
experience, will be at hand to point our arguments and
give new effect to our appeals! What new and startling
examples shall we be able to cite of the utter futility and
folly of resorting to the sword, either for secession or for
union, for empire or for independence, for revolution or
reaction, for national honour or civil freedom!

xx
25 AS

کو نانا نانی
JOE
Speech at the Anniversary Meeting of the
London Peace Society,
May, 1864.
A
NOTHER year has rolled around since most of us
met in this place to review the gloomy records
of one that had just given its unhopeful history to the
past. The firmament of that unhappy present was hung
with clouds heavy, thick, and dark and muttering. A
future was arising upon us like a cold and sunless morn-
ing of winter. The black rim of the rising year was
flushed with no golden twilight of promise. Such ano-
ther day as that the friends of peace had never seen. It
was the best question we could make to each in face of
the prospect: "Watchman, what of the night?" It was
the most searching crisis in our cause that it had ever
encountered since it was first admitted into the goodly fel-
lowship of Christian philanthropies. It had sifted our
ranks and thinned them like the test that reduced Gi-
deon's army to the scanty roll of a village train-band.
The best and bravest pass-word we could utter under the
ordeal was, Courage and faith! to stand firm to our prin-
ciples, to plant our feet stoutly on the rock of truth,
252 Speech at the Anniversary Meeting
and hold up our white banner steadily against the sweep-
ing tempest of error and passion. It needed courage and
faith, in large inspiration, to do even this. It needed
the inward thrill of that ringing cheer of the little Hebrew
band, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon !"-not to
impel us forward into the thick of the conflict, but to
quicken the vigour of our faith to hold our own against
the pressure of the world's antagonism. Those present to-
day who were here on our last anniversary may remem-
ber that "Courage and faith!" were the words of cheer
that I addressed over and over again to the friends of
Peace then assembled within these walls.
We meet again to-day after the lapse of a year that
has staggered to its end, with all its gloomy months
laden, like Bunyan's pilgrim, with the burden of the
wild and wicked passions of contending nations. Still
"it rains, and the day is dark and dreary." There is a
red rain of ruin falling in blistering drops of wrath upon
many a green land which heaven's sun and dew lighten
and moisten with all their old loving-kindness, as if to
show the thoughts of God and the thoughts of man in
as wide a contrast as the two opposite poles of eternity
itself. Since we last met here, war has widened and
deepened its work of desolation. With its sickle keen,
it has reapt the bearded grain of human lives on fields
that had not felt its teethed and curved edge before.
The graves of nearly a million of men, cut off in the
golden summer of their days, are the stubble which that
sickle has left behind. It is still dark enough to ask,
"Watchman, what of the night?" Is there any ray or
sign of a better morning to mankind? Is this the deep
of the London Peace Society, 1864. 253
darkness that closely precedes the break of day? Is there
even a thin rift in the clouds opening upon a streak of
light or a ruddy flush of the upcoming sun?
It is the most hopeful incident of this occasion that we
can say yes to these questions. We could not say it last
year, but we can say it now with a sentiment of gladness
and hope which no event in the history of our cause could
have inspired before. I think, even in view of all the
painful symptoms of the present hour, we may believe.
that we have come to a turning-point in this long malig-
nant fever of the nations. Their pulses are still hot and
quick with the emotions of the disease, but we may hope
its power is broken, and the great vitalities of the heart
are coming back to healthier action.
A very remarkable event in the history of Christen-
dom has taken place during the past year. Seemingly it
was the last and most unlikely that the most hopeful
and sanguine optimist would have expected under the
circumstances. Half the western hemisphere was en-
gulfed in war. Between thirty and forty millions of our
English-speaking race were fighting over the mangled
body of a national being which was once their common
hope and glory. The whole Continent of Europe was
tremulous with the throes of a suppressed volcano. War
surcharged the very atmosphere in which the nations
breathed and moved. War was everywhere the thought
and talk of men in public and private life. War went
up into the pulpit, and blended its unsanctified figures
with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and even with
the gentle similes of the Saviour's Sermon on the Mount.
War went to ball-rooms, and pic-nics, and bedizened and
254 Speech at the Anniversary Meeting
bedazzled concerts and coteries with the blazonry and
blandishments of its gaudy plush and fustian, and the
piping symphonies of its brazen music. Volunteers, iron-
clads, Armstrong guns, steel-cased batteries, sea-rams,
iron-snouted leviathans, and the most infernal machines
for the destruction of human life, were apparently in-
spiring the science and genius of Christendom with as
much enthusiasm and ingenuity as did the worship of the
Virgin Mary and the building of cathedrals and abbeys
in the Middle Ages. Both Governments and peoples were
giving their power, wealth, and homage to this beast.
Nations were loading themselves to the water's edge
with expenditures for war. Three or four questions of
imminent peril were pressing upon Europe for solution,
and becoming more and more complicated daily. In a
word, it was just the juncture of untoward events at
which the friends of Peace who had laboured and hoped
so many years for better things might be tempted to
feel that their cause was swamped in the great reflux of
barbarism rolling again over Christendom. It was just
the time for them, if ever, to go up into the clefts of the
rocks, and look out in silence and sadness upon the storm
to see if it would leave any of the slow-built structures of
their hope standing when it had blown out its violence.
Well, in the very thick of the tempest they saw this
sight; and the world never witnessed its like before.
They saw the great central sovereign of Christendom
take their storm-beaten banner, which was swaying
almost to the ground in their worn and trembling hands.
I will not say he stooped in his imperial throne to reach
it. Not that. Not that. He arose on tiptoe in the
of the London Peace Society, 1864. 255
highest place of earthly monarchs. He reached it with
his sceptre's end, and held up its white folds before the
nations.
It was our own flag. That makes the special and
gladdening significance of the event to us.
It was
not a parallel; it was a continuity of the same line.
It was not a coincidence; it was an incidence; it
was the falling into our path and purpose of action
of the very sovereign whom we should have chosen
above all others in Europe to lead the way in the
work of organizing permanent and universal peace. I
think it is both our right and our duty to dwell
upon this identity, and make it clear and conclusive on
this occasion; to show and believe that the French
Emperor's plan for organizing peace, and providing for
the disarmament of the nations, was, pure and simple,
that which the friends of Peace on both sides of the
Atlantic had advocated continuously for nearly half a
century. A Congress of Nations to settle the more
serious difficulties arising between them has been the
culminating measure which we, and those who preceded
us in this cause, have held up before the public mind
from the beginning. For nearly fifty consecutive years
this proposition has been kept before the Governments of
Christendom in every available form of utterance and
action. Here, to begin with, is a large volume of essays
on the subject written and published in America, before
half of this assembly were born. Copies of this volume
were sent years ago to all the crowned heads, and to nearly
all the great libraries and leading statesmen, in Europe.
The proposition, with its main arguments, has been put
256 Speech at the Anniversary Meeting
in the tract form, and circulated widely on both sides of
the Atlantic. In that quiet but effective operation, which
many present will recognise under the name of the
"Olive Leaf Mission," the project of a Congress of
Nations was brought before millions on the Continent of
Europe, from Madrid to St. Petersburgh, and from Copen-
hagen to Constantinople, in their own languages and
journals. At our great Peace Congresses at Brussels,
Paris, Frankfort, and London, we presented the triad of
our measures for organizing peace in this order," Stipu-
lated Arbitration," "Proportionate and Simultaneous
Disarmament," and a "Congress of Nations." The third
and last was the top and crowning-stone of the edifice.
The other two were the scaffolding on which we built
upward to this great culmination. Many here to-night
were at the Peace Congress at Paris. They will remem-
ber to their life's end what manner of meeting that was, the
reception we had from the French people, the homage
paid to our cause by the French Government. They will
remember that at the conclusion of those memorable days
in the Salle de St. Cecile, an address was drawn up to all
the Sovereigns, and Governments, and peoples of Chris-
tendom, commending to their earnest consideration the
three measures I have mentioned. A deputation of
members of the Congress from different countries waited
upon Louis Napoleon, and read the address to him, and
urged the most forcible arguments they could elaborate to
induce him to accept the plans proposed for the total
abolition of war. The deputation numbered in its list
two men as likely to influence his mind as any other two
individuals that could be found in Europe. One was
of the London Peace Society, 1864. 257
that man of "unadorned eloquence," Richard Cobden,
whom this country and the world delight to honour with
their admiration and esteem for what he has achieved for
human good and progress. The other was, as it were,
the premier of Continental journalists, Emile de Girardin.
Such, then, were the antecedents of the Emperor's pro-
position of a Congress of Nations. Such were the voices
crying in the wilderness to prepare the way for this
imperial utterance. Such were the shoulders peeled and
bent, such were the hands weary and worn, that had
laboured for a quarter of a century to cast up this high-
way through the bog of the Old World's barbarisms, on
which the nations might walk dryshod into the Canaan.
of perpetual peace. I say again, and I think you will
agree with me in the opinion, that it is both our right
and our duty to appreciate this connection, to regard it
as the grandest result which Divine Providence has yet
been pleased to give to fifty years of toil and trial on the
part of those who have borne the heat and burden of this
great reform in face of ridicule and sarcasm, and the
interested opposition of those who make war their pro-
fession. It is our privilege and duty to take hold of this
result as a leverage for new faith and activity, as a coign
of vantage in this holy cause, as a standpoint which
brings us almost within arm's-reach of the great consum-
mation to which we have so long looked with hope, even
in the darkest and wildest tempests that have swept over
the nations.
But the proposition of the French Emperor failed of
its intended effect. It broke down without any good
result, say many, and say it almost in a tone of exulta-
S
258 Speech at the Anniversary Meeting
tion. It would, indeed, be a bold expectation on the
part of the most sanguine friend of peace to look for a
full success of such a magnificent project at its first essay.
Such has not been the experience of the great moral
enterprises that have already blessed the world. Even
those espoused by powerful emperors against systems
that came in with Cain, and his murderous bludgeon,
must be subject to this everlasting law of "Try and try
again." The world knows the nature of Louis Napoleon
in this regard; that, when he casts his all upon the
hazard of an idea, he does not let it drop out of his
heart or hand at the first rebuff. We may rest assured
that he will push this idea to its consummation with that
steady, unswerving persistence which distinguishes his
character.
But why did the Emperor's proposition fail at its first
essay? The whole world knows the reason why, and
has had deep cause to deplore it. Of course, it could not
succeed without the cordial co-operation of England.
Had she joined France as heartily, hopefully, and trust-
ingly, in this great work of organizing peace, as she
united with her in organizing war in the Crimea and in
China; if she had brought her solid and practical wis-
dom to bear upon the project, to smooth away the
difficulties it inevitably encountered, to elaborate and
define the programme, and to compose the agenda ;—if
she had done this with an open heart and hand, there is
every reason to believe that this Dano-German question
would have been settled without a drop of blood, that
several other difficulties now threatening Europe with
the fell calamities of war would have been solved, and a
of the London Peace Society, 1864. 259
broad and firmer foundation would have been laid for the
peace and the simultaneous disarmament of nations.
But I think that thousands, of all political parties, in
this country believe that the temporary influence of a
personal characteristic gave a determinating bias to the
official decision of England. I am inclined to think that
no living British statesman stands higher in the estimation
of Christendom for purity and honesty of purpose, and
for general goodwill towards human progress, than Earl
Russell. But in declining to co-operate with the French
Emperor in organizing a Congress of Nations, he revealed
a feature of his mind which his warmest friends and
admirers must admit to be disproportionately developed
in the structure of his intellect; that is, his profound
reverence for history, for historical precedents and pre-
scriptions, for historical citations and equations. Thus,
among the objections he adduced to the Emperor's
project, this stood in the front rank-that it was out
of the direct line of history; that such a Congress had
always come at the end of a war, not before it, as in
the case of that of Vienna, or of that of Paris at the end
of the Crimean conflict. The ante-bellum, or war-pre-
venting Congress, proposed by Louis Napoleon might
possibly be all very well in its way, but Lord Russell
preferred an old-fashioned, historical Congress after the
Vienna pattern of 1815,-a post-bellum Congress, to
accept and establish the fait accompli of the field of battle ;
as it were, to legalize the verdict of the sword, still red
with its fierce judgment, to pass an act of moral indem-
nity in a Parliament of the nations, for drawing it
without justice and without mercy.
¿
s 2
260 Speech at the Anniversary Meeting
Louis Napoleon yielded to this historical predilection
of Earl Russell with unexpected and admirable grace.
So we have had in London a regular historical Congress
on the single Dano-German question, a bona-fide post-
bellum Congress to recognise and regulate the fait ac-
compli of the sword, to adjust and establish the future
relationships between the exacting victors and the
irritated vanquished. Still, I doubt if England and the
world in general will be convinced that this historical
Congress of the noble Earl has worked out a better
result for Denmark or for mankind at large than would
have been realized from the great Council of the Nations
which Louis Napoleon proposed to convene. History is
doubtless a great thing, but it is not the autocrat or
dictator of human destiny. I believe Lord Russell
might even have added wisdom as well as vigour to his
sagacity by listening to "what the young man said to
the psalmist "-
"Let the dead past bury its dead;
Act, act in the living present,
Heart within, and God o'erhead."
At the time when the French Emperor put forth his
grand proposition, England and France united were
powerful enough to make a new history for the world,
to sever the leading-strings of a barbarous and dying
past, and to lead the great family of nations by the
gentle and quiet path of new principles and precedents
into the permanent condition of peace and progress.
But perhaps, after all, the world needed one more trial
of the old past, one more Congress like that of Vienna
or of Paris, one more test of the policy of nailing up the
of the London Peace Society, 1864. 261
stable door after the horse has been stolen. If the world
needed just one more experience of this kind, it has
had it in this London Conference, and the world, let us
hope and trust, will now cry, enough! O jam satis!
enough, enough!
In conclusion, I think we may believe that the field is
now pretty well cleared for our old proposition of a
Congress of Nations. In the hands of the French Em-
peror, we may expect that it will carry the day against
History, that great Giant Despair that has built a huge
Doubting Castle athwart the upward path of nations,
and confined in its sunless donjon many a statesman who
should be out, free and bold in heaven's glad light, lead-
ing the van of human progress. Courage and faith!
let me say once more. Surely both should offer us their
inspiration now. Let us not abandon the flag we raised
in other years as it were from the gable of a thatched
cottage because the most powerful Emperor in the world
has nailed it to the highest pinnacle of his palace.
Depend upon it, it shall be lifted again as the most
glorious ensign ever unfurled to the nations. They shall
yet gather gladly under its outspread folds. Under it
they shall build up a temple which shall be to all peoples,
kindreds, and tongues what Solomon's was to the He-
brew tribes. And when the top-stone shall be raised to
its place, the acclamation, "Grace, grace, unto it!" shall
run like a pass-word of universal joy over the awakening
continents of the world.

*****.
Speech at the Annual Meeting of the London
Peace Society,
May, 1867.
I
*
ESTEEM it both a privilege and a duty to stand
on this platform once more, and testify in a few
words the undiminished interest I feel in the cause which
has assembled us within these walls on this new Anni-
versary. I feel that this platform has been consecrated
to that cause by the feet of earnest workers shod with a
holy preparation for preaching the Gospel of Peace and
brotherhood to mankind, but who walk with us no more
on earth. We miss such an one to-day who stood with
us here on the last anniversary of this Society. No
one present could feel his loss more deeply than myself.
In all brotherly sympathy and companionship we were
most intimately associated for nearly twenty years. In
all that time, from the first to the last day of our ac-
quaintance, his beautiful and gentle spirit seemed to be
the very indwelling and outbreathing of those principles
which this Society has laboured to promote among men
and among nations. His lips were sealed for ever on
earth in the middle of an unfinished sentence he was
uttering in public advocacy of those principles. On
*Edmund Fry.
Speech at the Annual Meeting, &c. 263
another platform, but a little way from this, he fell in
the middle of that sentence. His loving and gentle spirit
ascended to Him who gave it with the living sentiment
which had been cut short of utterance on his palsied
tongue. The transition was as quick and sudden as that
of good Joseph Sturge to his rest and reward. It is the
Christian's privilege to believe that the companionship of
such spirits, begun in these lower fields of toil and trial
for the glory of God and the good of man, will be resumed
and continued and purified through all the bright ages
of that better life to which these and other and earlier
friends of our cause have been raised. These sudden
breaches in our thin ranks should admonish us who re-
main behind that the afternoon of our day of labour is
far advanced, and that we must do quickly what our
hands can find time and strength to do for this great
work of universal Peace and Brotherhood.
On two or three former anniversaries of this Society,
I endeavoured to extract some gleams of hope and pro-
mise from the dark clouds which seemed to spread their
raven wings clean around the civilized world. I tried to
show to those inclined to despond that there was here
and there a break in the clouds, revealing the sunny sky
of a better future to mankind; that, when the temporary
darkness rolled away, we should see a brighter firmament
than Christendom ever beheld before; that we should
find that the precious seed that we had carried forth and
sown with toil and tears, even by the stony pathways
and thorny waysides of the nations, had not perished for
lack of earth or for lack of moisture, but that, like the
immortal vitalities of eternal truth, it had taken root,
264
Speech at the Annual Meeting
and was germinating to a glorious barvest, though seem-
ingly crushed under the iron heels of war stalking over
the green lands it was blackening with its curse. On the
last occasion on which I spoke from this platform, I
dwelt upon that token of promise which I believed every
friend of Peace should recognise in the proposition of the
French Emperor to the nations of Christendom, to meet
in general Congress assembled, not only with the view
to arrange peaceably and satisfactorily several European
questions then assuming a serious aspect, but also to come
to some mutual agreement for a proportionate and simul-
taneous reduction of those armed peace establishments
that are bearing with such crushing weight upon their
industrial populations. It is too late and too futile to
say now what might have been." But there is much
reason to believe, and there are many who now believe
it, that, if the Congress had been held at the time and in
the spirit proposed by the French Emperor, not only
the Danish war would have been intercepted, but the
great German war that resulted from it would have
been prevented. Still, these two lamentable wars, fol-
lowing each other in such quick succession, have not
swept away the growing structure of peace or blocked up
the progress of our cause. They established two facts
or principles which belong to our programme. In the
first place, they proved that the doctrine of Non-Inter-
vention has been at last pretty fully adopted by the leading
Powers of Europe. It is difficult to conceive how any
case can hereafter arise which shall more strongly tempt
and move England to interfere in a foreign quarrel than
the Danish question. It is doubtful if the people of this
((
of the London Peace Society, 1867. 265
country were ever so unanimous in their sympathy with
another people as they were with the Danes. Still, Eng-
land held fast her mooring to the great and solid principle
of Non-Intervention. The French people were moved
by the same sympathies with the weak and oppressed
party, but their Government held fast to Non-Interven-
tion. Now, this and other recent experiences in the family
circle of nations give us fair reason to believe that Non-
Intervention has become a well-recognised and a well-
settled policy among the Powers of Christendom. Here,
then, is one of the great measures so long advocated by
the friends of Peace adopted by the foremost Governments
of the world. Even the youngest adherents to our cause
will remember what importance that great international
patriot, Richard Cobden, attached to this measure, and
how he laboured in Parliament and out of it to induce
his own and other Governments to adopt it.
Then we have another principle, which we have advo-
cated from the beginning of the Peace movement, accepted
and acted upon by the leading nations of the world. From
the very first operations of Peace Societies in England
and America, they have proposed and urged as a substi-
tute for war a recourse to arbitration, or to a Conference
or Congress of Nations, which should bring to bear upon
the question of controversy the principles of equity and
the dispassionate opinions of a disinterested and unpre-
judiced mind. At hundreds of public meetings, and in
thousands of publications, we have advocated on both
sides of the Atlantic this plan of adjustment. Well, the
experience of the last few years has proved that no war
can again take place in Europe without a sincere and
266 Specch at the Annual Meeting
persistent effort on the part of outside Powers to pre-
vent it by a resort to this very substitute, by the arbi-
tration of a third or disinterested party, or by a Congress
of Nations convened for the express purpose of settling
the dispute without bloodshed. Now, are not these fair
and full signs of hope and promise for the future? Are
they not patent, practical proofs of progress which should
encourage even the most timid and despondent friends of
our cause?
Then there is still another and most important measure
which we have advocated from the beginning, now in
process of realization, indeed, almost within arm's-reach
of its consummation. That is, a well-defined basis of law
and equity on which a Conference or Congress of Nations
might satisfactorily adjust a difficult and aggravated
question of controversy between two or three of their
number. In other words, we have laboured to bring
about this enterprise and result; to enlist the best legal
talent and authority in Christendom to take that jumble
of discrepant opinions, customs, and precedents, called
international law, and elaborate from it a well-con-
structed code, strong and clear with common sense and
common honesty, which should have the spontaneous
adhesion of the common conscience as a rule of equity.
We have all along laboured to demonstrate the in-
dispensable necessity and the immeasurable value of such
a code, clothed with all the legal authority that the best.
jurisprudence of Christendom could give to it. It has
seemed to us to be the indispensable basis of action for
any Congress of Nations called to settle a question of
international difficulty. Well, as I have said, this measure
of the London Peace Society, 1867. 267
is now progressing towards a consummation which we
may possibly realize before the close of the present year.
At the last meeting of the Social Science Congress at
Manchester, Mr. Dudley Field, an American lawyer of
great eminence, brought forward the subject of such an
international code in a masterly argument, demonstrating
its importance to the peace and amity of nations. After
the full discussion which followed his address, a com-
mittee of eleven of the first legal authorities in Christen-
dom was chosen to develop such a code, and bring it
forward at the next meeting of the Social Science Con-
gress. So, before this year comes to a close, we shall
perhaps see a work accomplished which ought in itself to
make war impossible hereafter in Christendom.
Then we have a new source of hope in two or three
new influences brought to bear upon the question of
peace and war. There are two kinds of forces that
operate in different ways, both in matter and in human
society. There are the volcanic force, the earthquake force,
and the lightning and thunder force. These are all
noisy, impulsive, spasmodic forces. They sometimes split
a mountain, anon open the earth, and rend a forest.
Then there are noiseless, sleepless, gentle forces, like
light and heat, and the night distilleries of heaven's dew.
These quiet forces are the breathings of Omnipotence in
nature, regenerating a dead world, clothing it with beauty,
and setting it beating with all the pulses of spring
and the green and golden glory of summer life. The
thundering tornado may smite a great cathedral with
all its boisterous fury, and not displace a stone; but the
summer sunbeams, coming as noiseless as the footsteps.
268
Speech at the Annual Meeting
of light, shall permeate and expand the vast structure,
and add inches to its morning stature. So, in human
society, all the brute forces that operate upon it are
noisy, impulsive, and spasmodical, and war is the most
brutish and boisterous of them all. It is a tornado
that gathers into itself all the violent elements of human
passion and prejudice as it sweeps over the scene of its
fury. It is a tempest full of the thunder and lightning
of mad and wild indignation. All the strong and im-
petuous forces of anger and jealousy, all the worst vices
of a nation's mind, are poured into it. Then all the his-
tories of military fame, the aspirations of ambition, the
unreasoned impulses and vague notions of patriotism,
and lower ideas and interests, give a kind of variegated
halo of attraction to the gathering storm. When it has
accumulated all these forces into one compact power, and
seems ready to burst with all its fury upon the world,
one might well look around in dismay, and ask where and
what are the forces to arrest it? But such forces do
exist, though they be as noiseless and gentle as the sun-
beams of summer. What sunbeams do to vast structures
of stone or iron, these quiet moral forces do to the great-
est structures of human society. They permeate, expand,
and lift great nations to the stature of a higher and a
better mind. How the gentle touch of a single woman's
hand may turn the helm of a mighty foreign Power away
from the maëlstrom of war! Who may say what earth-
quakes of fury and red ruin were turned away from
Christendom by two notes penned by Queen Victoria to
the King of Prussia and the French Emperor on the
Luxemburg question? The influence she brought to
of the London Peace Society, 1867. 269
bear upon that most perilous and aggravated question
was as gentle and noiseless as the footsteps of the sun-
beams or the foot-fall of heaven's dew; but it permeated
and softened both the iron and the stone. The day is
coming and now is when this influence, put forth by Eng-
land's Queen, will curb and control the iron forces of brute
power. The day will come when the great nations of
the world shall not listen for the walk or voice of God
in the earthquake or in the whirlwind, but in such words.
as she uttered to the two great and angry potentates of
Europe. The day may come when a single tear from
Eugenie's eye, falling upon the council table of France
at the thought of a threatened war, may drown the fires
of the volcano just ready to deluge the nations with
its hot lava. The day may come, if it has not already
arrived, when the interlaced fingers of Queen Victoria
and her daughters and daughters-in-law shall hold the
great Governments of Europe together in bonds of peace
which war shall never break. Sitting on the throne of
England, with one hand folded in her daughter's on the
Prussian, and the other in Dagmar's on the imperial
throne of Russia, and with the Empress Eugenie's clasp-
ing the three, the Great Powers of Europe will feel such
a restraining touch on their sword arms when raised for
war as they never experienced before.
Then another and powerful influence has been recently
brought into action in favour of Peace. The unhappy
Luxemburg question, with all its evils, has produced
much incidental good. It brought out the new or latent
sentiment of the great masses of the French nation, not
only against a war on that question, but against war on
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Speech at the Annual Meeting
any question that was not vital to the interests and
honour of the country. Such a movement of the popular
mind was never seen in France before. Spontaneously,
and without apparent concert, petitions were sent up
simultaneously to the French Emperor from opposite
extremes of the Empire, imploring him not to draw the
sword on the Luxemburg question. A volume might
be compiled out of these petitions and memorials, which
would be a most valuable and interesting addition to the
literature published by the English and American Peace
Societies. Indeed, these memorials from the French
people against war reproduce the very sentiments and
almost the very language which we have put forth during
the last twenty-five years in advocating the cause of uni-
versal peace and brotherhood. And I think we have
every reason to believe that the ideas and principles we
enunciated to the world at our great Peace Congresses in
Paris, Brussels, and Frankfort did not fall upon the rock
and die; but they have been germinating in the mind
of the French people, and have greatly promoted this
wide out-growth of French sentiment against war. This
is no strained and unnatural inference. Why, in the ma-
terial world seeds may lie in the ground or on its surface
for scores of years and not lose their vitality. When one
of the primeval forests of pines is cut down in America,
and the bright warm sun of heaven let in upon the dead
leaves, a thrifty growth of chestnut-trees rapidly appears
from seed-nuts that have lain covered up in the cold
shade for perhaps half a century. So with these ideas
we have sown broadcast over the shaded lands of the
nations. As the sun of truth reaches them with its rays,
of the London Peace Society, 1867. 271
they spring up to a noble growth to bless the peoples with
their good fruitage.
I must notice still another, and perhaps the most pow-
erful, influence of all I have mentioned which is being
organized in behalf of peace as the permanent and gua-
ranteed condition of the nations. We have all seen the
development of those vast organizations of labour and
labouring men which are now attracting so much atten-
tion both in Europe and America. Thousands are
looking upon this movement with concern and doubt as
they watch its rapid progress. The events of the last
few months seem to show that this organization of
working men is extending its affiliations and ramifica-
tions so as to embrace the main body of the artisans of
Christendom. But there is one aspect of this movement
full of hope to the cause of Peacc. These allied armies
of artisans are organizing a strike for the well-being of
mankind which shall benefit all the ages to come. They
are organizing a mighty and magnificent strike against
war and the whole war system. They begin to see and
feel how war, in all ages and countries, has been the
horse-leech that has battened at the veins of the working
classes, that has preyed on their blood, filched their earn-
ings, taxed their bread, and degraded them into the veriest
tools and victims of brute force and brute furies. They
begin to feel that their humanity is worth something more
to them and something more to the world than to become
food for gunpowder; they begin to see and feel that they
belong to and form one great industrial brotherhood, and
that the sword cannot be drawn in any war without
their feeling its keenest edge. The working classes in
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Speech at the Annual Meeting
France, in addressing their fellow working men in Ger-
many on this Luxemburg question, utter these senti-
ments with an earnestness which shows how fully they
adopt them. However capitalists and the upper classes
of society may regard trades' unions and the strikes of
working men, let the hard-toiling, industrial artisans.
of Christendom organize one vast trades' union and
strike against war, and capital and commerce, and all
the great interests and enterprises of wealth, might well
say, “Grace, grace, unto it!”
And now, as it were to crown these influences we have
noticed with a glorious consummation, we have the great
Exhibition in Paris. From every part of France comes
the earnest wish and prayer that the grand Palace of the
Arts and Industries of the World shall really and truly
be made the Temple of Peace; that it shall inaugurate
the advent of that better time coming which has been
so long predicted and sung. The French Government
and people have been unanimous in this sentiment.
Prizes have been offered for the best songs dedicated to
Peace, and over six hundred poems have been written
by different persons under the impulse of this sentiment
and motive. One of the leading Paris journals has put
forth the proposition and basis of a Peace League, and
editors, political leaders, and men of all professions and
occupations are sending in their adhesions to it.
I beg leave to read two or three sentences from two
addresses from two different parties in France on this
subject. The first is from the Co-operative Societies in
Paris, and signed by fifteen hundred of their members.
It is in answer to a communication from the mechanics
of the London Peace Society, 1867. 273
of Berlin, asking the earnest co-operation of their French
brethren in preventing a war on the Luxemburg
question. These are the sentiments of the Paris working
men on the subject. They say to their German confrères,
"You are in the path of justice and truth. We have
read your address with tears in our eyes and joy in our
hearts. Let our German brethren be convinced that we
all wish for peace, that we all detest war, and that we all
hold the struggle between nations for liberty against the
enemies of liberty as the only struggle worthy of us.
With you we protest against the oppressive force of
might; we repudiate all idea of conquest and territorial
aggrandisement; we wish the will of nations should be
respected like the will of citizens. Like you we wish
that public opinion alone should govern States, and that
the spirit of fraternity should alone animate the relations
of peoples with each other. They who tell you of our
ambition deceive you. We are your friends. They who
strive to sow discord between us are our common ene-
mies ; and if the blood of two peoples is to be shed on
the fields of battle, it will be shed in spite of you and us.
We declare it loudly, while there is yet time, that the
responsibility of this enormous crime should fall on the
authors of it."
Such is the language of the working men of Paris to
their German brethren on the subject. Now, see what
merchants, advocates, professors, and other leading men
of Strasburg say in sending in their adhesion to the
French Peace League organized in Paris :-
"Let us not expose the lives of our children. Let us
not cause our fields to be laid waste, our towns and
T
274 Speech at the London Peace Society, &c.
villages given to the flames. Let us avoid the ruin of
our commerce; let us preserve our industry from destruc-
tion; let us live in fraternity with other peoples; and
let us not imperil the conquests of civilization for the
sake of a barren glory which has cost the world so much
blood. Such are the sentiments which we are anxious to
make public while declaring our adhesion to the League
of Peace."
Here, then, are new and powerful influences, con-
verging into a flood of public opinion, in favour of
permanent and universal peace. If there ever was a
time in the history of our cause for its friends to be up
and doing with courage and faith, that day has come.
Not for a whole century long has there been such an
auspicious juncture for a grand movement against the
barbarism of war. Let us take this flood at its tide, and
see if it will not lead on to a greater fortune for mankind
than all the money-wealth of the world can measure or
express.


Speech at the Annual Festival at Hartwell
Park, Aylesbury,
August 25th, 1864.
I
HAVE been invited to say a few words on this occa-
sion, and I hope I may say them without running
off into a long speech. In the first place, I am glad to
be here to-day, to stand on this platform again, and to
speak to such an audience as I see before me. It has
been, I think, about fifteen years since I stood here last.
Great changes have taken place since that time; changes
in the life of nations, and in the lives of individuals;
changes in all of us who meet here to-day. Some of these
have been happy, some sad. Fifteen years added to fifteen
or ten have made a great change in scores whom I am now
perhaps addressing. Fifteen years ago a large number
of those present in this assembly were boys and girls
bubbling over with the exuberance of young life. The
best speeches that could be made from this platform could
not draw them from the amorous sports they had set
on foot under yonder trees. It was better enjoyment to
them to run foot-races in the park, or hunt the handker-
chief in a ring of lads and lasses under yonder great oaks
T 2
276
Speech at the Annual Festival
and elms. Many of those young men and maidens, who
then hunted the handkerchief with such glee and glow
of mirth, found a noose at the end of it which caught
them in happy couples. I can fancy that many of such
pairs are in this assembly to-day, sitting here with that
silken noose not only around their necks, but around their
hearts; and that they hope and intend to wear it to their
life's end as the pledge and proof of the highest form of
domestic happiness. And it is quite probable that some
of them have children old enough to hunt the same old
handkerchief in the ring, as candidates for the same
matrimonial bonds in which their parents now stand
before us.
1
So, then, in face of all the changes of the past which
bring a shade of sadness over some of us, here is one very
pleasant augury for this Annual Festival. Here is a very
promising provision for keeping it up from year to year on
its first footing; for making it a happy occasion for old
and young, for men and women, and boys and girls, in
fact, for all ages and conditions between eight and eighty.
The brave little boys who now run their prize races in
this park, when they come to manhood, will, we may hope,
send up some of their number to stand on this platform,
to speak for the great principles that make and underlie
the well-being of mankind. The young handkerchief-
hunters of the ring to-day will replenish the audience
assembled here with thoughtful listeners and active
workers, while the ring will be kept full and happy with
their children; thus renovating and perpetuating both
circles from generation to generation. This is looking
into the future a long way; but I am sure you all join
at Hartwell Park, Aylesbury.
277
with me in the hope that this Festival may be made one
of the permanent and perpetual institutions of the country;
that the mantle of its venerable and generous founder and
father may fall upon the shoulders of his successors, and
that they may carry on the same work in the same spirit,
and be held in the same reverence and esteem by all the
people of the surrounding country.
But there is another circumstance of higher considera-
tion still connected with this festival; and it is this:
With all the changes that have taken place in our fresh
remembrance, this platform remains the same. It has
not been narrowed by ah inch. It is as broad and
catholic as ever. It is as broad as the law and life
of love, peace, and universal brotherhood. It is wide
enough for the advocacy of every good word and work
for man as a race or as an individual, for the peace
and well-being of nations, for the prosperity of smaller
communities, and for the happiness of individual families.
In fact, this is the only platform I know of on which all
the great philanthropic movements of the day have each
an equal space and an equal hearing. On no other plat-
form do the advocates of Temperance, Peace, Universal
Brotherhood, and of every moral and social reform, meet
on such even and united footing as here. Thus, this
platform from the beginning has been a standing proof
and illustration of the oneness of true philanthropy. It
has held up the standard of this great fact from the out-
set, that, though the great field of human improvement
was divided into many allotments, and the labourers
into many bands, the spirit of their work was one and
278
Speech at the Annual Festival
the same; that it was the breathing and the beating of
a heart of goodwill to man.
Temperance and Peace should always be found on the
same platform. We may say reverently of them, "What
God has joined let not man put asunder." The subjects
and objects of their efforts are as nearly alike as possible.
One is to hold an individual back from getting intoxi-
cated and mad with liquor; the other, to hold a nation
back from getting intoxicated and mad with passion.
One is to prevent private murder and wife-beating; the
other, to hold back a nation from human slaughter and
widow-making by tens of thousands. One is to save the
earnings of a father for the comfort and happiness of
his family and his home, instead of wasting them on the
means of misery and ruin to them all; the other is to
save the earnings of a nation for its own people, for
the means of their elevation, prosperity, and progress,
instead of squandering them upon armies and navies, and
bloody and savage war. One is to make a man walk
abroad in society in his right mind, and clothed in his
right dress, sober, quiet, respected, and loved by his
fellows, instead of swaggering out into the streets, swear-
ing, threatening, and brandishing a club at his neigh-
bours; the other is to make a nation behave itself like
a gentleman in the society of other nations, to walk
soberly and righteously, dressed as a Christian gentle-
man should be dressed, in civilian clothes, in civil speech,
with no huge bowie-knife stuck in his belt, wielding no
savage war-club, and with no sharp-bitted war-dogs fol-
lowing at his heels. In a word, Peace is only Temperance
at Hartwell Park, Aylesbury.
279
applied to nations. We are only trying to get them to
take the pledge of total abstinence from war.
Now, I am not going to make a Temperance speech, or
a Peace speech, or any formal speech at all on reform.
But I should like to say a few words on a movement
which I think might be made common to both these
great causes. Within the last two or three years the
friends of Temperance have taken hold of a new and
mighty leverage-power for lifting the victims of drink,
and the class most exposed to the drunkard's ruin, up
out of the low grounds of their temptation and danger.
This new leverage-power is the social principle; and this
power has hitherto been the mill-stone weight which has
dragged millions into the lowest depths of the misery of
intemperance. Drinking has always been a social habit,
drunkenness a social vice, and its guilt and wretchedness
a social condition. The companionship of the public-
house, the social gathering, the social song, the social
glass, the social pipe, the social stagger, the social fall,
and brawl, and even the social wife-beating, have been
so many workings of the social principle which have
brought unnumbered thousands to the most hopeless
ruin. Now, the friends of Temperance have made a
great move in advance of all their other efforts. They
have grasped hold of this social principle, and are turn-
ing it against the poor man's enemy with great, almost
wonderful success. As one said once of setting sabbath-
hymns and psalms to military music, "Why should
we let the devil run away with all the best tunes?" so
have said our friends in reference to the social prin-
ciple, "Why should we let the enemy of human souls
280
Speech at the Annual Festival
(
and bodies run away with a power which we could wield
with such blessed effect to their rescue and salvation?"
They never said a better thing, and the word they said
was a deed. They looked around them, and saw that
thousands of the most highly educated and wealthy men
in London and other great towns were not even con-
tented with the elegant and comfortable homes which
they had or could make; that they could not be social
enough in private homes; so that great and luxurious
club-houses were multiplying rapidly in order to enable
them to carry out the social principle more largely in
their daily life and intercourse. If such men, with such
private homes, needed a club-house, how much more the
thousands and tens of thousands of the working classes,
who had no homes at all of their own, or homes unfitted
for any social enjoyment!
Well, the experiment was tried. A Working Men's
Club was established. A Society House for them was
opened, which had more social attraction than fifty beer-
shops. All the social enjoyment they ever had at the
public-house, barring the drink, they had in this new
social home multiplied tenfold. Here were all the means
and appurtenances of social enjoyment, seasoned with
self-respect and mental and moral cultivation. It was a
grand success. It went beyond the most sanguine ex-
pectations. The Working Men's Club has become one of
the permanent institutions of the country. They have
been opened in nearly all the large towns in the king-
dom, and even in many villages. The social principle
works capitally in them. I have seen its working in
several, and it is most wonderful. I happened to be in
•
at Hartwell Park, Aylesbury.
281
a large town in the north of England about the first of
last March, where a very spacious building had just been
opened for a Working Men's Club. Forty-two names had
been entered on the registry of members. I was there
again a short time afterwards, and found that the list
of members numbered twelve hundred names! that the
club-house had become too small, and it was proposed to
open a second one in another part of the town for their
accommodation.
The Working Men's Club is hardly two years old in
this country as an institution, and yet the good it has
done and the good it promises to do "cannot be meted
out in words or weighed with language." We see in
this great success what our Temperance brethren have
done with the social principle. Now, I am confident that
the friends of Peace may lay hold of the same principle,
and work it to as great result in their cause. I think
many friends of that cause, who have watched the current
of public sentiment for the last few years, will join with
me in the opinion that the Volunteer Movement has done
more to diffuse a war-spirit among all classes of the commu-
nity than all the wars that this country has been engaged
in for the last half-century. I am led to this conclusion
by personal experience and observation. During the two
winters I have been in England on my present visit, I
have lectured on various subjects in a great many towns
all the way from Land's End to John O'Groats. On
these occasions I have always put forth, in some one
passage of my address, a peace sentiment, which, twelve
years ago, would have been almost certain to call out an
expression of assent and hearty sympathy. But on
282
Speech at the Annual Festival
nearly every one of these occasions to which I now refer,
the sentiment has been received with a dead, cold silence.
It seemed to fall upon the audience and to bound back
like a hailstone on a floor of marble. Now, I do not
believe that the wars that have taken place in the last
ten years have produced all this change in public senti-
ment. I am sincere in the opinion that, to a large
extent, it may be attributed to an influence which the
friends of Peace have overlooked or under-estimated. I
believe it comes from the fact that the enemy of our
cause has got hold of the social principle and worked
it against us most powerfully. The Volunteer Move-
ment has made soldiering a social institution. It has
given to military organizations a pic-nic and ball-room
character and influence; it has thrown a martial spirit,
dress, music, pomp, and circumstance over social parties
and excursions of young men who need an organized
companionship, athletic exercise, and the exhilaration of
scientific evolutions and movements. These they find in
their drills, parades, reviews, in their target shootings, in
the rollicking enjoyments of gipsy camps and half-gipsy
life. All this gives to the external organism of war a
fascination that has taken hold of the mind of a vast
majority of the people. It wreathes the brow of war with
flowers to hide its own natural hair of living serpents.
It turns away the people's heart from the thoughts and
words of Peace, and gives a martial spirit and bias to
the public mind. Indeed, I believe that it does more to
cripple the efforts of the friends of Peace than any other
influence. Now, it has been said that Peace has its vic-
tories as well as war.
We all believe that, I hope; even
at Hartwell Park, Aylesbury.
283
military statesmen and leaders have said it and believed
it. Well, I am of the opinion that it would be one of the
greatest victories yet achieved by Peace if it should
rescue this social principle from the hands of war, and
turn it against the enemy, just as our Temperance friends
have done in the establishment of club-houses for work-
ing men. Why should the young men of this or any other
country be obliged to go to the drill-room, or to the dress-
parade, or to the regimental muster, for social enjoyment,
for physical exercise of bone and muscle, for social instruc-
tion in physical education, for uniform step and grace of
motion, for uniform dress, for stirring music to enliven
and measure their march? I am convinced that nine in
ten of all the young men in the kingdom who have en-
rolled themselves as Volunteers do not in their hearts
mean war; that when they are firing at human forms
in wood or canvass, they do not really contemplate the
work of shooting their fellow-beings through the heart
or of running their sharp bayonets through their quiver-
ing bodies. I am not sure that nine in ten of them
would not say to us, Give us a substitute that will yield
us the same amount of social enjoyment, physical training
and exercise, blended with a patriotic purpose, and we
will adopt it: give us the organization, the evolutions and
movement, the music, the dress, the drill, the tented
field, the target, the trial of strength and skill, the pres-
tige and popularity which the Volunteer movement pro-
cures for us, and we will accept your substitute.
Well, I am confident that such a substitute can be
found; that it has been already; a substitute that meets,
in every particular, every feature of attraction, and
284 Speech at the Annual Festival
every quality of enjoyment which the military system
supplies. It is an organization that almost wholly
displaced the military system in America before this
deplorable war broke out. I mean the organization of
Volunteer Fire Companies. These furnished all the
exercise, all the enlivening music, the brilliant show of
dress, the measured step, the piercing fife and spirit-
stirring drum, the eager competition, and every other
attraction that attaches to military training. And over
and above all, there is one of the noblest objects aimed at
that could nerve the manhood of brave men. The great
battles they train themselves to fight are midnight
battles with the consuming fire,-battles fought amid
snow and ice in 'mid-winter against the devouring ele-
ment; charges, hose in hand, to pluck the burning
homes of widows and orphans from destruction; battles
in which there are ample scope and play for the best
bravery of the human heart and for the best strength of the
human arm.
These Volunteer Fire Companies became so
popular and numerous that there was one in almost every
village in New England. In my own native town, with
a population of about 6,000 souls, there were three of
these train-bands, besides a juvenile company, for even
boys of twelve years of age who would not wait, but formed
a band by themselves for the drill and exercise. Every
company had its own distinctive uniform. So, at the
mustering of a Fire Brigade, there was a greater variety
of dress than any military review ever presented. Each
company had its own engine, and prided themselves on
its brilliant appearance. It was drawn into the field in
the highest lustre that could be given to iron, brass, and
at Hartwell Park, Aylesbury.
285
silver, and even gold. Each company had its band of
music, and its silken banner floating on the breeze. In
everything except fire-arms they were a military organi-
zation, and went through a military drill. They had
their target-shooting, too, and it was a competition that
brought into play all their ambition and all their
strength and endurance. Their target was generally a
tall church-spire. Several companies would plant their
engines before this, and, pointing the muzzle of the hose
towards the belfry, would put their stoutest men at the
brakes, and shoot a column of water high up against the
steeple. The shout and the cheer with which the men
bent to the work, and lifted the stream higher and
higher, had more glow and excitement in it than all the
target-shootings at Wimbledon. The engine that made
the highest water-mark on the steeple carried off the
prize. Occasionally a competition would be opened for
all the fire companies in the country, and some would
come from a distance of several hundred miles to enter
the lists of the tournament. A grand muster of these
companies marching in review, each drawing its brilliant
engine, with banners waving and bands of music playing
alternately the most enlivening airs, presents a spectacle
which I never saw equalled by any military display in
England or in France. I am inclined to think that the
Prince of Wales came to a like opinion when the fire
brigades of New York gave him that grand night-ovation
when he visited that city. An army of ten thousand
firemen thus uniformed and drilled, marching in open
columns through Hyde Park by night, each with a
286
Speech at the Annual Festival
lighted torch in his hand, would make such a display as
no military review ever presented on those grounds.
Nor would another powerful influence be wanted to give
this new organization eclat and attraction. I mean the
influence which fair women have given to the military
system. As I have said, all these fire companies have
their distinctive banners, and these are often the work
and the gift of female hands. And the captain of each
band has his speaking trumpet, and this is often pre-
sented by the ladies of the town. I once attended one
of these presentations, when a stalwart artisan received
a richly-embossed trumpet from the hands of one of the
first ladies of the place, and the speech he made at the
reception would have done honour to any general at the
head of an army. Now, I beg you all to believe that
I am speaking in downright honesty on this subject.
I am sincere and earnest in the opinion that it would be
one of the greatest victories that Peace has yet won to
take hold of the great social principle, and work it to
this issue. It would realize a pretty large instalment
of the promised work of beating swords into plough-
shares. It would exorcise from military organization
the idea of human slaughter. It would convert the
accessories of war to peaceful, social, and civil ends.
We should have a new set of cold-water armies in the
We should have fire-engine cartridge-boxes filled
with a hundred rounds of cold water. We should have
shooting-matches that would beat anything done on
Wimbledon Common. The towers of Westminster
Abbey and the dome of St. Paul's would make excellent
at Hartwell Park, Aylesbury.
287
targets for the best shots with the engine-hose, and it
would improve the appearance of those buildings very
much to be shot at in this way once a week. There is
also a great deal of statuary erected here and there in
the City to the memory of illustrious sovereigns and
statesmen, and these might get a gratuitous ablution
occasionally which would do them good, and show the
world whether they were made of marble or cast iron,—
a question which few could determine in their present
condition. And I think there are some hopeful indica-
tions that Volunteer Fire Companies will be organized
in this country. Several noblemen and gentlemen of
wealth and influence in this country are beginning to
interest themselves in the system. It is said that the
Prince of Wales has manifested considerable interest in
it. Perhaps what he saw of it in America will predis-
pose him to look favourably at its introduction into
England. I have noticed also that it is making a little
stir in France, and I read the other day of the
Emperor's reviewing a fire company at Vichy. One
good company paraded in Hyde Park, well drilled, in
attractive uniform, and with a highly-finished engine,
and going through all the exercises and evolutions
adopted on such occasions, I am sure would excite lively
admiration, and that similar companies would be formed
in all the large towns in the kingdom. And now, in
conclusion, I would appeal to all the true friends of
Temperance here to lend a hand to this transformation
of the Volunteer movement. Certainly this is in your
line of reform. This is a cold-water movement. Depend
288 Speech at the Annual Festival, etc.
upon it, this new régime proposed would help the cause
of Temperance as well as Peace. The two causes should
ever go hand in hand. They both are based upon that
great central principle of philanthropy,—the Fatherhood
of God and the brotherhood of men.

نوم

Speech at the Anniversary of the Parish
Schools, Harborne,
May 24th, 1866.
I
AM to say a few words to you on the general sub-
ject of education, which these schools are founded
to promote especially in this parish and neighbourhood.
Now, education is a subject so large, that, in venturing to
speak for a few minutes upon it, I feel like a boy draw-
ing his bow at the stars, and not knowing which he
shall aim at with his single arrow. Indeed, the points
of interest embraced in the subject are almost as nume-
-rous as the stars in one of the largest constellations we
see in the heavens; so that I will direct my single arrow
at only one of the group, leaving the others to the well-
filled quiver of the learned and reverend gentleman who
will follow me.
It is a beautiful and benevolent arrangement of Divine
Providence that the most precious gifts to man are the
most common, cheap, and accessible to all. Nay, more,
they are inalienable gifts, which cannot be sold or taken
for debt, which cannot be given away again or parted
with. No man, however poor or tempted, can sell away
U
·290
Speech at the Anniversary
from himself the air in which he breathes, or the light in
which he walks, or the rain or dew that falls upon the
little piece of land he owns or tills. We have heard
a good deal about the inalienable rights of man, which
human governments must concede, respect, and defend.
Human governments may or may not do this, just as
they are disposed to regard the justice or policy of those
claims on the part of the individual. But the inalienable
gifts of nature are under the administration of a higher
and better government-the government of Providence,
which regulates the revolutions of planets and the fall
of dew-drops by the same rule of even and impartial
benevolence to man.
Now, as we ascend from the natural to the moral
world, as we go up from the air, light, rain, and dew,
which are given to nourish and delight our physical
being, and consider the air, light, rain, and dew which
are provided to nourish and delight our mental and
moral nature, we shall see the same beautiful and bene-
volent arrangement to make these latter and higher gifts
inalienable to all who value them. Indeed, the higher
and more precious they are to the intellectual mind or
moral soul, the more strongly they are guaranteed to the
possessor. A man may be imprisoned for debt. All his
property may be sold away from him, so that he is
stripped to the last penny's worth. He may be shut up
in a dark cell, and thus be robbed of the very light of
heaven, robbed of the sight of dew upon the grass, of
the breathing of the air upon his cheek. Nearly all
these common and precious gifts of nature may be filched
from him, or be dealt out to him in such stinted measure
of the Parish Schools, Harborne.
291
as just to keep him alive. But the higher treasures of
his mind and soul no sheriff nor jailer can take away,
touch, or diminish. There may be no window in his
cell, but the light of his knowledge will shine as brightly
as ever in the stillest and blackest midnight of his
prison. The turnkey may take away every article from
his pockets, and leave him not a needle, pin, or button;
but he and all the force at his command cannot carry
away from the prisoner a single iota of his knowledge.
They cannot rifle his mind of a single fact or thought
it has treasured. They cannot, by any burglar's imple-
ments, break into his spiritual being, and purloin one of
the immediate jewels of his soul. They cannot rob him
of a single memory, of a single affection, of a single
sentiment of love to God or man. They cannot bar
the pathway of communion with the Father of his spirit,
or shut out of his heart a single ray of the life that
comes from above.
But if these priceless treasures of the mind and soul
cannot be sold away from a man, if they cannot be taken
for debt, or stolen from him by burglars, there is this
great and most essential difference between them and the
richest and most common gifts of nature: they are not
spontaneous nor universal. They do not come to any
man, woman, or child like the air, light, rain, and dew.
Every one of them, even the smallest, has to be acquired
by an effort on the part of the possessor. A great and
good man may have his mind and heart full of the
precious jewels of knowledge, and the brighter jewels of
grace and heavenly wisdom and of a holy life; but he
cannot give one of the least of them to his child without
U 2
292
Speech at the Anniversary
an effort on the part of that child to receive and retain
the gift. Sir Francis Bacon could not give two letters
of the alphabet to his little son without this labour of
the child's mind to take in the gift. So it has been from
the beginning and so it will be to the end of time. Great
monarchs may bequeath empires and kingdoms to their
children, but not the proudest, richest, or wisest of
them all can bequeath the A B C of an alphabet
to the heirs of their crowns. There is no royal road to
knowledge or virtue or religion. There is no rich man's
road to the shortest syllables in our language. All the
human minds that have come into the world since Adam
have begun their intellectual life on the same line and
level. Every mind, however favoured by outward cir-
cumstances, has had to obtain its stock of knowledge by
its own labour. It has had to pick up all its intellectual
wealth thought by thought, gleaning often among the
very thorns and briers of difficulty.
Now, in all this there is something very encouraging
to the children of the poorest parents in this and every
other community. An allwise and gracious Providence
has put knowledge and virtue so far above all other
human acquisitions and properties, that it has ordained
that all the children born into the world shall begin in
the race of learning exactly even; or, in words sometimes
used, that they shall all begin on nothing; that not one
of them, however rich and powerful be his parents, shall
inherit from them a single letter of the alphabet, to set
him at the slightest advantage at the first start over the
poorest peasant's son. And now just see how the people
of this country, and the people of other Christian and
of the Parish Schools, Harborne.
293
enlightened countries, have tried, if I may so say, to
imitate the benevolence of Providence in the provisions
they have made for the education of the children of all
classes. If Providence has so ordained the structure of
the human mind that the children of the prince and
peasant, of the rich and poor, shall be brought up to the
first letter of the alphabet, and start there perfectly even
in the race after knowledge, this school and other schools
in the land are designed so to help the young racers that
they shall run neck and neck as long as possible. And
they often do run abreast a long way. They dash
through the short syllables together, and they are not
far apart when they plunge, with inky fingers, into the
pot hooks and trammels of their writing books; and even
in small sums in addition, a ploughman's son may come
out half a head before the son of a duke. Indeed, I am
not sure that many a poor man's boy in this village did
not make as good time through the alphabet as the
Prince Imperial of France did with all the extraordinary
advantages which that highly-favoured youngster had to
start with. I will go further still. I believe there is
more than one boy or girl of the same age sitting daily
on these seats, who would give the sole heir to the im-
perial crown of France a tight pull in arithmetic or
geography, or in other rudimental branches of useful
education.
But the pursuit of knowledge is not a steeple-chase.
It is not an amateur beating of the air as an occupation
for children, half labour and half amusement, stimulated
by the ambition to excel, and carry off the largest num-
ber of prizes and certificates of merit. It is the acquiring
294
Speech at the Anniversary
of the working capital of a useful life when the learner
comes to act for himself or for others. It is the laying
up of a little fortune, without which the richest man's son
is poor indeed, and with which the poorest man's son is
rich. It is an old saying that knowledge is power. It
is equally true that knowledge is wealth, in a broader,
better sense than the mere possession of money or land.
A young man, on setting out in life, may not own a
single acre or a single pound sterling, yet if he have a
mind well stored with practical knowledge, if he has fitted
himself to fill any position that may fall in the way of
an intelligent, trusty, virtuous man, if he has acquired
a taste and habit for reading, and delights in the com-
panionship of the best books of the day when his hours
of labour are done, that young man begins in the world
with a little fortune, which is both power and wealth.
It is more.
It is the well of a mental life which never
dries up, from which he may draw thoughts of rich and
varied enjoyment at every hour and in any occupation.
More than this, it will not only enable him to enjoy
any occupation in which he may happen to labour, but
it will qualify him to fill any honest occupation with
credit to himself and satisfaction to his employer.
Now, on this point there has been a good deal of
difference of opinion. Many intelligent and well-mean-
ing, and even benevolent, people have maintained, and
still believe, that a certain amount of education unfits
persons for certain occupations or positions; that it
makes them feel themselves above their business; that
it encourages them to take on airs, as it is called, and
gives them a certain look, deportment, and disposition
of the Parish Schools, Harborne.
295
This is a very
that do not become their position.
wide spread impression, which it is difficult to reason
away. It is a secret prejudice against universal educa-
tion, which resembles the prejudice against colour in
some countries, and against the admission of coloured
men to the common rights of citizenship. Now, I am
inclined to believe one of these prejudices has just about
as good a foundation as the other. If the truth could
be known, you would find that no persons are more
disposed to complain of stupidity and insensibility in
their servants than those who are opposed to the uni-
versal education of the children of the poor, on the
ground that it unfits them for the position they are to fill.
I would not entertain an uncharitable thought towards
such persons, but I think they do lay themselves open
to the suspicion that they object to intelligent, reading,
thinking, self-respecting servants or employés, because
they cannot treat them as they can the stolid, insensitive
men or women of mere muscle, who cannot read or
write, and are capable only of the single thought of
drawing a straight furrow, or of setting a table and
serving up a meal in a way to please the mistress of the
house. And this fact in itself proves the spontaneous
and universal respect paid to intelligence and virtue.
You will see this everywhere and in all conditions of
life. Even in the dark days of slavery in America, the
proudest master felt constrained to deport himself to-
wards an intelligent negro as he did not toward the
more ignorant of his slaves. And there were two very
important reasons for this difference of treatment. In
the first place, sheer intelligence always commands a
296
Speech at the Anniversary
certain degree of respect on the part of the employer
or master. Then, intelligence makes the servant or
employé more sensitive to praise or blame, more suscep-
tible of being moved by higher motives or quicker sensi-
bilities than stolid and ignorant men or women.
If I
may so say, a lash of silken string cuts as deep into his
nature as a cow-hide does into the nature of a stupid,
pig-headed son of ignorance. He needs no sharp, harsh
words to bring him to a sense of duty or to a perception
of what is right and wrong.
And here I must again refer to an aspect of this
universal education of the masses which is too generally
overlooked. We hear a good deal about the upper classes
of society, sometimes of the cream of society. Now, I think
you will find that the elevation which these classes attain
depends upon the elevation of the classes beneath them in
the social scale. I believe that they are not lifted up
from above, but raised from below, and raised by the
upward movement of what are called the lower classes.
I believe I once used the homely figure here, that as the
cream rises and falls with the milk that produces and
sustains it, so the upper classes of society rise in education
and refinement of mind and manners with the masses, of
the people who produce and sustain them. This must be
so in the nature of things. If the common labouring
men of the country should, by dint of self-cultivation,
reach, ten years hence, the level of intelligence on which
the middle class stand to-day, what must happen? Why,
this, almost inevitably-the two classes would fuse into
The intellectual distinction between them would
be erased, and they would stand on the same footing of
one.
of the Parish Schools, Harborne.
297
knowledge and virtue. Well, suppose it were felt and
known to be a certain fact that the working classes should
so avail themselves of the abundant means of instruction
now, as it were, pressed upon, them almost without
money and without price, as to attain, ten years hence,
to the high-water mark of education and intelligence
reached by the middle class of to-day, could you con-
ceive of any impulse or motive more powerful than this
fact to impel the middle class to raise the standard of
their own education, so that, ten years hence, they should
be as far above the working classes in learning, know-
ledge, and mental culture as they are now? If you see
and admit this, then I think you will see it equally clear
that nothing in the world could more tend to raise all
the upper classes of the country than the universal
education and elevation of the masses of the people. I
say all the upper classes, for all must be raised simul-
taneously by this elevation of the strata on which they
rest. This is not a mere theory. It is a fact rendered
patent to the world by a hundred illustrations. Men
occupying the highest social and political positions in
society, men belonging not only to the Upper Ten, but
Upper Five, feel this universal movement of intelligence
beneath and around them. They feel that the tide of
this mental life is arising; that it is coming in and
coming up like a flood; that they too must make a per-
sonal effort to rise; that they must either sink or swim,
and if they swim at all, they must swim on the surface.
See how the foremost men of the age, occupying the
highest social rank that society can confer or prescription
create, are moved by these great impulses of popular
298
Speech at the Anniversary, &c.
intelligence, by the very shaking of the uppermost.
branches of the tree of knowledge which the million-
handed masses of the people are feeling after. See how
great political and party leaders like Derby, Russell, and
Gladstone, each with half the load of an Atlas on his
back, are entering the lists of the learners and teachers,
accoutred as they are, and, as it were, wrestling for the
prize with the strongest athletes of literature. See how
the most powerful monarch that ever sat upon the im-
perial throne of France, with such governmental respon-
sibilities and burdens on his back as perhaps no other
human sovereign ever shouldered, see how he feels the
pulse and the power of this mighty uprising tide around
him; see what a prodigious effort he has put forth, under
the mountainous load of his political cares, to make him-
self as great a Napoleon of the pen as his uncle made
himself the Napoleon of the sword.
Some one has said there is no frontier to humanity.
It is equally true that society is not a six-story structure,
with a floor of cold, immovable marble between one and
the other from bottom to top. No; society is a great
organized life, stirred with the same human pulses from
the sole of the foot to the crown of the head; and when
the foot rises the head rises, and in the same proportion.
A school like this adds its pulse to this great mental life
that moves the world, that not only raises the masses of
the people, but uplifts all classes of society, the gentry,
aristocracy, the Lords and Commons, and the throne
itself.

CHIDDE
BX
A Tribute to Bichard Cobden,
THE DAY AFTER HIS DEATH,
At the conclusion of a Lecture on the "Higher Law and
Mission of Commerce," before the Leed's Mechanics'
Institute, April 6th, 1865.
A
S one who has watched, with the liveliest interest,
all that makes for the brotherhood of nations, I
am not willing to conclude without adverting to that new
bond of peace which the recent commercial treaty has
established between Great Britain and France. What
mind can measure, even in imagination, the good that may
flow to the whole family of man from this interlinking
of two neighbour-nations, whose mutual confidence and
cordial co-operation might do so much for the peace of
the world, and for the putting down of that terrible war
system which is now devouring the industrial earnings of
Christendom. And when that consummation shall be
realized; when these two great countries shall walk
hand-in-hand in the beautiful and enduring fellowship
of mutual confidence and generous thoughts towards
mankind; when the whole family of nations shall become
one peaceful brotherhood, moving on together in the
300
A Tribute to Richard Cobden.
happy harmony of friendly sentiments and blended in-
terests; when the heavy burdens which mutual suspicions
have imposed upon them shall be lifted from their
shoulders, and those suspicions shall be lifted from their
minds, like sombre mists of winter before the rising sun
of May, then shall the memory of Richard Cobden come
up out of the past like the sweet smelling savour of one
of the great lives which God gives now and then to the
world to brighten and bless it with their light. Then
shall that wide-reaching life, now seemingly ended among
men, live and move and have a glorious being in the life of
nations. Then, with new forces and faculties of vitality,
its immortal breath shall be felt in the pulse of the
world's prosperity and progress, in the principles and
policies that shall sway at the helm of Governments,
and haven the domestic happiness and social intercourse
of peoples.
When such a man lies dead in the land, while the
shadow of a great sorrow is on a nation's face, and
millions in other countries feel the penumbra of the
same grief moving over their spirits; while the electric
wires of the world are yet thrilling with the news that
one of the very foremost workers in the world's history
for the well-being of mankind has gone to his rest, I
could not refrain on this occasion from offering a small
tribute of reverence to the memory which, I trust and
believe, the English-speaking race in both hemispheres
will ever hold and cherish as a common treasure. If, in
the grand words of the ablest of his political opponents,
such a man, in the working presence of his great mind,
is still a member of Parliament, "independent of disso-
A Tribute to Richard Cobden.
301
lutions, of the caprice of constituencies, and even of the
course of time," he is in a wider sweep of influence an
immortal citizen of the great commonwealth of States
that speak the earth-engirdling tongue whose latent
power his peerless logic unlocked and strengthened to
its utmost capacity of expression in the advocacy of prin-
ciples that shall live for ever among men-among the
brightest immortalities of truth and right. All the mil-
lions that inhabit the American continent shall hold the
life of Richard Cobden as one of the great gifts of God to
a common race, and cherish and revere his memory as
one of the priceless heir-looms which the Motherland has
presented to the multitudinous family of States she has
planted on the outlying continents and islands of the
globe. In the proud and grateful sentiment of his re-
lationship, they shall say we with her in the common patri-
mony of such a life, and feel they have a children's right
to light the lamp of their experience by its light, and
follow its guidance, without abstracting from the beams
it sheds around her feet.

छ
༢g

Conclusion of a Paper read at the Social
Science Congress, Birmingham,
August, 1868,
ON THE NECESSITY AND FEASIBILITY OF AN AUTHO-
RITATIVE CODE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW.
L
ET any fair and honest man of common sense rake
among the hay, wood, and stubble of those am-
biguous precedents, contested opinions, and antiquated
customs which constitute the semblance of an interna-
tional code, and he will be surprised that the heterogenous
fabric could ever have received such a name. He will
find that it embodies not one rudimental element of legal
authority; that it presents not a single aspect of an act
of legislation, jurisprudence, or representative deliberation.
The precedents which lie at the base of the unstable and
shapeless structure are the acts of States pure and simple,
appreciated and applied by no fixed and recognised rule
of morality and justice. The opinions which are inter-
woven with these precedents, like reeds into a wall of
clay, are the varying conclusions of men of different
countries, who have written in different languages, and
Conclusion of a Paper, etc.
303
at wide intervals apart. We cannot ascertain whether
any two of them all ever saw each other's face, or inter-
changed a single note, view, or idea before sitting down
to his argument. Thus, what is called, by a liberal stretch
of imagination as well as courtesy, the international
code, neither contains nor presents a single element or
aspect of law, such as the people of every civilized state
are taught to regard and revere as law. This pretended
code has never passed through the process of any species
of legislation, international, national, or local. It has
never passed through any deliberation or consultation
of even unauthorized individuals met in council. It has
never been defined, adopted, or sanctioned by diplomacy
or by treaty between even two nations. In a word, it
lacks every element and aspect which the common mind
of the people ascribes to law.
It may set the anomalous character of this so-called
international code in clearer light, if we place it in com-
parison with the great conclusions, principles, and systems
which have been elaborated and clothed with a moral
authority to which nations yield spontaneous and common
homage. For instance, compare this shadowy interna-
tional code with the creeds of Christian faith and worship
which have been discussed, constructed, and sanctioned
with an authority which the largest communities of man-
kind have recognised as almost divine. What great
assemblies, councils, or congresses of the highest eccle-
siastical dignitaries have met in different ages and coun-
tries for this purpose! What a vast difference between
the elaboration of a creed for Christian Churches of
different countries and the elaboration of a code for
304
Conclusion of a Paper read at the
Christian nations! Look at the commonwealth of science,
and the principles and laws it has given to the world.
What congresses of the greatest savans of Christendom
meet from year to year to give authority to these con-
clusions! Consider the character and object of this new
voluntary parliament for the promotion of Social Science.
What a vast range of principles and measures for the well-
being of every class and every interest of the community
is brought under discussion in the sectional departments
of this great parliament of utilitarian philanthropists!
What is the first and greatest object of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science and of this
Social Science Congress? Undoubtedly it is to give to
the deductions and conclusions of both bodies that moral
authority which the mature and grave deliberations of
great representative assemblies must always impart to
the solution of the most important questions. Otherwise
the discussion of these questions might be carried on
merely in printed pamphlets or the public press, without
these great and impressive annual congresses. And this
consideration brings me to the practical proposition which
I would deferentially submit.
The last twenty years have been marked, beyond any
preceding period, by voluntary international association
and enterprize. The Great Exhibition of 1851 proved
most illustriously what the peoples of Christendom could
do on the voluntary principle of representation as well
as co-operation. Even populations outside the circum-
ference of Christendom were represented personally as
well as industrially in that great Parliament of the
Peoples. What a succession of People Parliaments fol-
Social Science Congress.
305
magnificent Inter-
-
lowed, ended, and crowned by the
national Exposition of Paris in 1867! How all the arts
and industries of the wide world, and all its diversified
populations, were convened and represented in that grand
temple of universal brotherhood! Then see what per-
manent international associations have sprung into ex-
istence since 1851, to work for the common weal of
nations. Look at the growth and moral power of this
Social Science Congress. It is only twelve years old,
but see what an institution it has already become in the
land; what manner of men from all parts of the king-
dom come up to its councils; what manner of measures,
what range of utilitarian questions, are here discussed
with an ability which would honour any legislative
assembly on earth. And this Social Science Congress,
with all its rapid growth and moral power, does not
stand alone; it could not stand alone. At such an age
of consentaneous intelligence and sympathy, it must pro-
duce its like in other countries. It has already pro-
duced its like on the Continent and in America. On
both continents Social Science Congresses, organized and
acting to promote the same objects which this was
founded to advance, have become permanent institutions.
Among the objects they have in hand and heart is the
construction of a well-defined code of International Law
out of the hay, wood, and stubble of that delusive fabric
which now passes by that name.
Seeing, then, that this Social Science Congress, and
those organized and acting on the Continent and in
America, recognise the intense necessity and value of
such an international code, seeing that at every annual
X
306
Conclusion of a Paper read at the
meeting the elaboration of such a code is urged by new
arguments and by new authorities, I submit more con-
fidently this proposition:-
"That this Congress elect a Committee of Nomination,
whose duty it shall be to nominate and invite a certain
number of the most eminent jurists of Great Britain to
meet similar jurists and statesmen of other countries,
in the course of 1869, at Brussels or the Hague, there
to discuss and utilize all the raw material of precedent
and opinion now existing, and to elaborate an inter-
national code clothed with all the authority which such
an august assembly and such erudite and judicial deli-
beration could give to it.
"Secondly, That this Nomination Committee enter
immediately into communication with the Social Science
Congresses on the Continent of Europe and in America
on the subject, inviting them to take the same step, and
to elect and send a certain number of the most profound
jurists of their respective countries to this international
convention, all of whom shall not only be regarded as
fitted by their talents and experience to fill the highest
seats of justice at home, but shall receive for their
services a compensation befitting the dignity of their
position and the value of their labours to mankind.”
Such an assembly of jurists and statesmen would in-
evitably make a profound impression upon all the Govern-
ments and upon the whole public mind of Christendom.
The code which they would construct would be clothed
with an authority which no Government in Christendom
could put aside or ignore. The nations of the civilized
world would be recovered from their present anomalous
Social Science Congress.
307
and
and unseemly condition, and the sentiment of law,
of organized order and peace, would pervade and govern
their relations, as it now does the relations of individual
towns and counties within a single well-ordered state.
This is the practical proposition which I would com-
mend to the consideration of this Congress. I submit
it pure and simple. I will not add to it a suggestion of
what an international assembly of jurists might door
become after such an international code had been given
to the world. Still, I beg, however, merely to hint at
a subsequent function which the Social Science Con-
gresses of Christendom might legitimately perform after
having provided such a code of international law. It
has become the custom and law in all civilized countries
to hold a coroner's inquest at the loss of life by any
sudden accident or disaster. The inquests held over the
terrible explosions of the fire-damps of coal mines, which
blast scores of human lives, and people whole villages of
the poor with widows and fatherless children, are read
with painful emotion by a whole nation. Every cause
of the calamity, and all its incidents, are brought under
the most searching investigation. With what intense and
painful interest the proceedings of the inquest over the
terrible Abergele catastrophe were read wherever the
English language is spoken! Well, after having pro-
vided such an international code as we have contemplated,
if nations shall be so insane, lawless, and wicked as to go to
war, and destroy millions of money and half a million of
precious human lives, then I think the Social Science Con-
gresses of Christendom might well institute a solemn
Coroner's Inquest over the calamity, and investigate and
x 2
308
Conclusion of a Paper, etc.
report to the world the cause and guilt of the stupendous
crime. If the Great Powers could be made to feel that
if they shall dare to cast the torch of war into the fire-
damps of human passion, and involve a continent in the
horrid combustion of the battle-field, such a Coroner's
Jury would be summoned to hold a searching and solemn
inquest over the catastrophe, and pronounce an impartial
verdict to the world, it would be to them like that voice
which Macbeth so much feared; as if in very deed
Heaven did "peep through the blanket of the dark to
cry, Hold! hold !."


The Olive Leaf Mission.
A
S the enterprise designated by this title is referred
to several times in the foregoing Speeches, and
as the author earnestly desires that all his readers may
form some definite idea of its object and operation, he
states here a few facts which may suffice to explain it.
After the Peace Congresses at Brussels and Paris in
1848 and 1849, being anxious to disseminate more widely
over the Continent the principles, sentiments, and doc-
trines enunciated at those great meetings, and by the
advocates of Peace in England and America for nearly
half a century, he arranged first with a widely-circulated
Paris journal to insert, once a month, about a column
and a half of matter on the subject, under the title
of "An Olive Leaf for the People." It was made up of
about half a dozen extracts from the speeches and writings
of distinguished statesmen and divines, such as Cobden,
Chalmers, Robert Hall, Dr. Channing, &c. The publi-
cation of this "Olive Leaf" cost 100 francs a month, or
for each insertion; but for this sum 30,000 copies of it
were circulated all over France with the responsibility
and commendation of the editor. Besides, they generally
310
The Olive Leaf Mission.
went to the same persons from month to month, bringing
them under the continual dropping of the powerful
thoughts of such eminent men. It was the cheapest and
most effective agency that could be possibly adopted, not
only for disseminating most widely among, but for im-
pressing most deeply those ideas upon, the masses of the
people on the Continent. The author, being then in
Germany, easily effected a similar arrangement with all
the leading journals of the various German States, and
subsequently with those of Denmark, Sweden, Norway,
Holland, Belgium, Spain, and Italy, and with one journal
even at St. Petersburgh. Thus, at the beginning of 1852,
the "Olive Leaf" appeared monthly in seven different
languages and in forty of the most influential journals
on the Continent, from Stockholm to Madrid and from
Copenhagen to Vienna. The best thoughts of such
writers as have been mentioned were brought in this way
before at least a million readers scattered through all
those countries, and there is every reason to believe that
they made an impression which has found utterance and
effect in the organization of Peace Societies, and in the
remonstrances of the masses in France, Germany, and
other Continental countries against war.
The whole expense of this "Olive Leaf Mission was
defrayed by ladies of all denominations in Great Britain,
who, for disseminating these principles at home as well
as abroad, formed themselves into what were called "Olive
Leaf Societies," of which about one hundred and fifty
were organized in England, Scotland, and Ireland. These
raised the money for paying the Continental journals for
the insertion of the "Olive Leaves," which cost about
11
The Olive Leaf Mission.
311
£300 a year. This was only part of the work they
performed for the cause of Peace; for while, as it were,
with one hand they dropped unseen these beautiful
truths into the minds of the millions on the Continent,
with the other they diffused the same as gently and
effectively at home. The author was present and assisted
at the formation of all these Societies, and no memory
from his past experience will be dearer to him at the end
of life than that of their earnest sympathy and generous
co-operation in this most blessed work.
During the author's long sojourn in America, from
1855 to 1863, this "Olive Leaf Mission" was suspended,
and the Societies formed to support it were mostly dis-
banded. But as a pleasant souvenir of the enterprise,
within the last two years, and while engaged in consular
duties at Birmingham, he has undertaken at his own
expense to publish an "Olive Leaf" monthly in two or
three leading German journals. Several generous friends
of the old "Foreign Mission of the Dove" have contri-
buted to assist him in this small revival of the work
which they so liberally supported when it was carried
forward on such a large scale. He subjoins some of the
new "Olive Leaves" which he has thus published in the
Augsburg Gazette and the Cologne Gazette. The first is
given in German, for a reason which perhaps some of
those able to read it may infer.

SASANGY
SYO
Olive Leaves for the People.
No. 1.
EIN OELBLATT FÜR DAS VOLK.
VO
OR ungefähr fünfzehn Jahren machte ich meinen
ersten Versuch damit, in Deutschland meine
Ansichten über Frieden zwischen den Völkern und
Freundschaft unter den Menschen bekannt zu machen.
Durch viele Journale und Zeitungen gingen diese meine
Gedanken, welche auf kleinen gedruckten Blättchen
unter dem Titel: "Oelblätter für das Volk" ihre erste
Verbreitung fanden. Jeder, der nur einmal meine
Blättchen gesehen oder gelesen hat, weiss, was ein Oel-
blatt bedeutet, und wie und wann es zuerst ein Symbol des
Freidens und der Freundschaft wurde. Wenn es mir
schon immer grosses Vergnügen machte, meine Ideen so
vielen Lesern in den verschiedenen Deutschen Staaten
vorzulegen, so gewährte es mir doch noch grössere und
herzinnigere Freude, zu erfahren, dass meine Oelblätter
von Vielen mit Nachdenken gelesen wurden. Während
meiner ausgedehnten Wanderungen in Amerika, meiner
Heimath, habe ich mehr als einen Deutschen begegnet,
Jo
Olive Leaves for the People.
313
der von den "Oelblättern" sprach, die er im Vaterlande
in verschiedenen Zeitungen und Journalen gelesen hatte.
Und nun-nach dem Verlauf von so vielen Jahren—
gereicht es mir daher nicht nur zur grössten Genug-
thuung, nein, macht es mich wahrhaft glücklich, dieselbe
Taube wiederum mit einem Oelblatt des Friedens und
der Freundschaft an wenigstens einige wenige Leser in
Deutschland abzusenden.
Von wem ich besonders wünsche, dass er seine Thüre
meinem Oelblatt öffnen, und dasselbe einnehmen und
lesen möge, das ist der Arbeiter, die Klasse des Volks,
die im Swchweiss ihres Angesichtes ihr Brod verdient.
Ich selbst bin in Amerika von meiner frühesten Jugend
an ein Arbeiten gewesen. Es giebt kaum ein Werkzeug,
welches von Ackerbauern oder Handwerkern gebraucht
wird, mit dem ich nicht gearbeitet, und über dessen Benüt-
zung ich nicht die Bedeutung der Arbeit kennen gelernt
habe. Lederschuhe für Menschen, wie Hufeisen für Pferde
habe ich neu gemacht, wie ausgebessert, und den Hammer
des Shuhmachers wie den des Grobschmidt's gesch-
wungen. Ich habe an der Drehbank und am Schmel-
zofen gestanden, Messing und Eisen gegossen, und in
Sand Formen für alle Arten metallener Waaren model-
lirt. Ich habe die Feile viele Sommer- und Winter
monate hindurch gehandhabt, Eisen gekupfert und
Messing verlöthet, Pflüge, Hacken, Feuerböcke, Schaufeln
und Zangen geschmiedet; kurz, ich habe in fast jedem
Handwerkszweige gearbeitet. Darum nun glaube ich
dass ich mit den Handwerkern jedes Landes mit einiger
Sachkenntniss und nöthigem Mitgefühl sprechen kann.
Dann aber bin ich auch einmal Handelsreisender ge-
M
314
Olive Leaves for the People.
wesen, und habe manche lange Tagereise durch die ver-
schiedenen Staaten Amerika's gemacht, Nähereien und
Stickarbeiten und andere Manufacte auf dem Lande an
Händler abgesetzt, hierauf einen eigenen Laden angefan-
gen, und Specerei, Schnitt-, Kurzwaaren, Lebensartikel
und Grünzeug hinter dem Ladentische verkauft. So darf
ich vielleicht auch ein Paar Worte an Deutsche Händler,
Handlungsdiener, Kaufleute und andere Personen mit
kaufmännischen Beschäftigungen richten, und hoffen, dass
man mir freundliches Gehör schenken wird, als Einem,
der gewissermaassen mit ihren Arbeiten und Wünschen
vertraut ist.
Endlich auch giebt es kein im Ackerbau und in der
Gartencultur benütztes Werkzeug, mit welchem ich nicht
manchen lieben langen Tag und manches Jahr gearbeitet
hätte, und viele Werkzeuge waren darunter, die vielleicht
in dem herrlichen Deutschen Vaterlande noch Niemand
gesehen. Ackerbau war meine letzte und Lieblings-
Beschäftigung, ich habe noch jetzt Vergnügen daran, und
hoffe, mich ihm ganz wieder hinzugeben, wenn ich erst
von diesem Aufenthalt in Europa in meine Heimath
zurückgekehrt sein werde. Doch man denke ja nicht,
dass ich immer bloss ein Amateur-Landbauer gewesen
bin. Das letzte Jahr, ehe ich die Vereinigten Staaten
verliess, um nach England zu gehen, bebauete ich mein
eigenes kleines Gut, ohne auch nur einen Tag einen
Arbeiter zu dingen. Ich pflügte selbst, säete, eggte und
hackte selbst, mähete 16 Morgen eigenhändig, schnitt,
rechte und fuhr das Heu ein. Ausserdem schwang ich
gar manchen Tag die Sense für meine Nachbarn, und
that andere Feldarbeit, trotzdem ich schon damals über
Olive Leaves for the People.
315
fünfzig Jahre alt war. Während ich mit diesen Handar-
beiten beschäftigt war, gab ich Zeitungen und monatliche
Revuen heraus, und schrieb und veröffentlichte verschie-
dene Bücher, die sich seitdem bedeutender und oft wieder-
holter Auflagen zu erfreuen hatten.—
Genug! Ich habe hier mehr aus meinem Leben er-
zählt, als ich jemals vorher dem Papier anvertraute, und
ich würde es nicht geschrieben haben, wenn ich nicht
überzeugt wäre, dass diese meine Autobiographie nir-
gends anders als in Deutschland gelesen werden würde.
Nur Wenige meiner Amerikanischen und Englishchen
Freunde sind fähig, Deutsch zu lesen, und so werden sie
nie erfahren, dass ich jemals eine solche Seite aus meinem
Tagebuche, meiner Privatgeschichte der Oeffenlichkeit
übergeben habe, wie ich es nun in diesem ersten "Oel-
blatt für das Volk" gethan. Dasselbe geschah aus
keinem andern Grunde, als dem, die verschiedenen mit
Handel und Gewerben aller Art beschäftigten Personen,
die hiernach die in ihrer Sprache gedruckten Oelblätter
zu Gesicht bekommen mögen, davon zu überzeugen, dass
dieselben von Jemandem kommen, der persönlich mit
ihren Beschäftigungen und Interessen, mit ihren Sympa-
thien und Wünschen bekannt ist.
No. II.
PEACE A WORKING MAN'S QUESTION.
IN last "Olive Leaf," I referred to some facts in my
own life and experience. I did this merely to show that I
felt a natural and personal interest in every class of readers
my
316
Olive Leaves for the People.
that I addressed, especially in working men, because I
had handled nearly every tool known to manual labour. I
do feel a deep and honest sympathy with labouring men
in all countries. I know how much sweat of the brow it
costs them to feed, clothe, and house their children; how
many years of parental care, hope, and affection, mingled
with affliction and sorrow, it requires to rear a son to the
stature and strength of young manhood. I place such a
son before my mind's eye-a poor man's son. Then I
multiply him by three millions, or by the whole number
of soldiers serving in all the armies of Christendom. I
say to myself, These are all the sons of poor labouring
men. Who can compute the toil, the trials, the tears,
the privations it cost their parents to rear them for this
military service, even in time of Peace! They are all
the picked men of the nations, strong, well-made, and
healthy. By and by there is a war for some cause they
perhaps do not understand. Fifty thousand sons of Eng-
lish working men and fifty thousand sons of French work-
ing men are marched up face to face, and pour in upon
each other deadly volleys from their breech-loading rifles.
Five thousand are left dead on the field, and three times
that number are maimed for life. Here, at one battle,
twenty thousand young men are
or by slow degrees of suffering and death.
calculate and feel the loss? Go and ask the twenty
thousand parents of the slain and wounded what is
the cost of (that battle to them. Go to the twenty thou-
sand humble cottages in which all those young men
were born or reared, and count the cost of that battle in
the tears, and sobs, and broken hopes of weeping fathers,
destroyed outright,
Who can
Olive Leaves for the People.
317
mothers, brothers, and sisters. There is the place, those
are the human hearts, that will give you the truest reck-
oning of the costs of war. I never read of a battle, or
a rumour of a war between two countries, without
estimating its cost in the blood and tears, in the bruised
hearts and broken hopes, of poor labouring men.
When-
ever I hear of some new and more deadly missile of death
invented for war, I think of the kind of men that it is
designed to mow down, rank by rank, and I also put the
expense of it in this way :-Here is a new shell which is
to cost eleven pounds sterling each, beside the powder.
Well, the average weekly wages of an English labourer
is ten shillings. Then it would cost him full five months
of hard labour at the plough, scythe, sickle, and hoe to
pay for one of these shells to burst among a company
of soldiers taken from the plough, scythe, sickle, and hoe,
and armed to slay the poor men's sons of another nation.
Nine-tenths of those who fight and fall in war are poor
men's sons. Is not Peace, then, a poor man's question,
a working man's question, in a special sense?
No. III.
THE HUSBANDRY OF THE PLOUGH AND
THE SWORD.
In my last "Olive Leaf," I said that I had used almost
every implement known to manual labour in the field
or workshop. I said this merely to show that I knew,
by long experience, the feelings, the trials, wants, and
interests of working men. In travelling in different
318
Olive Leaves for the People.
countries I think of them, and try to ascertain their
welfare; to learn how much they earn per week, how
well they can feed, clothe, and lodge their families, and
educate their children. I try to weigh the burdens.
which war and armed peace establishments saddle upon
their shoulders. I have got into the habit of measuring
the cost of these armaments against the earnings of
working men; and I do it in this way.
When we are told that over three millions of men in
the prime of manhood are trained in the armies of Europe
for war, I say to myself, Nineteen out of twenty of all
this host are poor men's sons. Think how much hard
toil in the field and factory, in mine and mountain-
what parental tears, and trials, and anxieties—it cost to
raise up these three millions of young men to the age
of eighteen or twenty years! Then I look at them while
they are at drill; I see they are all picked men-all
chosen for perfect health, strength, and stature. The
military surgeon has examined them all, and declared
them all very good for war. We have no surgeons to
examine candidates or recruits for the plough, axe,
hammer, or spindle. Bow-legged men, asthmatic men,
one-eyed men, rheumatic men, are deemed good enough
for the great industrial armies of the world; just as if
War must have the flowers, and Peace the weeds, of
mankind.
I have walked all over England, from Land's End to
John o'Groats, in the spring and summer months. It
is a beautiful country. Nearly the whole island is cul-
tivated like a garden. The amount of labour applied to
its cultivation is perfectly wonderful, especially to an
Olive Leaves for the People.
319
American like myself. And while I wonder, I put this
and that together in this comparison. They say it takes.
700,000 agricultural labourers to make this island such
a great garden of beauty and fertility.
Their wages
average ten English shillings a week. Then the labour
of the whole 700,000 men and women for the year cost
£18,200,000; and what a glorious show of green and
golden crops they spread over the whole island for that
sum! I look at it with admiration. But I cannot help
looking at something else at the same time. I look at
the English war budget for 1866, a year of armed peace.
I see £26,000,000 put down for the cost of mere arma-
ments for war in that year! That is, £2 for the plough
against £3 for the sword in the time of peace! This
comparison stirs up sad reflections about producers and
consumers.
I once heard it stated in the British Parliament that
a certain bombshell of a new pattern cost £11 when
ready for use. Then it would cost the labour of an able-
bodied man at the plough, sickle, and hoe, for six spring
and summer months, to pay for one of these death-dealing
shells! How much honest, patient labour is swallowed
up in the wolfish maw of war!
No. IV.
THE VALUATION OF HUMAN LIFE IN WAR.
If there is one sentiment that more than another marks
the civilization of the present day, it is the interest felt
in human life. Sympathy with human suffering is the
320
Olive Leaves for the People.
most distinctive characteristic of our age. Never before
in the world's history were there such associated efforts
to diminish or prevent suffering. The societies organized
for this purpose are almost innumerable. Great calami-
ties by fire, pestilence, or famine are almost drowned
by the flood of benevolence thus brought to bear upon
them. The great heart of the community has thus become
very sensitive to every kind of suffering, want, or wrong.
How the whole nation is distressed at the news of an
explosion of fire-damp in a coal mine, by which a score—
perhaps a hundred-working men lose their lives! The
Queen on her throne telegraphs to the scene of the disaster
to make inquiry or express her sympathy. In thousands.
of family circles the fate of the poor colliers is deplored
with deep commiseration. Money pours in from all
directions to support and comfort the mourning widows.
and orphans. A shipwreck, a railway accident, or any
other catastrophe which destroys human life, produces the
same feeling in the community. Sometimes a single life.
put in peril will fill a nation's heart with anxiety and
grief. For instance, look at the case of Dr. Livingstone,
the African explorer. What intense and painful interest
has been felt, not only in England, but in other countries,
in his fate! What costly expeditions have been fitted
out to seek for him in the hot wilds of that distant conti-
nent! Then think of Sir John Franklin, and of the
feeling which his fate has inspired throughout the
civilized world.
Now compare the feeling with which the community
hears of the loss or peril of a few human lives by these
accidents, with the feelings with which the news of the
Olive Leaves for the People.
321
death or mutilation of thousands of men, equally precious,
on the field of battle is received. How different is the
valuation! how different in universal sympathy! War
seems to reverse our best and boasted civilization, to carry
back human society to the dark ages of barbarism, to
cheapen the public appreciation of human life almost to
the standard of brute beasts. This has always seemed to
me one of war's worst works, because it destroys also the
sense of the ruin and misery which the sword makes
in the world. And this demoralization of sentiment is
not confined to the two or three nations engaged in war ;
it extends to the most distant and neutral nations, and
they read of thousands slain or mangled in a single battle
with but a little more humane sensibility than they would
read of the loss of so many pawns by a move on a chess-
board. With what deep sympathy the American nation,
even to the very slaves, heard of the sufferings in Ireland
by the potato famine! What shiploads of corn and pro-
visions they sent over to relieve that suffering! But how
little of that benevolent sympathy and of that generous
aid would they have given to the same amount of suffer-
ing inflicted by war upon the people of a foreign country!
This, I repeat, is one of the very worst works of war. It
is not only the demoralization, but almost the transfor-
mation, of human nature. We can generally ascertain
how many lives have been lost in a war. The tax-
gatherer lets us know how much money it costs. But
no registry kept on earth can tell us how much is lost to
the world by this insensibility to human suffering which
a war produces in the whole family circle of nations.
Y
322
Olive Leaves for the People.
No. V..
THE INHERITANCE OF NATIONAL
MISTAKES.
IF I draw my facts and ideas about war and war-estab-
lishments from the experience of the English people, it
is because I know them better than any other people
except my own. I also know that they are very generous,
and quite willing that the people of other countries
should learn what to avoid as well as what to imitate in
their past history. I do not think there is any nation
more ready to own past mistakes and to deplore them.
And I sometimes fear that there is no other nation so
liable to fall into such mistakes, and to fall into them so
honestly at the time of the temptation. And no other
nation has to carry on its shoulders such a heavy burden
of mistakes, some of the load being over a hundred years
old. And although they bear this load patiently and
bravely, few of them will confess that a pound of it
ought ever to have been put upon them. But nearly the
whole burden is the inheritance which has come down to
them from a past generation. It is a terrible national
debt of mistakes made in the course of about fifty years,
from 1774 to 1815.
The first great mistake in that period of time, which
the whole English nation now admit and deplore, was
that which led to the long revolutionary war in America.
After deducting all that was paid in precious English
blood and treasure in the seven years of that long struggle,
Olive Leaves for the People.
323
that war bequeathed to the present generation in England
a debt of over £100,000,000, or more than £3 to
every man, woman, and child in the United Kingdom;
and I do not think that Great Britain ever waged a war
which she deems such a mistake and misfortune as this
war with her American colonies.
But the mistake in regard to the American revolution
was very small, when estimated in money only, compared
with the next one made by England, almost before the
grass was green upon the graves of tens of thousands of
her soldiers who fell in that war. This was the great and
lamentable mistake which involved her first in a war with
the French Republic, and next in the terrible conflict with
the French Empire. And now, while thousands are still
living who remember those wars and all that led to them,
the majority of the English people will confess to you
that they were all a mistake. Indeed, there is no prin-
ciple more hateful to the whole nation than that on
which England first interfered with the French in the
formation and establishment of the government which
they preferred for themselves. This was the first mistake
which led to all the wars with France that followed.
Had it not been for this interference, Napoleon I. would
perhaps have died a colonel, and there would never have
been an Austerlitz, a Jena, or a Waterloo, as a field of
battle. British statesmen of all political parties now
admit that this interference with the French was all a
mistake, and ought to have been avoided. But who can
estimate the cost of that mistake to the generation now
living in England, and the generations to follow? At least
£800,000,000 of the national debt of Great Britain is the
Y 2
324
Olive Leaves for the People.
inheritance of what her people regard and condemn as
mistakes. The annual interest of this sum is more than
twenty shillings sterling on every man, woman, and child
on the island.
Such is the heavy heritage of mistakes saddled by one
generation upon another. How watchful ought a nation
to be against making such mistakes, to send down as a
crushing load to innocent, unborn millions!
No. VI.
THE GREAT FAMILIES OF THE FATHERLAND.
ONE of the grand old seers of Israel once saw a start-
ling vision, which he described in the exclamation,
“O wheel!” I am not a prophet nor the son of a
prophet. But sometimes, like other men who walk with
their eyes open, I see things that suddenly spread out a
great meaning before me. I have just been to Paris,
and there I saw the grandest vision I ever beheld. And
as I looked and looked at it, smitten with great wonder,
I exclaimed to myself, like the prophet of old, O wheel!
It was such a wheel as no Hebrew seer nor king nor
people ever saw before. They call it the "Grand Expo-
sition of the Arts and Industries of all Nations." But
it was in the form of a vast wheel with its hub upper-
most. Between its spokes, from the hub to the rim, the
different nations of the world displayed the best speci-
mens of their art and industry. The spectacle was
almost bewildering. The progressive thought, skill,
Olive Leaves for the People.
325
genius, labour, and wealth of all the ages were there in
works which seemed to embody the highest perfection
that the human hand and mind could reach. Nature
was there, too, with all the infinite productions of land,
sea, and sky. The most costly jewelry she elaborates on
and under the surface of the earth, the precious stones
and pearls, the woods and wools, the metals and minerals,
the fruits, seeds, plants, and flowers of all climes and
countries, were there arranged side by side with the
machinery-infinite, vast, and varied-which the nations
had invented for working up all this raw material for
man's use and ornament.
There were no spaces between the spokes of this
mighty wheel more gloriously filled than those allotted
to the great German fatherland, including Scandinavia
and Holland; for I love to group the whole Teutonic
race in one grand family circle, as they are virtually of
one blood and language, and occupy a coherent territory
which the Baltic is too narrow to divide. I walked
through this vast Teutonic section with the liveliest
admiration and delight. It was full of the mighty
speech of that German mind which has so shaped and
guided the thoughts of the nations. When I passed
through the Prussian and Austrian sections, locked arm
in arm as they were, I saw it clearly that there were
natural and spontaneous fraternities that the sword,
drawn in sudden anger, could only sever for a moment.
As I gazed upon their splendid feats of mechanical
genius and Titan-handed industry, I was touched with
the sentiment of that fraternity. What well-minded
Prussian, said I to myself, can walk through this Aus-
326
Olive Leaves for the People.
trian department and not feel proud that Austria, too, is
one of the sisters of the great German family circle?
Or what Austrian, even with the unhappy memories
of the recent past fresh within his breast, can walk from
end to end and side to side of this Prussian section and
not feel the glow and stir of a generous pride in his
heart that Prussia stands so gloriously in this grand
competition of the nations?
Painters of different ages and countries have won
great fame for painting family groups, or groups of
happy children playing or sitting on flowery lawns, green
meadows, or golden fields of harvest. But the skilled
artisans of the great fatherland, with their pencils of
steel and brazen easels, have produced such a group of
German States in Paris as all the artists of the world
could never have painted on canvas. Would that the
magnificent picture could be photographed entire, and a
copy hung up in every house from the Mediterranean to
the Baltic, and from the Baltic to the North Sea, in which
the Teutonic tongue is spoken! When were Bavaria or
Wurtemberg, Hesse and Saxony, and the other sisters
of the circle ever painted before with such features and
expressions of countenance as in the great Exposition?
How little did we of America and other distant countries
know what they were and what they could do until we
saw both, in their art and handiwork, in this great palace
of the world's industries! One might well wonder if
they knew themselves what they were and what they
could do until their mechanical skill, genius, and labour
grouped them together in such a tableau vivant in Paris.
And while I looked with wonder and delight at the
Olive Leaves for the People.
327
great German group of States, presented in such a
tableau vivant, this thought came to my mind,—How
can any animosities or jealousies ever arise again to mar
the harmony and happiness of such a family circle?
Surely this grand réunion at Paris must make them feel,
as they never felt before, what bonds of brotherhood
connect and entwine them. Permanent and universal
Peace extends itself outward by concentric circles,—
from town to province, from province to state, and from
state to the great commonwealth of nations. When all
the German States shall be united in one harmonious
family circle, Peace will have made the conquest of one-
third of Europe, and the rest must all the sooner yield
to its benign sceptre. Should the Paris Exposition thus
tend to promote not only German, but Teutonic, unity,
it will be worth to the cause of Peace throughout the
world all that it has cost.
No. VII.
THOUGHTS AT THE PARIS EXHIBITION.
WHILE wandering with wonder and admiration through
the mazes of machinery in the Great Exhibition, I saw
some engines that I felt at first ought never to have been
admitted into that glorious company of agricultural and
mechanical implements. Among the reaping, mowing,
sewing, printing, planing, and pumping machines, among
the lathes, looms, anvils, hammers, and the best tools ever
invented to lighten and economise honest human labour
there were monstrous cannons with awful throats, mortars,
328
Olive Leaves for the People.
bombshells, guns, and bayonets, made for the swiftest
destruction of human life. I stood and looked into the
huge mouths of those black cannon, and the great globes,
of solid iron, that lay beneath their lips to show what
death and desolation they could pour across the space of
miles into beleaguered towns. I thought of what was
said in the book of Job, that when the sons of God came
together, Satan came also with them. And these cannons
and rifles, bayonets and swords, said I to myself, are the
reaping machines of the Governments of Christendom !
These are the implements they contribute to this Great
Exposition of honest, patient art and industry! With
these they plough the green lands of the peoples! With
these seed-drills they sow the furrows made by those
red-hot ploughshares! With these they reap their
harvests and garner in their sheaves! Oh, if these
machines were set at work for five minutes upon this
great living army of the world's working men and utili-
tarian manufacturers, and upon all these glittering
forests of their handiwork, what a scene would they
produce! what a contrast between their work and the
work of all this labour-doing and labour-saving machinery
of peaceful industry! While thinking of this contrast,
I found myself in the great picture circle, hung with the
master-pieces of the world's living painters. And there
I saw some of the harvests that war has reaped with its
reaping machines. There I saw, painted to the life, the
battle scenes before Sebastopol-at the storming of the
Redan, of the Malakoff, and on the field of Inkermann.
They made me shudder with horror. Still, I thought it
was well that these terrible pictures of death and destruc-
Olive Leaves for the People.
329
tion should be hung up before the eyes of thousands and
hundreds of thousands of different nations. It was well
that these harvests of the battle-field should be painted
to the life, and hung up before the reaping machines of
war to show their manner of work, to show what kind
of sheaves they reap, and what kind of grain they thresh
out for mankind. It was well that the thinking, intelli-
gent multitudes of different lands thronging the great
Palace of Art and Industry could have placed before
them all this enginery of war, and such horridly vivid
representations of what it could produce. So I did not
regret that this Satan was allowed to come with the sons
of God into this magnificent assemblage for once, that
they might see his fiendish features all the more dis-
tinctly for the contrast. Surely thousands must have
been struck with the thought that war destroys myriads
of strong active men, who might make the best artisans
and labourers of the nations; that its murderous ma-
chinery destroys what the looms, anvils, and ploughs of a
great kingdom can earn. If this is one of the lessons
which the peoples of different land and tongue shall learn
at the Great Exhibition in Paris, they will be well repaid
for meeting together in that grand Palace and Parlia-
ment of Industry.
330
Olive Leaves for the People.
No. VIII.
A FRIENDLY ADDRESS OF CITIZENS OF
BIRMINGHAM
TO THE PEOPLE OF FRANCE AND GERMANY,
Adopted at a public meeting held in the Priory Rooms, on
Tuesday, September 3rd, 1867.
BRETHREN,-We beg you to receive kindly a few words
of fraternal greeting which we citizens of Birmingham,
in public meeting assembled, desire to address to you.
We wish to tender to you an expression of the deep
sentiment of gladness and delight with which we and
thousands of our fellow-countrymen have read the
friendly communications which communities in France and
Germany have recently addressed to each other depre-
cating every act and utterance of ill-will, and every dis-
position and effort calculated to put in peril the peace
existing between the two countries. In this friendly
correspondence we recognise, with hope and joy, a new
power and a new era in the commonwealth of nations.
We see in it the great, intelligent, industrious peoples
of Christendom brought face to face and hand to hand,
in the full force of their enlightened reason and common
humanity, to pledge each other that they will not suffer
themselves to be led like sheep dumb to the slaughter
without opening their mouth against the bloody and use-
less sacrifice, to insist that the sacred rights and interests
of nations shall not be decided by the blind hazard and
arbitrament of war, to constrain their Governments to
Olive Leaves for the People.
331
submit every dangerous question of controversy that may
arise between them to the passionless tribunal of reason,
equity, and humanity, rather than to that fiery and
windy tempest of fury and destruction which war
summons forth with its consuming breath.
Brethren of France and Germany,-We trust that you
also will see in the fraternal communications which you
addressed to each other on a recent question of much
peril a moral force which you may and will employ at
the shortest notice whenever a question shall arise to
endanger the peace between the two nations. We
express this hope not without some experience in the
use and influence of such correspondence. On more than
one occasion, different towns and communities in Great
Britain have put themselves in direct communication
with the citizens of another country on questions which
threatened to lead to a desolating war. In 1846, when
a case of this nature arose between England and the
United States in connection with the Oregon question, a
number of large and influential towns in the United
Kingdom addressed similar towns in America in com-
munications breathing the same spirit that inspired the
addresses which you interchanged on the Luxemburg
question. Again, on the accession of the Emperor of
the French to the Imperial throne, a sentiment was
aroused in Great Britain which, under the influence of
certain journals and public men, assumed such force,
and expressed itself in such forms, as to alarm thousands
of thoughtful men lest it should break the bonds of
peace between the two nations. To counteract this
sentiment, and to convince the French people that it was
332
Olive Leaves for the People.
not the feeling of the great masses of the nation, the
large towns of the kingdom resorted to this very system
of friendly international addresses. London, Dublin,
Glasgow, and Edinburgh sent each an address to Paris;
Liverpool to Lyons, Manchester to Marseilles, Birming-
ham to Bordeaux, Leeds to Lille, Sheffield to Strasburg.
Fifty of the large towns in Great Britain addressed the
same number of towns in France, deprecating the expres-
sion of any sentiment of distrust or illwill towards the
French people, and earnestly inviting their fraternal
co-operation in strengthening and multiplying the bonds
of peace and mutual interest between the two countries.
So far from drifting into a war with each other, France
and England soon became more closely united than they
had ever been before.
Brethren of Germany and France,-Let us pledge
each other that war shall not rob us of one of the glo-
rious victories which peace has won for us in this great
year of progress. This year the peoples of Christendom
have met in a grand Parliament of their arts and indus-
tries in Paris. We have shown to each other and to the
world at large what we have been thinking and doing
for the well-being of mankind. We have exhibited such
combinations and results of science, art, and mechanical
skill as have filled even their contributors with wonder.
What fraternities of capital, genius, and labour every
How
department, section, and stall has represented!
the coarsest toil of the miner's pick and the forger's
hammer has been blended with the finest touches that
the human hand ever gave to the working of the pre-
cious metals! What an exposition of the seeds, grains,
Olive Leaves for the People.
333
roots, and fruits, and all the agricultural implements with
which the patient and laborious millions of all latitudes
plough, sow, and reap their lands for food for man and
beast! With this magnificent spectacle before our eyes,
let us enter into a solemn bond and covenant with each
other that war shall never more be allowed to cut the
sinews of these splendid industries, to disperse the
peaceful armies of these honest artisans of the field,
forest, mine, and factory, or to array them against each
other with the barbarous instruments of the battle-field.
Let us raise aloft, over all the populous continents of
the world, this white banner with a new device,—“The
Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Men!" Let
us rally the taxed and toiling peoples under this flag;
under its glorious and victorious folds let us organize one
grand and decisive crusade to expel war, and all its
spirit, and all its horrid machinery, from the face of the
earth.
(Written by E. Burritt.)

How Prints

Letter to the New Britain Agricultural Club.
BIRMINGHAM, England,
May 13th, 1865.
MY DEAR SIR,
I beg you to accept my best thanks for your
very interesting and welcome letter, which not only
conveyed to me the expression of your own kind feeling,
but also the pleasant remembrance of the Agricultural
Club to their first Secretary, who holds that connection
with them in sunny memory. Indeed, I am truly rejoiced.
to learn, not only from your letter, but from our village
paper, that the Association lives whilst so many once
organized in Connecticut have died out of existence. I
have read the reports of your social and business meet-
ings with as much satisfaction and enjoyment even as I
would feel at the prosperity and happiness of a little
Benjamin in a family of a dozen children. I am sure
you will all pardon me in speaking of the Club in these
parental terms. I do not pretend to be more than one
of its godfathers. You know that in the last twenty
years I have stood in this sponsorial relation to a good
many schemes and enterprises which I thought might
work to a common good. I think they will count up to
Letter to the New Britain, etc.
335
the full number of Jacob's children, and I can truly say,
that our New Britain Agricultural Club has been the
Benjamin of them all. This assurance will convince you,
if any new one be necessary, how glad I was to hear that
the Society had lived and moved on through all the
thrilling and absorbing events that have broken like an
avalanche upon our beloved country in the last four
years. I do, indeed, rejoice that while for this period
the promise and prediction of the holy seer have been
reversed, and the ploughshare has been beaten into
swords, and while New Britain has carried as many of
them into the great struggle as any other town of its
size in the Union, the young farmers of our Club have
not valued less the peaceful and happy husbandry of our
hills and valleys, where the dews are white instead of
red. I am sure, now the great conflict is ended, they
will enter upon this husbandry with new zeal and enjoy-
ment; that many of our young men who have wielded
the sword in the bloody battles of the war will again
put their hands to the plough with a satisfaction they
never before experienced.
I do not wish to suggest an invidious thought by the
preference, but I cannot help expressing the wish that
the sons and descendants of the first fathers of New
Britain should especially give themselves to the cultiva-
tion of those fields which their ancestors ploughed, sowed,
and reaped from generation to generation, and which
still bear their family names. In those early years, the
soil they cultivated was hard and sterile. It was an
almost heroic struggle of faith and patience with them
to feed, clothe, and educate their large families from the
336
Letter to the New Britain
stinted production of our stony hills and cold and peaty
lowlands. They neither possessed nor could obtain
capital to invest in improvements, which should not
pay back the outlay in the first or second subsequent
crop.
When we think of what a population they reared upon
the productions of their small farms, we ought to be
thankful to them that they were able to hand over to us
their uplands and lowland fields in as good condition as
they did. With all our advantages, if we do not bring
them up to a high culture, we shall fall short of the
merits of our fathers. We have a great many noble hills
in New Britain, from the highest one in Stanley
Quarter to the one that stands on the line between us and
Kensington. Compared with what they should be and
with what we may make them, they stand like a row of
ragged heathens before us, with their bald Indian pates
stuck with feathery weeds, neither useful nor ornamental.
I believe the aspects of these stony hills are improving
under the influence of our Club. But a great work
remains to us-to take them in hand, and make them
the glory of the town; to scrub and shave their faces,
to give them a new suit of verdure from head to foot,
so that our village people shall look up to them, as well
as from them, for the beautiful scenery of cultivated fields
and varied and luxuriant vegetation. It is one of my
latest-born ambitions to do a little in this great work of
transformation, to make my little hill farm, the most
stony and sterile in New Britain, put on a new dress,
and set a good example to its neighbours, or follow theirs
if it is better.
Agricultural Club.
337
I have read the reports of your meetings, and noticed
with lively interest the subjects you have discussed. You
really seem to have inaugurated a new branch of agri-
culture, the growth of Sorghum. I always felt that the
introduction of this crop would be of great importance to
our Northern communities. At first thought it seems
like acclimatising a tropical exotic, or transferring to our
climate and soil a production for which we have hitherto
been dependent upon Southern latitudes and countries.
I know of no crop that could be added to our New
England list which would be more valuable to our people.
It is better to us than cotton, if any species of it could be
grown on our soil. For Sorghum gives us an article that
every family requires almost at every meal. Then it can
be raised so easily, is so hardy in its growth, and grows
in such common soil, and can be so quickly and cheaply
converted into syrup and sugar, that it meets a want
and adds to our resources a value which no other single
production could supply. Really, with Sorghum sugar
and chicory coffee, and all the other articles of comfort
and luxury a New England farmer can grow on his own
land, he may set up one of the most independent tables
in the world. I think our friend and neighbour Wells
proved this in the banquet he set before the Club at your
social meeting at his house. It would be interesting and
instructive to publish the inventory of that family feast,
just to show our community what nature will do for us,
if we will only do the right thing for her.
From your
pleasant description I doubt if ever a festive board were
opened in New England before, which served up so many
different articles grown on one farm. All honour to our
Z
338
Letter to the New Britain
New Britain farmers for this illustration of the latent
capacities of our hardy soil. If that man may be con-
sidered a benefactor of his race who makes two spires of
grass grow where only one did before, then he does a
better work still for the community who introduces an
entirely new crop, who makes something grow for man
that never grew before on his own or his neighbours'
land.
The reports of your doings and social enjoyments as a
Club make me long earnestly to be with you again, to
share them with you. Indeed, I fully intended to have
returned to America next summer, and to take my place
again among the farmers of my native town, with a new
relish for the occupation acquired during my sojourn in
England. But, all unexpectedly on my part, the Consu-
lar Agency at Birmingham was conferred on me by our
Government, which I thought might mean an expression of
respect and confidence on their part, which I could not
bring myself to decline, although its acceptance in.
volved an upturning of my whole programme of remain-
ing life. I have just entered upon the duties of this
new office, the first I ever held under any Government,
national, municipal, or local, and I hope I may be
able to perform them satisfactorily to all parties. This
new and unlooked-for appointment must, of course,
delay my return to America. But it will not in any
way abate or change my interest in the New Britain
Agricultural Club; it will rather increase it, and
perhaps make it more practical than if I were present
with you, and again following the plough on the hill that
I have so often furrowed in spring, summer, and autumn.
Agricultural Club.
339
I earnestly wish I could do something from this stand-
point to stimulate and even to assist the Club to new
enthusiasm, as well as effort. And I would propose this
as a substitute for what I should be glad to do if I
were present with you :—If you can find a suitable room
in the village for your business meetings, which shall
make a good and comfortable official home for the Club,
I will pay the rent of it while I remain here, if it does
not exceed fifty dollars a year. Such a room as head-
quarters would give our Club a local habitation as well
as a name, which would be a permanent anchorage for it,
and greatly tend to strengthen its organization. Besides,
there are other practical benefits that would be realized
from it. We could gather together a good library of
agricultural books and publications for circulation among
the members. To supply themselves with a stock of such
reading would be an additional motive to induce them to
attend the regular meetings, on which evenings the books
might be drawn as in the case of our old parish library,
which some of your elder members will remember. In
addition to books and periodicals, collections or specimens
of seeds, implements, fertilizers, diagrams, &c., might be
added very easily and naturally, constituting a kind of
agricultural museum which would have a utilitarian
value as well as a pleasant interest to the Club. Then,
if such a permanent home for the Club could be estab-
lished, I might be able to do a good deal towards making
it a centre of useful influence while I remain in England.
I should like right well to send over to you seeds of all
kinds grown in this country, and such as might be pro-
cured from the Continent, not only seed wheat, oats,
z 2
340
Letter to the New Britain
barley, beans, vetches, and other grains, grasses, and
pulse, but seed potatoes, which might make a profitable
change for those we cultivate, and which, perhaps, gene-
rate the germs of disease from their continuous cultiva-
tion on the same soil. I could also send you drawings.
of all the agricultural implements used in England, the
plans of barns, stables, piggeries, and houses of all kinds,
hurdles, fences, hedges, &c.; also engravings of cattle,
sheep, and swine, of all breeds, represented in the highest
stage of perfection. Thus we might make our library
and museum a centre of great interest and usefulness,
not only to the farmers of New Britain, but to neigh-
bouring towns, and gradually to the whole State and
country. I hope you will take this proposition into
early and earnest consideration. Should you adopt it, I
should be glad to perform my part of the undertaking
promptly and fully.
I feel that I have not performed exactly what I pro-
mised and what you expected when I left for England.
I did intend to write to the Club a series of letters on
what I might see and learn in reference to agricultural
matters in this country. With this thought uppermost in
my mind, I set out in the first summer after my arrival
here on a
"Walk from London to John o'Groats." In
the course of about three months I accomplished this
long pedestrian journey of full seven hundred miles.
Following the line I took, I passed through the best
agricultural counties in England and Scotland, and visited
and described in my notes some of the largest and most
successful agricultural establishments in the kingdom.
Among these were the farms of Alderman Mechi and of
Agricultural Club.
341
the late Jonas Webb, so well known in America for the
breeding of Southdown sheep and Short-horn cattle.
I saw and heard so much on this tour, that I found
it would take four years to publish my notes in the
New Britain paper at the rate of two columns a week.
So I concluded it would be the quickest and easiest way
to put them into a volume, and send them to you in
the form of a book. This was brought out by a London
house in May of last year. The first edition was very
elegant and rather expensive for its size, fine paper,
binding, and illustrations; for it contained five photo-
graphic portraits, a number which had never, I believe,
appeared before in one volume. This made the retail
price twelve English shillings, or about three dollars of
our money at its usual value. One hundred copies were
sent to a house in New York for sale, as they desired
to bring out a cheap American edition. Under the exist-
ing circumstances of the country, the heavy duties
charged upon them and the heavier tax of exchange
brought up the selling price of the books in America to
six dollars or more. This entirely prohibited their sale,
and I believe they were nearly all sent back to London.
I succeeded in getting about half a dozen copies sent to
friends and relatives in New Britain, one being deposited
in the library of the New Britain Institute. As many
of our members of the Club are also members of the Insti-
tute, I hoped that some of them would see and read the
volume, which I had virtually written for the association,
of which I had acted so long as its first secretary,
trusting that an American edition would be published
at a price which would enable me to present many of
342
Letter to the New Britain
our fellow-workers with a copy. Had the agricultural
library proposed been then established, I could have got
the book more largely into their hands.
Soon after my "Walk from London to John o'Groats"
left the press, I set out on another pedestrian tour on
the 1st June last year, and made a "Walk from London
to Land's End and Back." This is the title of another
volume the same size as the first, and a companion to it.
In the course of a month or six weeks it will leave the
press, and then I shall endeavour to forward a few copies
of both books to the Club. They will comprise nearly
a thousand pages octavo, and I hope they present facts
and observations which the members will read with some
interest and profit. It would enhance my enjoyment in
forwarding them if they should form the first contri-
bution from abroad to the agricultural library which I
trust you will be able to establish.
This is indeed the longest letter already that I ever
sent to New Britain. But I cannot conclude without
saying something about our beloved country. Truly, I
can mingle my joy of heart, with yours that the flames
of this fiery furnace have at last burnt themselves out,
and, if I may say it with the reverence I feel, that One
like unto the Son of Man may be seen standing over
the life of the nation, which has breathed with a great
and unwavering pulse of vitality under His protection
through all this long and terrible ordeal. I rejoice with
a joy no words I can find may fully express at the
termination of a conflict which, in common with thou-
sands, I had felt for years must come upon the nation
unless averted by an act of national duty and justic
Agricultural Club.
343
that should put an end to slavery, the cause of this and
nearly all our national woes. I felt with others of
clearer vision and greater experience that the God of
justice and of the oppressed was suffering us to run
ourselves as a nation at bay between two alternatives,
either to drown slavery in tears or drown it in blood. I
hoped and prayed that He would give the nation grace
and a softened heart to wash out and extinguish the
great iniquity with tears of repentance, by putting it
upon the consciences and shoulders of the entire nation
as a common guilt, and by expiating and removing it
at the cost of the National Treasury. With this hope
and this prayer I laboured in season and out of season,
as you well know, in the advocacy of compensated emanci-
pation. But Providence decided that it was too late,
that the nation's sin was riper for blood than for tears;
and what rivers of blood have reddened the land within
the last few years! The two rivulets that have made
each smoking river have equalled each other in depth
and current. The cost in blood has been spread pretty
evenly over all sections of the nation. In the red over-
flow of this great judgment the North and South have
not been divided. They sinned together, and they have
suffered together, and may the God of our Israel grant
that they may arise together to a new life out of the
sackcloth and ashes of this compulsory and costly
repentance, putting away and purifying from their gar
ments even the smell of slavery slain in the conflict.
We ought to have a national thanksgiving, that should
cover the entire continent, and last a month, that we
have at last got beyond, on the sunny side of the event
344
Letter to the New Britain
We can
which millions have looked forward to in gloomy fore-
boding for nearly half a century. "The irresistible con-
flict" has come and gone. It is behind us.
now face a new future, and see God's face in it with
hope and comfort. There is one event just gone to the
record of these great years, so sublime in its working
upon the mind of the world, that it seems to be taken
up into the rank of those Divine Providencies and
Revelations that have come at intervening spaces, a
thousand years broad, to mark the history of God's
dealings with mankind. Certainly not for a thousand
years has the death of one man produced such an im-
pression upon the whole of Christendom as the sudden
and most atrocious taking off of Abraham Lincoln. No
American life ever had such a burden put upon it; none
that has breathed on our continent ever performed a
greater work. But he was stronger in his death than
in his life. Living, he saw the wide and ensanguined
rift in the American Union close for ever its devouring
jaws to open no more; dying, he closed the wider chasm
between the two hemispheres. I say it reverently, by
his death he made of twain one, abolishing the enmity
between the Old World and New, between England and
America. The fires of indignation that burst forth from
the heart of the English nation at his martyrdom, and
the surging flood of sympathy with our country at the
bereavement which it unlocked, seemed in one day and
night to burn up and drown every unfriendly sentiment
toward our nation that ever found expression in Great
Britain.
I should be much obliged and greatly pleased if you
Agricultural Club.
345
would communicate this letter to the New Britain Agri-
cultural Club in any way that may appear to you best
calculated to reach the largest number of its members.
Ever and truly yours,
ELIHU BURRITT.
WILLIAM WHITTLESEY, Esq.,
President of the New Britain
Agricultural Club.
THE END.
M. S. Rickerby, Printor, 4A, Walbrook, Mansion House. E. C.
WORKS OF ELIHU BURRITT,
PUBLISHED BY
SAMPSON LOW, SON, & MARSTON, Crown Buildings, 188, Fleet Street,
London.
WALK FROM LONDON TO JOHN O'GROATS.
Small Post Svo., 68.
The journey and observations embraced in this volume include visits
to Alderman Mechi's establishment at Tiptree Hall; Babraham, the
residence of Jonas Webb; Samuel Jonas, at Chrishall Grange; and
other distinguished agriculturists and stock-raisers in England and
Scotland. Extended notices are given of salmon-breeding on the Tay
and tree-planting in the Highlands, besides descriptions of scenery and
incidents by the way.
WALK FROM LONDON TO LAND'S END AND BACK.
Small Post 8vo., 6s.
The Author's journey, given in this volume, took him through the
counties of Berkshire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Devonshire, Cornwall,
Somersetshire, Monmouthshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, and
Oxfordshire, including most of the south and west of England. The
volume contains detailed notices of Stonehenge, Salisbury, Exeter, and
other cathedrals; Glastonbury Abbey; Windsor, Tintagel, Chepstow,
and other castles; Land's End, the Valley of the Wye, and the varied
and picturesque sceneries of the wide range of country embraced in the
tour. The Author visited the Queen's Dairy at Windsor; Lady Rolle's
remarkable establishment at Bicton, in Devonshire; the great sheep-
farm of Mr. Campbell, at Buscot, near Farringdon, and some of the
most celebrated and successful breeders of Devonshire cattle in that county.
WALKS IN THE BLACK COUNTRY AND ITS GREEN
BORDERLAND.
Second and Cheaper Edition. Fcap. 8vo., Es. A few copies of
the Octavo Edition may be had, price 12s.
This is a handsome volume describing the characteristics of the
"Black Country," or that remarkable district for mineral and mechanical
production of which Birmingham is the representative and centre. The
"Green Borderland" embraces Stratford-on-Avon, Warwick, Kenil-
worth, Coventry, Lichfield, the Lickey and Clent Hills, the Wrekin,
Tong, and Boscobel, and other scenes and centres of historical interest
and association.
"His delight in the beauties of English scenery, the mild and tender radiance
of English skies and suns, which he thiuks superior to American, and the storied
buildings of old English towns, kindles in the reader a pleasure almost equal to
the writer's. The volume is a charming one, and should be widely read.”—Daily
News.
"A pleasant, chatty book, containing a good deal of information.......We trust
that Mr. BURRITT's remarks will rouse attention to these stupid relics of a past
age; and we trust also that his book will receive the publicity to which its
genial tone and stores of information entitle it."-Times.
"One almost longs to be an American when one reads the accounts written by
Americans of their wanderings in this country. No Englishman, in visiting any
part of his own land, can possibly experience the peculiar glow of pleasure, of
interest, of curiosity, of tenderness, of feelings half new and half old, which
animates the mind of an American on contemplating the great scenes of the
mother country with their wealth of transmitted associations..
....Of all
American writers, ELIHU BURRITT has done most to familiarize his countrymen
with the leading features of English life. It is more than twenty years since ho
began writing about us, and, besides magazine and newspaper articles, he has
published two good-sized books of English travel before the present, viz.,
A Walk from London to John O'Groats' and 'A Walk from London to Land's
End and Back.' They are all distinguished by a tone of quiet affection for the
land of his ancestors, which never degenerates into vulgar flattery, but is more
like the tender regard of a grown man for his parents whom, after many years,
he has come to visit from far-distant climes. The present volume is not the least
agreeable of the three. It mixes up fact and sentiment in about equal propor-
tions, and is always entertaining, even when it deals with things not materially
susceptible of graceful treatment."-Daily News.
"He is full of pleasant information, sensible, and amusing, so that the reader
goes gaily on from Birmingham, and its host of great men and all their famous
doinge, through Dudley, Stourbridge, and Hoyley, through the Wrekin, glancing
at brick-making and the nail trade (with some details of great interest) at
Shenstone, and the once-famous 'Leasowes,' at Tong, Boscobel, and Charlos'
Oak, and so onwards to smoky Wolverhampton, its historical monuments and
leading manufactures, his guide being in good spirits and full of talk the whole
way. "Standard.
"A traveller of his stamp can take no journey without plucking some flowers
by the wayside, and thus a report drawn up for official purposes has, in his
hands, assumed the proportions of a most readable and even charming book,
wherein clear and concise accounts of the rise and progress of certain under-
takings, involving vast manufacturing changes, are relieved by biographical
notices written almost with the warmth of a professed romancist, and yet moro
agreeable reminiscences of rural rambles having for their goal some time-honoured
spot made famous by natural beauty or the glamour of heroic associations."-
Star.
THE MISSION OF GREAT SUFFERINGS.
6s.
This is a volume designed to show what the ministry of suffering and
self-sacrifice has done in the development of Christianity, Patriotism,
and Philanthropy, illustrated by numerous examples, as in the early
martyrs and modern benefactors and heroes and heroines of benevolence.
In the press, by same Author,
SHORT ESSAYS AND SKETCHES.
Small Post 8vo.
JACOB AND JOSEPH: the Lesson of their Lives for the
Young.
Square 16mo. Illustrated.

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