THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
THE 
 
 TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS: 
 
 AN 
 
 ORATION 
 
 DELIVEKED BEFORE THE AUTHORITIES 
 OF THE CITY OF BOSTON, 
 
 Inlg 4, 1815. 
 BY CHARLES SUMNER. 
 
 ! yet a nobler task awaits thy hand ! 
 
 For what can War but endless War still breed ? 
 Till Truth and Right from Violence be fr.eed. 
 
 MILTON, SONNET TO FAIRFAX. 
 
 FROM THE SECOND BOSTON EDITION. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 HENRY LONGSTRETH, 347 MARKET STREET. 
 1846. 
 
Certainly if all who look uppn themselves as men, not so much from the shape 
 of their bodies, as because they are endowed with reason, would listen awhile 
 unto Christ s wholesome and peaceable decrees, and not, puffed up with arro 
 gance and conceit, rather believe their owne opinions than his admonitions ; the 
 whole world long ago (turning the use of iron into milder workes), should have 
 lived in most quiet tranquillity, and have met together in a firme and indissoluble 
 League of most safe Concord. ARNOBIUS, ADVERSUS GENTES, LIB. 1, p. 6. 
 
 All high titles come hitherto from fighting. Your Herzog (Duke, Dux) is leader 
 of armies,- your Earl (Jar!) is strong man; Marshal, cavalry horse-shoer. A 
 millennium, or reign of Peace, having been prophesied, and becoming daily more 
 and more indubitable, may it not be apprehended that such Fighting titles [also 
 General, Admiral, Colonel, Captain] will cease to be palatable, and new and 
 higher need to be devised. CARLYLE S SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
CITY OF BOSTON. 
 
 In the Board of Aldermen, July 7, 1845. 
 
 Resolved, That the thanks of this Board be presented in behalf of the City 
 Council, to CHARLES SUMNEK, Esq., for the able and eloquent oration, delivered 
 by him, before the Municipal Authorities of the City, at the recent celebration of 
 the anniversary of the Declaration of the Independence of the United States ; 
 and that he be requested to furnish a copy for the press. 
 
 Attest, S. F. McCLEARY, City Clerk. 
 
 Boston, July 10, 1845. 
 SIR: 
 
 I am grateful to my fellow-citizens for listening with such indulgence to 
 sentiments which, I was sorry to believe, would not be in harmony with the 
 opinions of all ; and I now place at your disposal a copy of the Oration, much of 
 which was necessarily omitted in the delivery, on account of its length. 
 
 In undertaking to present my views of the True Grandeur of Nations, I thought 
 that I was most fitly fulfilling the trust that had been reposed in me, when I 
 was selected as the voice of the City of Boston on the National Anniversary. 
 Believing that, in the present state of Christian society, all war and all preparation 
 for war, are irrational, unnecessary and inconsistent with that true greatness at 
 which our republic should aim, I deemed it my duty on that occasion to uphold 
 that truth. I was also anxious that our country should seek the true glory, and 
 what is higher than glory, the great good, of taking the lead in the disarming of 
 the nations. 
 
 Allow me to add, that I wish to be understood as restraining my opinions 
 precisely within the limits which I have assigned them in these pages; and, 
 particularly, to disclaim the suggestion which has been volunteered with regard 
 to them, that Force may not be employed, under the sanction of Justice, in the 
 conservation of the laws and of domestic quiet. All good men must unite in 
 condemning, as barbarous and unchristian, the resort to external [Force ; in other 
 words, to the arbitrament of War ; to International LYNCH LAW; or the great 
 Trial by Battle, to determine justice between nations. 
 
 I am, sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 
 THOMAS A. DAVIS, ESQ., Mayor, fyc., SfC. 
 

ORATION, 
 
 IT is in obedience to an uninterrupted usage in our com 
 munity that, on this Sabbath of the Nation, we have all put 
 aside the common cares of life, and seized a respite from the 
 never-ending toils of labour, to meet in gladness and con 
 gratulation, mindful of the blessings transmitted from the 
 Past, mindful also, I trust, of the duties to the Present and 
 the Future. May he who now addresses you be enabled so 
 to direct your minds, that you shall not seem to have lost a 
 day ! 
 
 All hearts first turn to the Fathers of the Republic. 
 Their venerable forms rise before us, and we seem to behold 
 them, in the procession of successive generations. They 
 come from the frozen rock of Plymouth, from the wasted 
 bands of Raleigh, from the Heavenly companionship of Wil 
 liam Penn, from the anxious councils of the Revolution, and 
 from all those fields of sacrifice, on which, in obedience to 
 the Spirit of their Age, they sealed their devotion to duty 
 with their blood. They seem to speak to us, their children ; 
 " Cease to vaunt yourselves of what you do, and of what 
 has been done for you. Learn to walk humbly, and to 
 think meekly of yourselves. Cultivate habits of self-sacrifice 
 and of devotion to duty. May our words be always in your 
 minds, never aim at aught which is not RIGHT, persuaded 
 that without this, every possession and all knowledge will 
 become an evil and a shame. Strive to increase the inherit 
 ance which we have bequeathed; know, that, if we excel 
 you in virtue, such a victory will be to us a mortification, 
 while defeat will bring happiness. It is in this way, that 
 you may conquer us. Nothing is more shameful for a man, 
 
6 
 
 than to found his title to esteem, not on his own merits, but 
 on the fame of his ancestors. The glory of the Fathers is 
 doubtless to their children a most precious treasure ; but to 
 enjoy it without transmitting it to the next generation, and 
 without adding to it yourselves, this is the height of imbecility. 
 Following these counsels, when your days shall be finished 
 on earth, you will come to join us, and we shall receive you 
 as friends receive friends ; but if you neglect our words, 
 expect no happy greeting then from us."* 
 
 Honor to the memory of our Fathers ! May the turf lie 
 gently on their sacred graves ! But let us not in words only, 
 but in deeds also, testify our reverence for their name. Let 
 us imitate what in them was lofty, pure and good ; let us 
 from them learn to bear hardship and privation. Let us, who 
 now reap in strength what they sowed in weakness, study to 
 enhance the inheritance we have received. To do this, we 
 must not fold our hands in slumber, nor abide content with 
 the Past. To each generation is committed its peculiar task ; 
 nor does the heart, which responds to the call of duty, find 
 rest except in the world to come. 
 
 Be ours, then, the task which, in the order of Providence, 
 has been cast upon us ! And what is this task ? How shall 
 we best perform the part assigned to us ? What can we do 
 to make our coming welcome to our Fathers in the skies, 
 and to draw to our memory hereafter the homage of a grate 
 ful posterity? How can we add to the inheritance we have 
 received? The answer to these questions cannot fail to 
 interest all minds, particularly on this Anniversary of the 
 birth-day of our country. Nay, more ; it becomes us, on 
 this occasion, as patriots and citizens, to turn our thoughts 
 inward, as the good man dedicates his birth-day, to the 
 consideration of his character and the mode in which its 
 vices may be corrected and its virtues strengthened. Avoid 
 ing, then, all exultation in the prosperity that has enriched 
 our land, and in the extending influence of the blessings of 
 freedom, let us consider what we can do to elevate our cha 
 racter, to add to the happiness of all, and to attain to that 
 righteousness which exalteth a nation. In this spirit, I pro 
 pose to inquire what, in our age, are the true objects of na 
 tional ambition what is truly national glory national 
 honor WHAT is THE TRUE GRANDEUR OP NATIONS. 
 
 * The chief of this is borrowed almost literally from the words attributed by Plato 
 to the Fathers of Athena, in the beautiful Funeral Discourse of the Menexenue. 
 
I hope to rescue these terms, so powerful over the minds 
 of men, from the mistaken objects to which they are applied, 
 from deeds of war and the extension of empire, that hence 
 forward they may be attached only to acts of Justice and 
 Humanity. 
 
 The subject will raise us to the contemplation of things 
 that are not temporary or local in their character ; but which 
 belong to all ages and all countries ; which are as lofty as 
 Truth, as universal as Humanity. But it derives a peculiar 
 interest, at this moment, from transactions in which our 
 country has become involved. On the one side, by an act 
 of unjust legislation, extending our power over Texas, we 
 have endangered Peace with Mexico ; while on the other, by 
 a presumptuous assertion of a disputed claim to a worthless 
 territory beyond the Rocky Mountains, we have kindled 
 anew on the hearth of our Mother Country, the smothered 
 fires of hostile strife. Mexico and England both aver the 
 determination to vindicate what is called the national honor ; 
 and the dread arbitrament of war is calmly contemplated by 
 our Government, provided it cannot obtain what is called an 
 honorable peace.* 
 
 Far be from our country and our age the sin and shame of 
 contests hateful in the sight of God and all good men, having 
 their origin in no righteous though mistaken sentiment, in no 
 true love of country, in no generous thirst for fame, that last 
 infirmity of noble minds, but springing in both cases from an 
 ignorant and ignoble passion for new territories; strengthened 
 in one case, by an unnatural desire, in this land of boasted 
 freedom, to fasten by new links the chains which promise 
 soon to fall from the limbs of the unhappy slave ! In such 
 contests, God has no attribute which can join with us. Who 
 believes that the national honor will be promoted by a war 
 with Mexico or England ? What just man would sacrifice a 
 single human life, to bring under our rule both Texas and 
 Oregon ? It was an ancient Roman, touched perhaps, by a 
 transient gleam of Christian truth, who said, when he turned 
 aside from a career of Asiatic conquest, that he would rather 
 save the life of a single citizen than become master of all the 
 dominions of Mithridates. 
 
 A war with Mexico would be mean and cowardly ; but 
 
 * The official paper at Washington has said, " We presume the negotiation is 
 really resumed, and will be prosecuted in this city, and not in London, to some 
 definite conclusion peaceably we should hope but we wish for no peace but an 
 honorable peace." 
 
8 
 
 with England it would be at least bold, though parricidal. 
 The heart sickens at the murderous attack upon an enemy, 
 distracted by civil feuds, weak at home, impotent abroad ; but 
 it recoils in horror from the deadly shock between children 
 of a common ancestry, speaking the same language, soothed 
 in infancy by the same words of love and tenderness, and 
 hardened into vigorous manhood under the bracing influence 
 of institutions drawn from the same ancient founts of freedom. 
 Curam acuebat, quod adversus Latinos bellandum erat, 
 lingua moribus, armorum genere, institutis ante omnia 
 militaribus congrucntes ; milites militibus, centurionibus 
 centurioneSj tribuni tribunis compares, collegxque, iisdem 
 pzersidis, ssepe iisdem manipulis permixti fuerant.* 
 
 IN OUK AGE THERE CAN BE NO PEACE THAT IS NOT HON 
 ORABLE ; THERE CAN BE NO WAR THAT IS NOT DISHONOR 
 ABLE.! The true honor of a nation is to be found only in 
 deeds of justice and in the happiness of its people, all of 
 which are inconsistent with war. In the clear eye of Chris 
 tian judgment vain are its victories ; infamous are its spoils. 
 He is the true benefactor and alone worthy of honor who 
 brings comfort where before was wretchedness ; who dries 
 the tear of sorrow ; who pours oil into the wounds of the 
 unfortunate ; who feeds the hungry and clothes the naked ; 
 who unlooses the fetters of the slave ; who does justice ; who 
 enlightens the ignorant; who enlivens and exalts, by his 
 virtuous genius, in art, in literature, in science, the hours of 
 life ; who, by words or actions, inspires a love for God and 
 for man. This is the Christian hero ; this is the man of 
 honor in a Christian land. He is no benefactor, nor deserv 
 ing of honor, whatever may be his worldly renown, whose 
 life is passed in acts of force ; who renounces the great law 
 of Christian brotherhood ; whose vocation is blood ; who 
 triumphs in battle over his fellow-men. Well may old Sir 
 Thomas Browne exclaim, " the world does not know its 
 
 *T. Liv. VIII, c. 6. 
 
 t It will be observed that this proposition is restrained to our age. It is not 
 intended to express any opinion with regard to the Past, and, particularly, with 
 regard to the War of the Revolution. Wars are the natural consequence of the 
 predominance of the animal part of our nature ; but the day has now arrived in 
 which we should declare Independence of the bestial propensities, and recognize 
 the supremacy of the moral and intellectual faculties. The question of the justi- 
 fiableness of the War of the Revolution has been handled with great strength and 
 freedom by Hon. William Jay, in his admirable publication, Peace and War; in 
 a sermon by Rev. Mr. Judd, and by the late Mr. Grimke, of South Carolina, in 
 his address before the Connecticut Peace Society. For some considerations 
 bearing on this question, and another occurring in these pages, I beg leave to 
 refer to a letter printed in the Appendix, Note A. 
 
o-reatest men ;" for thus far it has chiefly discerned the violent 
 brood of battle, the armed men springing up from the dragon s 
 teeth sown by Hate, and cared little for the truly good men, 
 children of Love, Cromwells guiltless of their country s blood, 
 whose steps on earth have been as noiseless as an angel s 
 
 win * 
 
 Itas not to be disguised that these views differ from the 
 generally received opinions of the world down to this day. 
 The voice of man has been given mostly to the praise of mili 
 tary chieftains, and the honors of victory have been chanted 
 even by the lips of woman. The mother, while rocking her 
 infant on her knees, has stamped on his tender mind, at that 
 age more impressible than wax, the images of war; she 
 has nursed his slumbers with its melodies; she has pleased 
 his waking hours with its stories ; and selected for his play 
 things the plume and the sword. The child is father to the 
 man ; and who can weigh the influence of these early im 
 pressions on the opinions of later years ? The mind which 
 trains the child is like the hand which commands the end of 
 a long lever; a gentle effort at that time suffices to heave the 
 enormous weight of succeeding years. As the boy advances 
 to youth he is fed, like Achilles, not only on honey and milk, 
 but on bear s flesh and lion s marrow. He draws the nutri 
 ment of his soul from a literature, whose beautiful fields have 
 been moistened by human blood. Fain would I offer my 
 tribute to the Father of Poetry, standing, with harp of im 
 mortal melody, on the misty mountain top of distant anti 
 quity; to all those stories of courage and sacrifice which 
 emblazon the annals of Greece and Rome ; to the fulmina- 
 tions of Demosthenes and the splendors of Tully ; to the sweet 
 verse of Virgil and the poetic prose of Livy. Fain would I 
 offer my tribute to the new literature, which shot up in modem 
 times as a vigorous forest from the burnt site of ancient 
 woods ; to the passionate song of the Troubadour of France, 
 and the Minnesinger of Germany ; to the thrilling ballads of 
 Spain, and the delicate music of the Italian lyre. But from 
 all these has breathed the breath of war, that has swept the 
 heart-strings of innumerable generations of men ! 
 
 And when the youth becomes a man, his country invites 
 his services in war, and holds before his bewildered imagina 
 tion the highest prizes of honor. For him is the pen of the 
 historian and the verse of the poet. His soul swells at the 
 thought, that he also is a soldier ; that his name shall be en 
 tered on the list of those who have borne arms in the cause of 
 
10 
 
 their country; and, perhaps, he dreams, that he too may 
 sleep, like the Great Captain of Spain, with a hundred trophies 
 over his grave. But the contagion spreads among us, beyond 
 those bands on whom is imposed the positive obligation of 
 law. Respectable citizens volunteer to look like soldiers, and 
 to affect in dress, in arms and deportment, what is called " the 
 pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war." The ear- 
 piercing fife has to-day filled our streets, and we have come 
 together, on this Anniversary, by the thump of drum and the 
 sound of martial music. 
 
 It is not strange, then, that the spirit of war still finds a 
 home among us : nor that its honors are still regarded. This 
 fact may seem to give point to the bitter philosophy of 
 Hobbes, who held that the natural state of mankind was 
 war, and to sustain the exulting language of the soldier in 
 our own day, who has said : " War is the condition of this 
 world. From man to the smallest insect, all are at strife; and 
 the glory of arms, which cannot be obtained without the ex 
 ercise of honor, fortitude, courage, obedience, modesty and 
 temperance, excites the brave man s patriotism, and is a 
 chastening correction of the rich man s pride."* 
 
 I now ask what is war ? Let me give a short but strictly 
 scientific answer. War is a public, armed, contest, between 
 nations, in order* to establish JUSTICE between them ; as, for 
 instance, to determine a disputed boundary line, or the title 
 to a territory. It has been called by Lord Bacon " one of the 
 highest trials of right, when princes and states, that ac 
 knowledge no superior upon earth, shall put themselves upon 
 the justice of God for the deciding of their controversies by 
 such success as it shall please him to give on either side."t 
 
 * Napier Penins. War. VI. 688. "Why, man," said a British General, " do 
 you know that a grenadier is the greatest character in this world," and after a 
 moment s pause, adding the emphasis of an oath to his speech, " and, I believe, 
 in the next too." Southey s Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of So 
 ciety, 1.211. 
 
 t Bacon s Works, Vol. III. p. 40. This definition of Lord Bacon has been 
 adopted by Mr. Chancellor Kent in his authoritative work. Kent, Commenta 
 ries on American Law, Vol. I. p. 46. Valtel defines war as "that state in which 
 we prosecute our rights by /orce." Law of Nations, Book 3, ch. 1. 1; in 
 which he very nearly follows Bynkershoek, who says; Bellum est eorum, qui 
 suae potestatis sunt, juris sui perscquendi ergo, concertatio per vim del dolum. 
 Quaeest. Jur. Pub. Lib. I. c. 6. Mr. Whewell, in his recent work, says; Though 
 war is appealed to because there is no other ultimate tribunal to which States 
 can have recourse, it is appealed to for justice. Elements of Morality and 
 Polity, Vol. II. 1146. Mr. Lieber says, in a work abounding in learning and 
 sagacious thought, Political Ethics, II. 643, that war is a mode of obtaining 
 rights; a definition which does not differ in substance from that in the text; 
 though he imagines that such wars may justly be regarded as defensive in their 
 
11 
 
 This definition may seem, at first view, to exclude what 
 are termed by " martial logic," defensive wars. But a close 
 consideration of the subject will make it apparent that no 
 war can arise among Christian nations, at the present day, 
 except to determine an asserted right. The wars usually 
 and falsely called defensive are of this character. They are 
 appeals for justice to force ; endeavours to redress evils by 
 force. They spring from the sentiment of vengeance or 
 honor. They inflict evil for evil, and vainly essay to over 
 come evil by evil. The wars that now lower from Mexico 
 and England are of this character. On the one side, we 
 assert a title to Texas, which is disputed ; and on the other 
 a title to Oregon, which is disputed. Who can regard the 
 ordeal by battle in these causes as a defensive war ? The 
 object proposed in 1R34 by war with France, was to secure 
 the payment of five millions of dollars, in other words, to 
 determine, by the arbitrament of war, a question of justice. 
 It would be madness to term this a case of self-defence ; it 
 has been happily said,* if, because a man refuses to pay a 
 just debt, I go to his house and beat him, that is not self- 
 defence ; but such was precisely the conduct proposed to be 
 adopted by our country. The avowed purpose of the war, 
 declared by the United States against Great Britain in 1812, 
 was to obtain from the latter power an abandonment of her 
 unrighteous claim to search American vessels. It is a mock 
 ery to miscall such a contest a defensive war. 
 
 I repeat, therefore, that war is a public armed contest, be 
 tween nations, in order to establish justice between them. 
 
 When we have considered the character of war ; the mis 
 eries it produces ; and its utter and shameful insufficiency, as 
 a means of establishing justice, we may then be able to de 
 termine, strictly and logically, whether it must not be ranked 
 with crimes from which no true honor can spring, to indi 
 viduals or nations, but rather condemnation and shame. 
 
 I. And first as to the character of war, or that part of our 
 nature in which it has its origin. Listen to the voice of the 
 ancient poet of Boeotian Ascra : 
 
 character. He advocates war with the ardor of one inspired by the history of 
 the past, and looking no higher than to history for rules of conduct, while his 
 own experience of suffering on fields of slaughter has failed to make him discern 
 the folly and wickedness of such a mode of determining questions between 
 nations. 
 
 * Rev. Andrew P. Peabody, in his Address on the Nature and Influence of War, 
 where he treats this topic, as well as the whole subject of war, with great point 
 and effect. 
 
12 
 
 This is the law for mortals ordained by the Ruler of Heaven ; 
 Fishes and Beasts and Birds of the air devour each other; 
 JUSTICE dwells not among them ; only to MAN has he given 
 JUSTICE the Highest and Best.* 
 
 The first idea that rises to the mind, in regarding war, is 
 that it is a resort to force, whereby each nation strives to 
 overpower the other. Reason, and the divine part of our 
 nature, in which alone we differ from the beasts, in which 
 alone we approach the Divinity, in which alone are the ele 
 ments of justice, the professed object of war, a/e dethroned. 
 It is, in short, a temporary adoption, by men, of the character 
 of wild beasts, emulating their ferocity, rejoicing like them in 
 blood, and seeking, as with a lion s paw, to hold an asserted 
 right. This character of war is somewhat disguised, in more 
 recent days, by the skill and knowledge which it employs ; 
 it is, however, still the same, made more destructive by the 
 genius and intellect which have been degraded to its servants. 
 The early poets, in the unconscious simplicity of the world s 
 childhood, make this strikingly apparent. All the heroes of 
 Horner are likened in their rage to the ungovernable fury of 
 animals or things devoid of human reason or human affec 
 tion. Menelaus presses his way through the crowd, " like a 
 beast."t Sarpedon was aroused against the Argives, "as 
 a lion against the crooked-horned oxen ;"J and afterwards 
 rushes forward " like a lion nourished on the mountains for 
 a long time famished for want of flesh, but whose courage 
 compels him to go even to the well-guarded sheep-fold." 
 The great Telamonian Ajax in one and the same passage is 
 likened to " a beast," " a tawny lion" and " an obstinate 
 ass;"|| and all the Greek chiefs, the flower of the camp, 
 are described as ranged about Diomed, " like raw-eating lions 
 or wild boars whose strength is irresistible."1F And Hector, 
 the hero in whom cluster the highest virtues of polished war, 
 is called by the characteristic term, " the tamer of horses," 
 and one of his renowned feats in battle, indicating only brute 
 strength, is where he takes up and hurls a stone which two 
 of the strongest men could not easily put into a wagon ;** 
 and he drives over dead bodies and shields, while the axle is 
 defiled by gore, and the guard about the seat, sprinkled from 
 
 *IIesiod, Works and Days, v. 276279. Cicero also says; Neque ulla re 
 longius absumus a natura ferarum, in quibus inesse fortitudinem sacpe dicimus ut 
 
 in equis, in leonibus ; justitiam, aequitatem, bonitatem non dicimus. De Offic 
 
 Lib. 1 cap. 16. 
 
 t rgi (?otxu>?. II. III. 449. J Aw0 wj povalv e Jufii;. II. XII. 293. 
 
 j II. XII. 300306. || II. XL 546558. IT II. V. 782 
 
 **I1. XII. 415 449. Sae a similar act, ^Eneid XII. 826. 
 
13 
 
 the horse s hoofs and from the tires of the wheels ;* and, 
 in that most admired passage of ancient literature, before 
 returning his child-, the young Astyanax, to the arms of his 
 wife, he invokes the gods for a single blessing on his head, 
 that " he may excel his father, and bring home bloody 
 spoils, his enemy being slain, and so make glad the heart of 
 his mother. ^ 
 
 Illustrations of this nature might be gathered from the early 
 fields of modem literature, as well as from the more ancient, 
 all showing the unconscious degradation of the soldier, who, 
 in the pursuit M justice, renounces the human character to 
 assume that oHhe beasts. Henry V, in our own Shakspeare, 
 in the spirit-stirring appeal to his troops, says : 
 
 When the blast of war blows in our ears, 
 Then imitate the action of the tiger. \ 
 
 This is plain and frank, and reveals the true character of war. 
 I need not dwell on the moral debasement of man that 
 must ensue. All the passions of his nature are unleashed 
 like so many blood-hounds, and suffered to rage. All the 
 crimes which fill our prisons stalk abroad, plaited with the 
 soldier s garb, and unwhipt of justice. Murder, robbery, 
 rape, arson, theft, are the sports of this fiendish Saturnalia, 
 when 
 
 The gates of mercy shall be all shut up " 
 And the fleshed soldier, rough and hard of heart, 
 In the liberty of bloody hand shall range 
 With conscience wide as hell. 
 
 Such is the foul disfigurement which war produces in man > 
 man, of whom it has been said, "how noble in reason, how 
 infinite in faculties ! in form and moving, how express and 
 admirable ! in action, how like an angel ! in apprehension 
 how like a God !" 
 
 II. Let us now consider more particularly the effects or 
 consequences of this resort to brute force, in the pursuit of 
 justice. 
 
 The immediate effect of war is to sever all relations of 
 friendship and commerce between the two nations and every 
 
 *I1. XI. 534. See a similar scene, /Eneid XII. 337. In modern warfare, we 
 find a similar sketch of the great Conde. The soul is startled by the picture of 
 a distinguished person, in whom the human character has been blotted out; * Le 
 Due etait couvert de sueur, de poussiere, et de fumee ; le feu jaillissait de ses 
 yeux, et le bras dont it tenait son epee etait ensanglante jusqu ">au coude. * Vous 
 etes blesse, Monseigneur ? Lui demanda Bussaq. Non, non, repondit Enghien 
 [Conde] ; Vest le sang de ces coquins / 17 voulait parler dcs ennemis." Mahon, 
 Essai sur la vie du Grand Conde, p. 60. 
 
 t II. VI. 476481. t Hen. V. Act 3, Scene 1. 
 
14 
 
 individual thereof, impressing upon each citizen or subject the 
 character of enemy. Imagine this between England and 
 the United States. The innumerable ships of the two coun 
 tries, the white doves of commerce, bearing the olive of 
 peace, would be driven from the sea, or turned from their 
 proper purposes to be ministers of destruction ; the threads 
 of social and business intercourse which have become woven 
 into a thick web would be suddenly snapped asunder ; friend 
 could no longer communicate with friend ; the twenty thou 
 sand letters, which each fortnight are speeded, from this port 
 alone, across the sea, could no longer be sent^nd the human 
 affections and desires, of which these are ft precious ex 
 pression, would seek in vain for utterance. Tell me, you, 
 who have friends and kindred abroad, or who are bound to 
 foreigners by the more worldly relations of commerce, are 
 you prepared for this rude separation ? 
 
 But this is little compared with what must follow. This 
 is only the first portentous shadow of the disastrous eclipse, 
 the twilight usher of thick darkness, that is to cover the 
 whole heavens, as with a pall, to be broken only by the 
 blazing lightnings of the battle and the siege. 
 
 The horrors of these redden every page of history ; while, 
 to the disgrace of humanity, the historian has rarely applied 
 to their brutal authors the condemnation they deserve. A 
 popular writer, in our own day, dazzled by those false ideas 
 of greatness at which reason and Christianity blush, does not 
 hesitate to dwell on them with terms of rapture and eulogy.* 
 
 *The same spirit pervades the Histoire de la Revolution Francaise, by Thiers, 
 and so far as I have read it, his later work, the History of the Consulate and 
 Empire. For a degrading picture of what is called glory, I would refer to the 
 Histoire de la Revolution, Tom, 8, p. 430. War in every age has been the same 
 and to the shame of human nature has never wanted historians, who described 
 its deeds with feelings kindred to those by which they were inspired. Frois- 
 sart, who takes special delight in describing " les rencontres ou 1 on pouvoit 
 voir d une et d autre part, belles envahies, belles rescousses, beaux faits d armes, 
 et belles prouesses," has recounted with much detail all the assaults of cities 
 and castles, the almost constant result of which was, " que la ville etoit assez 
 tot gagnee par force ct tantot robee et mise H 1 epee, sans mercy, hommes et 
 femmes et enfans, et less eglises arses et bruslees." Lewis of Spain transported 
 his troops to Basse-Bretannque, "pour aller ardoir et rober tout le pays et 
 trouverent si grand avoir que merveille seroit H raconter." Gaultier de Maury 
 pursued them ; but he occupied himself H maisons et villes ardoir, et a gaffner 
 du butm." Froissart, c. 178, p. 88. Sismondi has correctly remarked that Frois 
 sart accorded his admiration equally to bravery and to cunning, to the courtesy 
 which pardoned as to the rage which caused the flow of torrents of blood. Sis 
 mondi, Histoire des Francais, Tom. X. 373. Even the beautiful soul of Wilber- 
 force, which sighed that "the bloody laws of his country sent many unprepared 
 into another world, by capital punishment, could hail the slaughter of Waterloo, 
 on the babbath that he held so holy, by which thousands were hurried into Eter 
 nity, as " a splendid victory !" Life of Wilberforce, IV. 256, 261. 
 
15 
 
 At Tarragona, above six thousand human beings, almost all 
 defenceless, men and women, grey hairs and infant inno 
 cence, attractive youth and wrinkled age, were butchered by 
 the infuriated troops in one night, and the morning sun rose 
 upon a city whose streets and houses were inundated with 
 blood. And yet this is called " a glorious exploit."* This 
 was a conquest by the French. At a later day Ciudad Rod- 
 rigo was stormed by the British, when there ensued in the 
 license of victory, a frightful scene of plunder and violence, 
 while shouts and screams on all sides fearfully intermingled 
 with the groans of the wounded. The churches were dese 
 crated, the cellars of wine and spirits were pillaged ; fire was 
 wantonly applied to different parts of the city; and brutal 
 intoxication spread in every direction. It was only when the 
 drunken men dropped from excess, or fell asleep, that any 
 degree of order was restored, and yet the storming of Ciudad 
 Rodrigo is pronounced " one of the most brilliant exploits of 
 the British army."t This exploit was followed by the storm 
 ing of Badajoz, in which the same scenes were enacted again 
 with added atrocities. Let the story be told in the words of 
 a partial historian ; " Shameless rapacity, brutal intemper 
 ance, savage lust, cruelty and murder, shrieks and piteous 
 lamentations, groans, shouts, imprecations, the hissing of fire 
 bursting from the houses, the crashing of doors and windows, 
 and the report of muskets used in violence, resounded for two 
 days and nights in the streets of Badajoz ! On the third 
 when the city was sacked, when the soldiers were exhausted 
 by their excesses, the tumult rather subsided than was quelled ! 
 The wounded were then looked to, the dead disposed of.":j: 
 
 The same terrible war affords another instance of the hor 
 rors of a siege, which cries to Heaven for judgment. For 
 weeks before the surrender of Saragossa, the deaths were 
 from four to five hundred daily ; the living were unable to 
 bury the dead, and thousands of carcasses, scattered about 
 the streets and court-yards, or piled in heaps at the doors of 
 churches, were left to dissolve in their own corruption or to 
 be licked up by the flames of the burning houses. The city 
 was shaken to its foundation by sixteen thousand shells 
 thrown during the bombardment, and the explosion of forty- 
 five thousand pounds of powder in the mines, while the bones 
 
 * Alison, Hist, of French Rev. VIII. 114. t Alison, Hist. VIII. 189. 
 
 t Napier, History of Penins. War, IV. 431. 
 
16 
 
 of forty thousand persons of every age and both sexes bore 
 dreadful testimony to the unutterable atrocity of war.* 
 
 These might be supposed to be pictures from the age of 
 Alaric, Scourge of God, or of Attila, whose boast was, that 
 the grass did not grow where his horse had set his foot ; but 
 no ; they belong to our own times. They are portions of 
 the wonderful but wicked career of him, who stands out as 
 the foremost representative of worldly grandeur. The heart 
 aches, as we follow him and his marshals from field to 
 field of glory.t At Albuera in Spain, we see the horrid 
 piles of carcasses, while all the night the rain pours down, 
 and the river and the hills and the woods on each side, re 
 sound with the dismal clamors and groans of dying men.J 
 At Salamanca, long after the battle, we behold the ground 
 still blanched by the skeletons of those who fell, and strewn 
 with the fragments of casques and cuirasses. We follow in 
 the dismal traces of his Russian campaign ; at Valentina 
 we see the soldiers black with powder, their bayonets bent 
 with the violence of the encounter ; the earth ploughed with 
 cannon shot, the trees torn and mutilated, the field covered 
 with broken carriages, wounded horses and mangled bodies, 
 while disease, sad attendant on military suffering, sweeps 
 thousands from the great hospitals of the army, and the mul 
 titude of amputated limbs, which there is riot time to destroy, 
 accumulate in bloody heaps, filling the air with corruption. || 
 What tongue, what pen, can describe the horrors of the 
 field of Borodino, where between the rise and set of a single 
 sun, more than one hundred thousand of our fellow-men, 
 equalling in number the population of this whole city, sank 
 to the earth dead or wounded ? Fifty days after the battle, 
 no less than twenty thousand are found lying where they 
 
 * Napier, Hist, of Pen. War, II. 46. For the terrific storming of St. Sebastian. 
 see Napier, VI. 197219. 
 
 "f A living poet of It;ily, who will be placed by his prose, among the great names 
 of his country s literature, in a deathless ode, which he has thrown on the Urn of 
 Napoleon, leaves to posterity to judge, whether his was true glory. 
 
 Ball Alpi alle Piramidi, 
 Dal Manzanare al Reno 
 Di quel securo il fulmine, 
 Tenea dietro il baleno, 
 Scoppio da Scilla al Tanai 
 Dall uno all altro mar. 
 Fa vera gloria ? Ai posteri 
 
 L> ardua sentcnza. Manzoni, II Cinque Maggio. 
 
 When men learn to appreciate moral grandeur the easy sentence will be rendered, 
 and the glory of the warrior will be scattered like the unclean dust of his earthly 
 body. 
 
 I Napier, III. 543 $ Alison, VII. 241 . || Alison, VII. 355. 
 
17 
 
 have fallen, and the whole plain is strewn with half-buried 
 carcasses of men and horses, intermingled with garments 
 dyed in blood, and bones gnawed by dogs and vultures. 
 Who can follow the French army, in their dismal retreat, 
 avoiding the pursuing spear of the Cossack, only to sink 
 under the sharper frost and ice, in a temperature below zero, 
 on foot, without a shelter for their bodies, and famishing on 
 horse-flesh and a miserable compound of rye and snow-water ? 
 Still later we behold him with a fresh array, contending 
 against new forces under the walls of Dresden ; and as the 
 Emperor rides over the field of battle, having supped with 
 the king of Saxony the night before, ghastly traces of the 
 contest of the preceding day are to be seen on all sides ; out 
 of the newly made graves hands and arms are projecting, 
 stark and stiff above the earth.* And shortly afterwards 
 when shelter is needed for the troops, direction is given to 
 occupy the Hospitals for the Insane, with the order " turn out 
 the mad."t 
 
 But why follow further in this career of blood ? There is, 
 however, one other picture of the atrocious, though natural 
 consequences of war, occurring almost within our own day, 
 that I would not omit. Let me bring to your mind Genoa, 
 called the Suburb, City of palaces, dear to the memory of 
 American childhood as the birthplace of Christopher Colum 
 bus, and one of the spots first enlightened by the morning 
 beams of civilization, whose merchants were princes, and 
 whose rich argosies, in those early days, introduced to Europe, 
 the choicest products of the East, the linen of Egypt, the 
 spices of Arabia, and the silks of Samarcand. She still sits in 
 Queenly pride, as she did then, her mural crown studded with 
 towers, her churches rich with marble floors and rarest pic 
 tures, her palaces of ancient Doges and Admirals yet spared 
 by the hand of Time, her close streets, thronged by one hun 
 dred thousand inhabitants, at the feet of the maritime Alps, as 
 they descend to the blue and tideless waters of the Mediter 
 ranean sea, leaning with her back against their strong moun 
 tain sides, overshadowed by the foliage of the fig-tree and the 
 olive, while the orange and lemon fill with their perfume the 
 air where reigns perpetual spring. Who can contemplate 
 such a city without delight ? Who can listen to the story of 
 her sorrows without a pang ? 
 
 In the autumn of 1799, the armies of the French Republic, 
 
 * Alison, IX. 226. t Alison, IX. 267. 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 which had dominated over Italy, were driven from their con 
 quests, and compelled with shrunk forces, under Massena, to 
 seek shelter within the walls of Genoa. After various efforts 
 by the Austrian General on the land, aided by a bombard 
 ment from the British fleet in the harbor, to force the strong 
 defences by assault, the city is invested by a strict blockade. 
 All communication with the country is cut off on the one side, 
 while the harbor is closed by the ever-wakeful British watch 
 dogs of war. Within the beleaguered and unfortunate city, 
 are the peaceful inhabitants, more than those of Boston in 
 number, besides the French troops. Provisions soon become 
 scarce ; scarcity sharpens into want, till fell Famine, bringing 
 blindness and madness in her train, rages like an Erinnys. 
 Picture to yourself this large population, not pouring out their 
 lives in the exulting rush of battle, but wasting at noon-day, 
 the daughter by the side of the mother, the husband by the 
 side of the wife. When grain and rice fail, flax-seed, millet, 
 cocoas and almonds are ground by hand-mills into flour, and 
 even bran, baked with honey, is eaten, not to satisfy, but to 
 deaden hunger. During the siege, but before the last ex 
 tremities, a pound of horse-flesh is sold for 32 cents ; a. pound 
 of bran for 30 cents; a pound of flour for $1,75. A single 
 bean is soon sold for four cents, and a biscuit of three ounces 
 for $2,25, and none are finally to be had. The miserable 
 soldiers, after devouring all the horses in the city, are reduced 
 to the degradation of feeding on dogs, cats, rats and worms, 
 which are eagerly hunted out in the cellars and common 
 sewers. Happy were now, exclaims an Italian historian, not 
 those who lived, but those who died ! The day is dreary 
 from hunger; the night more dreary still from hunger ac 
 companied by delirious fancies. Recourse is now had to 
 herbs ; monk s rhubarb, sorrel, mallows, wild succory. People 
 of every condition, women of noble birth and beauty, seek 
 on the slope of the mountain enclosed within the defences, 
 those aliments which nature destined solely for the beasts. 
 A little cheese and a few vegetables are all that can be af 
 forded to the sick and wounded, those sacred stipendiaries 
 upon human charity. Men and women, in the last anguish 
 of despair, now fill the air with their groans and shrieks ; 
 some in spasms, convulsions and contortions, gasping their 
 last breath on the unpitying stones of the streets ; alas ! not 
 more unpitying than man. Children, whom a dying mother s 
 arms had ceased to protect, the orphans of an hour, with 
 piercing cries, seek in vain the compassion of the passing 
 
19 
 
 stranger ; but none pity or aid them. The sweet fountains of 
 sympathy are all closed by the selfishness of individual dis 
 tress. In the general agony, the more impetuous rush out 
 of the gates, and impale themselves on the Austrian bayonets, 
 while others precipitate themselves into the sea. Others still 
 (pardon the dire recital !) are driven to eat their shoes and 
 devour the leather of their pouches, and the horror of human 
 flesh has so far abated that numbers feed like cannibals, on 
 the bodies of the dead.* 
 
 At this stage the French general capitulated, claiming and 
 receiving what are called " the honors of war ;" but not 
 before twenty thousand innocent persons, old and young, 
 women and children, having no part or interest in the war, 
 had died the most horrible of deaths. The Austrian flag 
 floated over the captured Genoa but a brief span of time ; for 
 Bonaparte had already descended, like an eagle, from the 
 Alps, and in less than a fortnight afterwards, on the vast 
 plains of Marengo, shattered, as with an iron mace, the 
 Austrian empire in Italy. 
 
 But wasted lands, ruined and famished cities, and slaught 
 ered armies are only a part of " the purple testament of bleed 
 ing war." Every soldier is connected, as all of you, by dear 
 ties of kindred, love and friendship. He has been sternly 
 summoned from the warm embraces of family. To him there 
 is, perhaps, an aged mother, who has fondly hoped to lean 
 her decaying frame upon his more youthful form ; perhaps a 
 
 * This picture has been drawn from the animated sketches of Botta (History 
 of Italy, under Napoleon, vol. I. chap. I.) Alison, (Hist, of French Rev. vol. IV. 
 chap. XXX.) and Arnold, (Modern History, Lee. IV.) The humanity of the latter 
 is particularly aroused to the condemnation of this most atrocious murder of 
 innocent people, and he suggests, as a sufficient remedy, a modification of the 
 laws of war, permitting all non-combatants to withdraw from a blockaded town ! 
 They may be spared in this way the languishing death by starvation ; but they 
 must desert their firesides, their pursuits, all that makes life dear, and become 
 homeless exiles; a fate little better than the former. It is strange that Arnold s 
 pure soul and clear judgment did not recognize the great truth, that all war is 
 unrighteous and unlawful, and that the horrors of this siege are its natural conse 
 quence. Laws of war ! Laws in that which is lawless ! order in disorder ! rules 
 of wrong ! There can be only one law of war ; that is the great law, which pro 
 nounces it unwise, unchristian and unjust. The term, Laws, or Rights of War, 
 has been referred to the ancient Greeks; but, it is believed, that they are not 
 chargeable with the invention of such a contradictory combination of words. 
 Grotms was misled, and it would seem after him, Sir James Mackintosh (Lecture 
 on the Law of Nature and Nations) into the belief that Aristotle wrote a treatise 
 AiaccuwjiiaT a rtoXf|iic<>i/, by a corrupted passage of Ammonius, the Grammarian, in 
 his Treatise, of like and different words, where there is Tto/uwcov JVars, instead of 
 rtoXtcov States. See Barbeyrac s note to $ 38 of the Preliminary Discourses of Gro- 
 tius on the Rights of Peace and War ; Selden, Of the Law of Nature and Nations, 
 juxta Discipl. Hebr. Lib. chap. 1, p. 4. 
 
20 
 
 wife, whose life has been just entwined inseparably with his, 
 now condemned to wasting despair ; perhaps brothers, sisters. 
 As he falls on the field of battle, must not all these rush with 
 his blood ? But who can measure the distress that radiates 
 as from a bloody sun, penetrating innumerable homes ? Who 
 can give the gauge and dimensions of this incalculable 
 sorrow ? Tell me, ye who have felt the bitterness of parting 
 with dear friends and kindred, whom you have watched 
 tenderly till the last golden sands have run out, and the great 
 hour-glass is turned, what is the measure of your anguish ? 
 Your friend has departed, soothed by kindness arid in the 
 arms of love ; the soldier gasps out his life, with no friend 
 near, while the scowl of hate darkens all that he beholds, 
 darkens his own departing soul. Who can forget the anguish 
 that fills the bosom and crazes the brain of Leonora, in the 
 matchless ballad of Burger, who seeks in vain among the 
 returning squadrons for her lover left dead on Prague s 
 ensanguined plain ? But every field of blood has many Leo 
 noras. From a poet of antiquity, we draw a vivid picture of 
 homes made desolate by the murders of battle.* 
 
 But through the bounds of Grecia s land, 
 
 Who sent her sons for Troy to part, 
 
 See mourning, with much suffering heart, 
 
 On each man s threshold stand, 
 
 On each sad hearth in Grecia s land. 
 
 Well may her soul with grief be rent ; 
 
 She well remembers whom she sent, 
 
 She sees them not return ; 
 
 Instead of men to each man s home, 
 
 Urns and ashes only come, 
 
 And the armour which they wore; 
 
 Sad relics to their native shore. 
 
 For Mars, the barterer of the lifeless clay, 
 
 Who sells for gold the slain, 
 
 And holds the scale in battle s doubtful day, 
 
 High balanced o er the plain, 
 
 From Ilium s walls for men returns 
 
 Ashes and sepulchral urns ; 
 
 Ashes wet with many a tear, 
 
 Sad relics of the fiery bier. 
 
 Round the full urns the general groan 
 
 Goes, as each their kindred own. 
 
 One they mourn in battle strong, 
 
 And one, that mid the armed throng 
 
 He sunk in glory s slaughtering tide, 
 
 And for another s consort died. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Others they mourn whose monuments stand 
 By Ilium s walls on foreign strand ; 
 Where they fell in beauty s bloom, 
 There they lie in hated tomb ; 
 Sunk beneath the massy mound. 
 In eternal chambers bound. 
 
 * Agamemnon of ^schylus ; Chorus. This is from the beautiful translation of 
 John bymmons. 
 
21 
 
 III. From this dreary picture of the miseries of war, I turn 
 to another branch of the subject. 
 
 War is utterly ineffectual to secure or advance the object at 
 which it aims. The misery which it excites, contributes to 
 no end, helps to establish no right, and therefore, in no re 
 spect determines justice between the contending nations. 
 
 The fruitlessness and vanity of war appear in the results 
 of the great wars by which the world has been lacerated. 
 After long struggles, in which each nation has inflicted and 
 received incalculable injury, peace has been gladly obtained 
 on the basis of the condition of things before the war. 
 Status ante Bellum. Let me refer for an example to our 
 last war with Great Britain, the professed object of which 
 was to obtain from the latter Power a renunciation of her 
 claim to impress our seamen. The greatest number of 
 American seamen ever officially alleged to be compulsorily 
 serving in the British navy was about eight hundred. To 
 overturn this injustice, the whole country was doomed, for 
 more than three years, to the accursed blight of war. Our 
 commerce was driven from the seas ; the resources of the 
 land were drained by taxation ; villages on the Canadian 
 frontier were laid in ashes ; the metropolis of the Republic 
 was captured, while gaunt distress raged every where within 
 our borders. Weary with this rude trial, our Government 
 appointed Commissioners to treat for Peace, under these in 
 structions : " Your first duty will be to conclude peace with 
 Great Britain, and you are authorized to do it, in case you 
 obtain a satisfactory stipulation against impressment, one 
 which shall secure under our flag protection to the crew. If 
 this encroachment of Great Britain is not provided against, 
 the United States have appealed to arms in vain."* After 
 wards, despairing of extorting from Great Britain a relin- 
 quishment of the unrighteous claim, and foreseeing only an 
 accumulation of calamities from an inveterate prosecution of 
 the war, our Government directed their negotiators, in con 
 cluding a treaty of Peace, " to omit any stipulation on the 
 subject of impressment" The instructions were obeyed, and 
 the Treaty that once more restored to us the blessings of 
 Peace, which we had rashly cast away, and which the coun 
 try hailed with an intoxication of joy, contained no allusion 
 to the subject of impressment, nor did it provide for the sur 
 render of a single American sailor detained in the service 
 
 * American State Papers, vol. VII. p. 577. 
 
22 
 
 of the British navy, and thus, by the confession of our own 
 Government, " the United States had appealed to arms IN 
 
 VAIN."* 
 
 All this is the natural result of an appeal to war in order to 
 establish justice. Justice implies the exercise of the judg 
 ment in the determination of right. Now war not only su 
 persedes the judgment, but delivers over the results to 
 superiority of force, or to chance. 
 
 Who can measure beforehand the currents of the heady 
 fight? In common language we speak of the chances of 
 battle ; and soldiers, whose lives are devoted to this harsh 
 calling, yet speak of it as a game. The Great Captain of 
 our age, who seemed to chain victory to his chariot wheels, 
 in a formal address to his officers, on entering Russia, says : 
 " In war, for tune has an equal share with ability in procuring 
 success."! The mighty victory of Marerigo, the accident of 
 an accident, wrested unexpectedly at the close of the day 
 from a foe, who at an earlier hour was successful, must have 
 taught him the uncertainty of war. Afterwards in the bit 
 terness of his spirit, when his immense forces had been 
 shivered, and his triumphant eagles driven back with broken 
 wing, he exclaimed, in that remarkable conversation recorded 
 by the Abbe de Pradt : " Well ! this is war. High in the 
 morning, low enough at night. From a triumph to a fall is 
 often but a step.":}: The military historian of the Peninsular 
 campaigns, says : " Fortune always asserts her supremacy 
 in war, and often from a slight mistake, such disastrous con 
 sequences flow, that in every age and in every nation, the 
 uncertainty of wars has been proverbial ;" and again, in 
 another place, in considering the conduct of Wellington, he 
 says : A few hours delay, an accident, a turn of fortune, 
 and he would have been foiled ! ay ! but this is war, always 
 dangerous and uncertain, an ever-rolling wheel and armed 
 with scythes." || And can intelligent man look for justice to 
 an ever-rolling wheel armed with scythes ? 
 
 The character of war, as dependent upon chance, might be 
 illustrated from every page of history. It is less discerned, 
 perhaps, in the conflict of large masses, than of individu 
 als, though equally present in both. How capriciously the 
 
 * This sketch has been drawn from the War and Peace, by Hon. William Jay, 
 a gentleman whose various writings in the cause of humanity, marked by rare 
 power of logic, accuracy of statement and elevated sentiment, will shed upon his 
 name a fame not inferior to that of his illustrious father. 
 
 t Alison, VIII. 346. \ Ib., IX. 239. Napier, VI. 687. I! Ib., IV. 477. 
 
wheel turned when the fortunes of Rome were staked on the 
 combat between the Horatii and Curiatii, and who, at one 
 time, could have augured that the single Horatius, with his 
 two slain brothers on the field, would have overpowered the 
 three living enemies ? 
 
 But the most interesting illustration is to be found in the 
 history of the private wars, and particularly of the judicial 
 combat, or of trial by battle, in the dark ages. The object 
 proposed in these cases was precisely the professed object of 
 modern war, the determination of justice. Did time permit, 
 it would be interesting and instructive to trace the curious 
 analogies between this early ordeal by battle, child of super 
 stition and brute force, and the great ordeal of war.* Like 
 the other ordeals, by burning ploughshares, by holding hot 
 iron, by dipping the hand in hot water, or hot oil, they are 
 both a presumptuous appeal to Providence, under an appre 
 hension and hope, that Heaven will give the victory to him 
 who has the right. The monstrous usage of trial by battle 
 prevailed in the early modern centuries throughout Europe ; 
 it was a part of the common law of England ; and though it 
 fell into desuetude, overruled by the advancing spirit of civili 
 zation, still, to the disgrace of the English law, it was not 
 legislatively abolished, until in 1817 the right to it had been 
 distinctly claimed in Westminster Hall. Abraham Thornton, 
 on appeal against him for murder, when brought into court, 
 pleaded as follows : " Not guilty, and I am ready to defend 
 the same by my body ;" and thereupon taking off his glove, 
 he threw it upon the floor of the court. The appellant did 
 not choose to submit to this trial, and abandoned his proceed 
 ings. In the next session of Parliament, trial by battle was 
 abolished in England.! The Attorney General, on introduc 
 ing the bill for this purpose remarked, that, " if the party had 
 persevered he had no doubt the legislature would have felt it 
 their imperious duty to interfere and pass an ex post facto law, 
 to prevent so degrading a spectacle from taking place "\ 
 
 To an early monarch of France belongs the honor of first 
 interposing the royal authority, for the entire suppression 
 within his jurisdiction of this impious usage, so universally 
 adopted, so dear to the nobility, and so profoundly rooted in 
 the institutions of the Feudal Age. And here let me pause 
 with reverence, as I mention the name of St. Louis, a prince, 
 
 * See Appendix, Note B. t Blackstone, Com. III. 337, Chitty s note. 
 
 \ Annual Register, Vol. 61. p. 52 (1819). 
 
24 
 
 whose unenlightened errors may find easy condemnation in 
 our age of larger toleration and wider knowledge, but whose 
 firm and upright soul, whose exalted sense of justice, whose 
 fatherly regard for the happiness of his people, whose respect 
 for the rights of others, whose conscience void of offence 
 before God and man, make him foremost among Christian 
 rulers, the highest example for a Christian prince or a Chris 
 tian people. He was of conscience all-compact, subjecting 
 all that he did to the single and exclusive test of moral recti 
 tude, disregarding all considerations of worldly advantage, all 
 fear of worldly consequences. 
 
 His soul, thus tremblingly sensitive to questions of right, 
 was shocked by the judicial combat. In his sight, it was a 
 sin thus to tempt God, by demanding of him a miracle, when 
 ever judgment was to be pronounced. In 1260 he assembled 
 a parliament, where he issued an ordinance, to take effect 
 throughout the royal dominion, in which he expressly says : 
 " We forbid to all persons throughout our dominions the 
 trial by battle; and, instead of battles, we establish proofs 
 by witnesses ; and we do not take away the other good and 
 loyal proofs which have been used in lay courts to this day. 
 
 * AND THESE BATTLES WE ABOLISH IN OUR 
 
 DOMINIONS FOR EVER."* 
 
 Such were the restraints on the royal authority, that this 
 Ordinance was confined in its operation to the demesnes of 
 the King; and did not extend to those of the barons and 
 feudatories of the realm. But where the power of St. Louis 
 did not reach, there he labored by his example, his influence 
 and his express intercession. He treated with many of the 
 great vassals of the crown, and induced them to renounce 
 this unnatural usage. Though for many years later France 
 continued in some parts to be vexed by it, still its overthrow 
 commenced with the Ordinance of St. Louis. 
 
 Honor and blessings attend the name of this truly Christian 
 King ; who submitted all his actions to the Heaven-descend 
 ed sentiment of duty; who began a long and illustrious 
 reign by renouncing and restoring a portion of the conquests 
 
 * " Nous deffendons a tons les batailles par tout nostre demengne (domaine); mes 
 nous n ostons mie les claims, les respons, les convenants, ne tous autres con- 
 venants que 1 en fait en court laie, siques a ore selon les usages de divers pays, 
 fors que nous ostons les batailles ; et en lieu des batailles nous melons prueves de 
 tesmoms; et si n oston pas les autres bones prueves et loyaux qui out este en 
 court laie siques a ore. < * Et ces batailles nous ostons en mestre demaigne 
 
 tmyovrs." Recueil des Ordonnances, t. I. p. 8693. Guizot, Histoire de la 
 Civilization en France, IV. 162164. 
 
25 
 
 of his predecessor, saying to those about him, whose souls 
 did not ascend to the height of his morality, " I know that 
 the predecessors of the King of England have lost by the 
 right of conquest the land which I hold ; and the land which 
 I give him, I do not give because I am bound to him or his 
 heirs, but to put love between my children and his children, 
 who are cousin-germans ; and it seems to me that what I 
 thus give, I employ to good purpose !"* Honor to him who 
 never grasped by force or cunning any new acquisition; 
 who never sought advantage from the turmoils and dissen 
 sions of his neighbors, but studied to allay them ; who, first 
 of Christian Princes, rebuked the spirit of war, saying to 
 those who would have him profit by the dissensions of his 
 neighbors, " Blessed are the Peace-makers ;"t who abolished 
 trial by battle throughout his dominions ; who aimed to do 
 justice to all his people, and to all neighbors, and in the ex 
 tremity of his last illness, on the sickening sands of Tunis, 
 among the bequests of his spirit, enjoined on his son and suc 
 cessor, " in maintaining justice, to be inflexible and loyal, 
 neither turning to the right hand nor to the left !"J 
 
 The history of the trial by battle will illustrate and bring 
 home to your minds the chances of war, and the consequent 
 folly and wickedness of submitting any question to its arbi 
 trament. As we revert to those early periods in which it 
 prevailed, our minds are impressed by the barbarism which 
 we behold ; we recoil, with horror, from the awful subjection 
 of justice to brute force ; from the impious profanation of the 
 character of God in deeming him present in these outrages ; 
 from the moral degradation out of which they sprang, and 
 which they perpetuated ; we involve ourselves in our self- 
 complacent virtue, and thank God that we are not as these 
 men, that ours is, indeed, an age of light, while theirs was an 
 age of darkness ! 
 
 But are we aware that this monstrous and impious usage, 
 which our enlightened reason so justly condemns in the cases 
 of individuals, is openly avowed by our own country, and by 
 the other countries of the earth, as a proper mode of deter 
 mining justice between them ? Be upon our heads and upon 
 our age the judgment of barbarism, which we pronounce 
 
 *Joinville, Hist.de St. Louis, p. 142 ; Guizot, Histoire de la Civilization en 
 France, Tome IV, 151. 
 
 t Benoist soient tuit li apaiseur, Joinville, pp. 143, 144; Guizot. 
 t Sismondi, Histoire des Fran$. VIII. 196. 
 
26 
 
 upon those that have gone before ! At this moment, in this 
 period of light, when the noon-day sun of civilization seems, 
 to the contented souls of many, to be standing still in the 
 heavens, as upon Gibeon, the relations between nations are 
 governed by the same rules of barbarous, brutal force, which 
 once prevailed between individuals. The dark ages have 
 not passed away ; Erebus and black Night, born of Chaos, 
 still brood over the earth ; nor shall we hail the clear day, 
 until the mighty hearts of the nations shall be touched, as 
 those of children, and the whole earth, individuals and 
 nations alike, shall acknowledge one and the same rule of 
 Right. 
 
 Who has told you, fond man ! to regard that as a glory 
 when performed by a nation, which is condemned as a crime 
 and a barbarism, when committed by an individual ? In what 
 vain conceit of wisdom and virtue do you find this incongru 
 ous morality? Where is it declared, that God, who js no 
 respecter of persons, is a respecter of multitudes ? Whence 
 do you draw these partial laws of a powerful and impartial 
 God ? Man is immortal ; but States are mortal. He has a 
 higher destiny than States. Shall States be less amenable to 
 the great moral laws ? Each individual is an atom of the 
 mass. Must not the mass be like the individuals of which it 
 is composed ? Shall the mass do what individuals may not 
 do ? No. The same moral laws which govern individuals 
 govern masses, as the same laws in nature prevail over large 
 and small, controlling the fall of an apple and the orbits of 
 the planets. It was the beautiful discovery of Newton, that 
 gravity is a universal property of matter, a law obeyed by 
 every particle in reference to every other particle, and con 
 necting the celestial mechanism with terrestrial phenomena. 
 So the Rule of Right, which binds the single individual, 
 binds two or three when gathered together binds conven 
 tions and congregations of men binds villages, towns and 
 cities binds states, nations and empires clasps the whole 
 human family in its seven-fold embrace ; nay more, 
 
 Beyond the flaming bounds of place and time, 
 The living throne, the sapphire blaze, 
 
 it binds the angels of Heaven, the Seraphim, full of love, the 
 Cherubim, full of knowledge : above all, it binds, in self- 
 imposed bonds, a just and omnipotent God. It is of this, and 
 not of any earthly law, that Hooker speaks in that magnifi 
 cent period which sounds like an anthem ; Of law no less 
 
27 
 
 can be said, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice 
 the harmony of the world ; all things in heaven and earth do 
 her homage, the very least as feeling her care, the greatest as 
 not exempted from her power ; both angels and men, and 
 creatures of what condition soever, though each in different 
 sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent admiring her 
 as the mother of their peace and joy." 
 
 We are struck with horror and our hair stands on end, at 
 the report of a single murder ; we think of the soul that has 
 been hurried to its final account ; we seek the murderer ; and 
 the law puts forth all its energies to secure his punishment. 
 Viewed in the clear light of truth, what are war and battle 
 but organized murder ; murder of malice afore-thought ; in 
 cold blood ; through the operation of an extensive machinery 
 of crime ; with innumerable hands ; at incalculable cost of 
 money ; through subtle contrivances of cunning and skill ; 
 or by the savage brutal assault ? Was not the Scythian right, 
 when he said to Alexander, " Thou boastest, that the only 
 design of thy marches is to extirpate robbers ; thou thyself 
 art the greatest robber in the world." Among us one class 
 of sea-robbers is hanged as pirates ; another is hailed with 
 acclamation : 
 
 Ille crucem sceleris pretium tulit, hie diadema.* 
 
 It was amidst the thunders which made Sinai tremble, that 
 God declared ; " Thou shalt not kill ;" and the voice of these 
 thunders, with this commandment, has been prolonged to our 
 own day in the echoes of Christian churches. What mortal 
 shall restrain the application of these words ? Who on earth 
 is empowered to vary or abridge the commandments of God ? 
 Who shall presume to declare, that this injunction was directed, 
 not to nations, but to individuals only ; not to many but to 
 one only; that one man may not kill, but that many may; 
 that it is forbidden to each individual to destroy the life of a 
 single human being, but that it is not forbidden to a nation to 
 cut off by the sword a whole people ? 
 
 When shall the St. Louis of the nations arise ? the Chris 
 tian ruler or Christian people, who shall proclaim to the 
 whole earth, that henceforward for ever the great trial by 
 battle shall cease; that it is the duty and policy of nations to 
 
 * Juvenal, Sat. XIII. 105. The ancient laws of Ina recognize numbers as the 
 only distinction between an army and a band of robbers ; " Fures appellamus 
 societatem septem hominum \ etseptem usque ad XXXV turmam; et deinde esto 
 exercitus." 
 
28 
 
 establish love between each other ; and in all respects, at all 
 times, towards all persons, as well their own people, as the 
 people of other lands, to be governed by the sacred rules of 
 right, as between man and man ! May God speed the com 
 ing of that day ! 
 
 I have already alluded, in the early part of my remarks, to 
 some of the obstacles to be encountered by the advocate of 
 Peace. One of these is the warlike tone of the literature, 
 by which our minds and opinions are formed. The world 
 has supped so full with battles, that all its inner modes of 
 thought, and many of its rules of conduct seem to be incar 
 nadined with blood; as the bones of swine, fed on madder, 
 are said to become red. But I now pass this by, though a 
 most fruitful theme, and hasten to other topics. I propose 
 to consider in succession, very briefly, some of those influ 
 ences and prejudices, which are most powerful in keeping 
 alive the delusion of war. 
 
 1. One of the most important of these is the prejudice to 
 a certain extent in its favor founded on the belief in its ne 
 cessity. The consciences of all good men condemn it as a 
 crime, a sin ; even the soldier, whose profession it is, con 
 fesses that it is to be resorted to only in the last necessity. 
 But a benevolent and omnipotent God cannot render it 
 necessary to commit a crime. When war is called a neces 
 sity, it is meant, of course, that its object cannot be gained 
 in any other way. Now I think that it has already appeared 
 with distinctness, approaching demonstration, that the pro 
 fessed object of war, which is justice between nations, is in 
 no respect promoted by war ; that force is not justice, nor in 
 any way conducive to justice ; that the eagles of victory can 
 be only the emblems of successful force and not of estab 
 lished right.* Justice can be obtained only by the exercise 
 of the reason and judgment; but these are silent in the din 
 of arms. Justice is without passion ; but war lets loose all 
 the worst passions of our nature, while " high arbiter Chance 
 more embroils the fray." The age has passed in which a 
 nation, within the enchanted circle of civilization, will make 
 
 * Le rccours ;l la force, soit par le combat judiciaire, soit par la guerre privee, 
 etait le mode le plus commun de mettre fin aux proces. Mais la force n est pas 
 la justice ; les plus ^grossiers esprits ne les confondent pas long temps. La neces- 
 sited un autre systf;me judiciaire, d un veritable jugement, devint bientot evidente. 
 Guizot, Histoire de la Civilization, Tome IV. 89. 
 
29 
 
 war upon its neighbor, for any professed purpose of booty or 
 vengeance. It does " nought in hate, but all in honor." 
 There are professions even of tenderness which mingle with 
 the first mutterings of the dismal strife. Each of the two 
 governments, as if conscience-struck at the abyss into which 
 it is about to plunge, seeks to fix on the other the charge of 
 hostile aggression, and to assume to itself the ground of de 
 fending some right ; some stolen Texas ; some distant, worth 
 less Oregon. Like Pontius Pilate, it vainly washes its hands 
 of innocent blood, and straightway allows a crime at which 
 the whole heavens are darkened, and two kindred countries 
 are severed, as the veil of the Temple was rent in twain. 
 
 The various modes, which have been proposed for the de 
 termination of disputes between nations, are Negotiation, 
 Arbitration, Mediation, and a Congress of Nations ;* all of 
 them practicable and calculated to secure peaceful justice. 
 Let it not be said, then, that war is a necessity ; and may 
 our country aim at the true glory of taking the lead in the 
 recognition of these, as the only proper modes of determin 
 ing justice between nations ! Such a glory, unlike the earthly 
 fame of battles, shall be immortal as the stars, dropping per 
 petual light upon the souls of men ! 
 
 2. Another prejudice in favor of war is founded on the. 
 practice of nations, past and present. There is no crime or 
 enormity in morals, which may not find the support of human 
 example, often on a most extended scale. But it is not to be 
 urged in our day that we are to look for a standard of duty 
 in the conduct of vain, mistaken, fallible man. It is not in 
 the power of man, by any subtle alchemy, to transmute 
 wrong into right. Because war is according to the practice 
 of the world, it does not follow that it is right. For ages 
 the world worshipped false gods ; but these gods were not 
 the less false, because all bowed before them. At this mo 
 ment the larger portion of mankind are Heathen ; but Hea 
 thenism is not true. It was once the practice of nations to 
 slaughter prisoners of war ; but even the spirit of war recoils 
 now from this bloody sacrifice. In Sparta, theft, instead of 
 being execrated as a crime, was dignified into an art and an 
 accomplishment, and as such admitted into the system of 
 youthful education ; and even this debasing practice, estab- 
 
 *For a sketch of the labors and examples which tend to the establishment of a 
 System of Arbitration, or a Congress of Nations, see Appendix, Note C. 
 
30 
 
 lished by local feeling, is enlightened, like war, by an in 
 stance of unconquerable firmness, which is a barbaric coun 
 terfeit of virtue. The Spartan youth, who allowed the fox 
 concealed under his robe to eat into his heart, is an example 
 of mistaken fortitude, not unlike that which we are asked to 
 admire in the soldier. Other illustrations of this character 
 crowd upon the mind ; but I will not dwell upon them. We 
 turn with disgust from Spartan cruelty and the wolves of 
 Taygetus ; from the awful cannibalism of the Feejee Islands ; 
 from the profane rites of innumerable savages ; from the 
 crushing Juggernaut ; from the Hindoo widow lighting her 
 funeral pyre ; from the Indian dancing at the stake. But had 
 not all these, in their respective places and days, like war, the 
 sanction of established usage ? 
 
 But it is often said, " Let us not be wiser than our fathers." 
 Rather let us try to excel our fathers in wisdom. Let us imi 
 tate what in them was good, but let us not bind ourselves as 
 in the chains of Fate, by their imperfect example. There 
 are principles which are higher than human examples. Ex 
 amples are to be followed when they accord with the sugges 
 tions of duty. But he is unwise and wicked, who attempts 
 to lean upon these, rather than upon those truths, which, like 
 the Everlasting Arm, cannot fail ! 
 
 In all modesty be it said, we have lived to little purpose, 
 if we are not wiser than the generations that have gone be 
 fore us. It is the grand distinction of man that he is a pro 
 gressive being ; that his reason at the present day is not 
 merely the reason of a single human being, but that of the 
 whole human race, in all ages from which knowledgehas de 
 scended, in all lands from which it has been borne away. We 
 are the heirs to an inheritance of knowledge, which has been 
 accumulating from generation to generation. The child is now 
 taught at his mother s knee the orbits of the heavenly bodies, 
 
 Where worlds on worlds compose one Universe; 
 
 the nature of this globe ; the character of the tribes of men 
 by which it is covered, and the geography of nations, all of 
 which were far beyond the ken of the most learned of other 
 days. It is, therefore, true, as has been said, that antiquity 
 is the real infancy of man : it is then that he is immature, 
 ignorant, wayward, childish, selfish, finding his chief happi 
 ness in pleasures of sense, all unconscious of the higher 
 delights of knowledge and of love. The animal part of his 
 
31 
 
 nature reigns over his soul, and he is driven on by the gross 
 impulses of force. He seeks contests, war and blood. But 
 we are advanced from the childhood of man ; reason and 
 the kindlier virtues of age, repudiating and abhorring force, 
 now bear sway. We are the true Ancients. The single 
 lock on the battered forehead of Old Time is thinner now than 
 when our fathers attempted to grasp it ; the hour-glass has 
 been turned often since ; the scythe is heavier laden with the 
 work of death. 
 
 Let us cease, then, to look for a lamp to our feet, in the 
 feeble tapers that glimmer in the sepulchres of the Past. 
 Rather let us hail those ever-burning lights above, in whose 
 beams is the brightness of noon-day ! 
 
 3. There is a topic to which I allude with diffidence ; but 
 in the spirit of frankness. It is the influence which war, 
 though condemned by Christ, has derived from the Christian 
 Church. When Constantine on one of his marches, at the 
 head of his army, beheld the luminous trophy of the cross in 
 the sky right above the meridian sun, inscribed with these 
 words, By this conquer, had his soul been penetrated by the 
 true spirit of Him, whose precious symbol it was, he would 
 have found in it no inspiration to the spear and the sword. 
 He would have received the lesson of self-sacrifice, as from 
 the lips of the Saviour, and would have learned that it was 
 not by earthly weapons that any true victory was to be won. 
 The pride of conquest would have been rebuked, and the 
 bauble sceptre of Empire would have fallen from his hands. 
 By this conquer ; that is, by patience, suffering, forgiveness 
 of evil, by all those virtues of which the cross is the affecting 
 token, conquer ; and the victory shall be greater than any in 
 the annals of Roman conquest ; it may not find a place in the 
 records of man ; but it shall appear in the register of ever 
 lasting life. 
 
 The Christian Church, after the first centuries of its exist 
 ence, failed to discern the peculiar spiritual beauty of the faith 
 which it professed. Like Constantine, it found new incen 
 tives to war in the religion of Peace ; and such has been its 
 character, let it be said fearlessly, even to our own day. The 
 Pope of Rome, the asserted head of the church, the Vice 
 gerent of Christ on earth, whose seal is a fisherman, on whose 
 banner is a LAMB before the HOLY CROSS, assumed the 
 command of armies, often mingling the thunders of battle 
 
32 
 
 with those of the Vatican. The dagger which projected from 
 the sacred vestments of the Archbishop de Retz, as he ap 
 peared in the streets of Paris, was called by the people, " the 
 Archbishop s Prayer Book." We read of mitred prelates in 
 armor of proof, and seem still to catch the jingle of the golden 
 spurs of the bishops in the streets of Cologne. The sword of 
 knighthood was consecrated by the church ; and priests were 
 often the expert masters in military exercises. I have seen at 
 the gates of the Papal Palace in Rome, a constant guard of 
 Swiss soldiers ; I have seen, too, in our own streets a show, 
 as incongruous and as inconsistent, a pastor of a Christian 
 church parading as the chaplain of a military array ! Ay ! 
 more than this ; some of us have heard, within a few short 
 weeks, in a Christian pulpit, from the lips of an eminent 
 Christian divine, a sermon in which we are encouraged to 
 serve the God of Battles,* and, as citizen soldiers, to fight 
 for Peace ;t a sentiment, which can find no support in the 
 Religion of Him who has expressly enjoined, when one cheek 
 is smitten to turn the other, and to which we listen with pain 
 and mortification from the lips of one, who has voluntarily 
 become a minister of Christian truth ; alas ! in his mind, in 
 ferior to that of the Heathen, who declared that he preferred 
 the unjustest peace to the jus test war.% 
 
 And who is the God of Battles ! It is Mars ; man-slaying, 
 blood-polluted, city-smiting Mars! Him we cannot adore. 
 It is not He who binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades, 
 
 * Deo imperante, quern adesse bellantibus credunt, are the appropriate words of 
 astonishment by which Tacitus describes the barbarous superstition of the an- 
 cient Germans. De Moribus, Germ. $ 7. It was afterwards on the German soil, 
 that Frederick of Prussia said that he always found the God of Battles to be on 
 the side of the strongest regiments. When it was proposed to him to adopt as 
 an inscription for his banner, that was soon to flout the sky of Silesia, " For God 
 and Country," he rejected the first words saying it was not proper to introduce 
 the name of the Deity in the quarrels of men. 
 
 t Lord Abington said, May 30th, 1794, in the House of Lords ; " The best road 
 to Peace, my Lords, is War ; and War carried on in the same manner in which 
 we are taught to worship our Creator, namely, with all our souls, with all our 
 minds, with all our hearts, and with all our strength !" 
 
 t Iniquissimam paccm, justissimo bcllo antefcro, are the words of Cicero. Only 
 eight days after Franklin had placed his name to the Treaty of Peace, which 
 acknowledged the Independence of his country, he wrote to a friend; "may we 
 never see another war, for, in my opinion, there never was a good war, nor a bad 
 peace." It was with great reluctance, that I here seemed to depart for a moment 
 from so great a theme to allude to any person ; but the person and the theme 
 here become united. I cannot refrain from the effort to tear this iron branch of 
 War from the golden tree of Christian truth, even though a voice come forth from 
 the breaking bough. For a few observations on Dr. Vinton s Sermon, see Ap 
 pendix, notes A. and B. 
 
33 
 
 and looses the bands of Orion ; who causes the sun to shine 
 on the just and the unjust; who tempers the wind to the 
 shorn lamb ; who distils the oil of gladness upon every upright 
 heart ; the fountain of Mercy and Goodness, the God of Jus 
 tice and Love. The God of Battles is not the God of Chris 
 tians; to him can ascend none of the prayers of Christian 
 thanksgiving ; for him there can be no words of worship in 
 Christian temples ; no swelling anthem to peal the note of 
 praise. 
 
 There is now floating in this harbor a ship of the line of 
 our country. Many of you have, perhaps, pressed its deck, 
 and observed with admiration the completeness which pre 
 vails in all its parts ; its lithe masts and complex net- work of 
 ropes ; its thick wooden walls, within which are more than 
 the soldiers of Ulysses ; its strong defences, and its numerous 
 dread and rude-throated engines of war. There each Sab 
 bath, amidst this armament of blood, while the wave comes 
 gently plashing against the frowning sides, from a pulpit sup 
 ported by a cannon, or by the side of a cannon, in repose 
 now, but ready to awake its dormant thunder, charged with 
 death, a Christian preacher addresses the officers and crew ! 
 May his instructions carry strength and succor to their souls ! 
 But he cannot pronounce in such a place, those highest words 
 of the Master he professes, " Blessed are the Peace-makers;" 
 " Love your Enemies ;" " Render not evil for evil." Like 
 Macbeth s " Amen," they must stick in his throat. 
 
 It cannot be doubted that this strange and unblessed con 
 junction of the clergy with war, has had no little influence in 
 blinding the world to the truth now beginning to be recog 
 nized, that Christianity forbids war in all cases. 
 
 Individual interests are mixed up with prevailing errors, 
 and are concerned in maintaining them to such an extent, that 
 it is not surprising that military men yield reluctantly to this 
 truth. They are naturally in this matter, like lawyers, ac 
 cording to Voltaire, " the conservators of ancient barbarous 
 usages ;" but that these usages should obtain countenance in 
 the Christian church is one of those anomalies, which make 
 us feel the weakness of our nature and the elevation of 
 Christian truth. It is important to observe, as an unanswer 
 able fact of history, that for some time after the Apostles, 
 while the lamp of Christianity burnt pure and bright, not 
 only the Fathers of the church held it unlawful for Chris 
 tians to bear arms, but those who came within its pale, 
 abstained from the use of arms, although at the cost of their 
 3 
 
34 
 
 lives. Marcellus the Centurion, threw down his military belt 
 at the head of the legion, and in the face of the standards 
 declared with a loud voice, that he would no longer serve 
 in the army, for he had become a Christian; and many 
 others followed his example. It was not until Christianity 
 became corrupted, that its followers became soldiers, and its 
 priests learned to minister at the altar of the God of Battles.* 
 
 Thee to defend the Moloch priest prefers 
 The prayer of Hate, and bellows to the herd 
 That Deity, accomplice Deity, 
 In the fierce jealousy of waked wrath 
 Will so forth with our armies and our fleets 
 To scatter the red ruin on their foes ! 
 O blasphemy ! to mingle fiendish deeds 
 With blessedness !t 
 
 A motion has been brought forward in Congress, to dispense 
 with the services of chaplains in the army and navy, mainly 
 on account of the incompatibility between the principles of 
 the Gospel and the practice of War. It is to be hoped that 
 what God has placed so far asunder, may no longer be joined 
 together by man. If chaplains are to be employed, it should 
 be to preach the religion they profess as to the Heathen, and 
 not to offer incense to the idol of war. 
 
 When will Christian ministers look for their faith, not to 
 the ideas, opinions and practices of the people by whom they 
 are surrounded, but to the written words of the texts from 
 which they preach ? It has been said of a monarch of Eng 
 land that he " read Gospel truth in Anna Boteyn s eyes." 
 Not less hyperbolical and impossible is their discernment who 
 can find in the flashing bayonet, any token of Peace, any 
 illumination of Christian Love. That truly great man, the 
 beloved Channing, whose spirit speaks to us from no scep- 
 tered urn, but from that sweet grassy bed at Mount Auburn, 
 says : " When I think of duelling and war in the Christian 
 world, and then of the superiority to the world and the un 
 bounded love and forbearance which characterize our reli- 
 
 * This subject, so interesting to the student of history, and to the conscientious 
 inquirer into the true signification of the Gospel, has been treated with fulness 
 and learning by Mr. Clarkson in his Essay on the Doctrines and Practice of the 
 Early Christians as they relate to war. Mr. Jay, in his recent address before the 
 Peace Society, justly charges the Christian Church " with awful delinquencies on 
 the subject of war, and directs the attention of her members to the duty of 
 repentance and reformation." He sustains the charge by numerous illustrations 
 of the conduct of the clergy, through a succession of ages, but particularly in 
 our own day. He finds the English Episcopal Church peculiarly reprehensible; 
 and his testimony on this point is of special authority, from his known eminence 
 as a lay member of the sister Church in the United States. 
 
 t Religious Musings by Coleridge, written Christmas Eve of 1794. 
 
35 
 
 gion, I am struck with the little progress which Christianity 
 has as yet made." 
 
 One of the beautiful pictures, adorning the dome of a 
 Church in Rome, by that master of art, whose immortal colors 
 breathe as with the voice of a Poet, the Divine RafFaelle, 
 represents Mars, in the attitude of war, with a drawn sword 
 uplifted and ready to strike while an unarmed Angel from 
 behind, with gentle but irresistible force, arrests and holds the 
 descending arm. Such is the true image of Christian duty ; 
 nor can I readily perceive the difference in principle between 
 those ministers of the Gospel, who themselves gird on the 
 sword, as in the olden time, and those others, who, unarmed, 
 and in customary suit of solemn black, lend the sanction of 
 their presence to the martial array, or to any form of prepa 
 ration for war. The drummer, who pleaded that he did not 
 fight, was held more responsible for the battle than the mere 
 soldier; for it was the sound of his drum that inflamed the 
 flagging courage of the troops. 
 
 4. From the prejudices engendered by the Church, I pass 
 to the prejudices engendered by the army itself; prejudices 
 having their immediate origin more particularly in military 
 life, but unfortunately diffusing themselves, in widening 
 though less apparent circles, throughout the community. I 
 allude directly to what is called the point of honor, early 
 child of chivalry, the living representative in our day of an 
 age of barbarism. It is difficult to define what is so evanes 
 cent, so impalpable, so chimerical, so unreal ; and yet which 
 exercises such power over many men, and controls the rela 
 tions of states. As a little water, which has fallen into the 
 crevice of a rock, under the congelation of winter, swells till 
 it burst the thick and stony fibres ; so a word, or a slender 
 act, dropping into the heart of man, under the hardening 
 influence of this pernicious sentiment, dilates till it rends in 
 pieces the sacred depository of human affections, while Hate 
 and the demon Strife, no longer restrained, are let loose 
 abroad. The musing Hamlet saw the strange and unnatural 
 power of this sentiment, when his soul pictured to his con 
 templations 
 
 the army of such mass and charge, 
 
 Led by a delicate and tender prince 
 Exposing what is mortal and unsure 
 To all that fortune, death and danger, dare 
 Even for an egg-shell; 
 
36 
 
 and when he says, with a point which has given to this sen 
 timent its strongest and most popular expression, 
 
 Rightly to be great 
 
 Is not to stir without great argument ; 
 But greatly to find quarrel in a straw 
 When honor s at the stake. 
 
 And when is honor at stake ? This question opens again 
 the views with which I commenced, and with which I hope 
 to close this discourse. Honor can only be at stake, where 
 justice and happiness are at stake ; it can never depend on 
 an egg-shell, or a straw ; it can never depend on an impotent 
 word of anger or folly, not even if that word be followed by 
 a blow. In fine, true honor is to be found in the highest 
 moral and intellectual excellence, in the dignity of the hu 
 man soul, in its nearest approach to those qualities which we 
 reverence as the attributes of God. Our community frowns 
 with indignation upon the profaneness of the duel, which has 
 its rise in this irrational point of honor. But are they aware 
 that they themselves indulge the sentiment, on a gigantic 
 scale, when they recognize what is called the honor of the 
 country, as a proper ground for war ? We have already seen 
 that justice is in no respect promoted by war ? Is true honor 
 promoted where justice is not? 
 
 But the very word honor, as used by the world, does not 
 express any elevated sentiment. How infinitely below the 
 sentiment of duty ! It is a word of easy virtue, that has 
 been prostituted to the most opposite characters and tranac- 
 tions. From the field of Pavia, where France suffered one 
 of the greatest reverses in her annals, Francis writes to his 
 mother; "all is lost except honor. 77 At a later day, the 
 renowned cook, the grand Vatel, in a paroxysm of grief and 
 mortification at the failure of two dishes expected on the table, 
 exclaimed, " I have lost my honor. 7 * Montesquieu, whose 
 
 * Accable d embarras, Vatel est averti 
 
 Que deux tables en vain reclamaient leur roti; 
 
 Jl prend pour en trouver une peine inutile. 
 
 " Ah !" dit.il, s adressant a son ami Gourville, 
 
 De larmes, de sanglots, de douleur suffoque, 
 
 " Je suis perdu d honneur, deux rotis ont manques /" 
 
 Berchoux. 
 
 This scene is also described, with the accustomed coldness and brilliancy of 
 her fashionable pen, by Madame de Sevigne, (Lettres L and LI, Tom. I. pp. 164, 
 168.) In the same place she recounts the death of this culinary martyr. Dis 
 appointed by the failure of the purveyors to arrive with the turbots for an enter 
 tainment in proper season, he withdrew to his chamber, where he placed his 
 sword against the door, and stabbed himself to the heart, but it was not until 
 the third blow, after giving himself two not mortal, that he fell dead. ". The 
 fish now arrives from all quarters, they seek Vatel to distribute it; they go to 
 
37 
 
 writings are a constellation of epigrams, places it in direct 
 contrast with virtue. He represents what he calls the preju 
 dice of honor as the animating principle of monarchy, while 
 virtue is that of a republic, saying that in well governed 
 monarchies almost every body will be a good citizen, but it 
 will be rare to meet with a really good man.* By an instinct 
 that points to the truth, we do not apply this term to the 
 high columnar virtues which sustain and decorate life, to pa 
 rental affection, to justice, to the attributes of God. We do 
 not speak of an honorable father, an honorable mother, an 
 honorable judge, an honorable angel, an honorable God. In 
 such sacred connections we feel, beyond the force of any 
 argument, the vulgar and debasing character of the sentiment 
 to which it refers. 
 
 The degrading rule of honor is founded in the supposed 
 necessity of resenting by force, a supposed injury, whether 
 by word or act.t But suppose such an injury is received, 
 sullying, as is falsely imagined, the character ; is it wiped 
 away by a resort to force, by descending to the brutal level 
 of its author ? " Could I have wiped your blood from my 
 conscience as easily as I can this insult from my face," said a 
 Marshal of France, greater on this occasion than on any field 
 of fame, " I would have laid you dead at my feet." It is 
 Plato, reporting the angelic wisdom of Socrates, who declares 
 in one of those beautiful dialogues, which shine with stellar 
 light across the ages, that it is more shameful to do a wrong 
 
 his room, they knock, they force open the door; he is found bathed in blood. 
 They hasten to tell the Prince, [the great Conde] who is in despair; the Duke 
 wept; it was on Vatel that his journey from Burgundy hinged. The Prince 
 related what had passed to the King, with marks of the deepest sorrow. It 
 was attributed to the high sense of honor which he had after his own way (on dit 
 que c etoit a force d avoir de 1 honneur a sa maniere.) He was highly com 
 mended ; his courage was praised and blamed at the same time." The Epistle 
 Dedicatory prefixed to the concludiug volume of the Almanac des Gourmands, 
 addressing the shade of Vatel, says; " So noble a death secures you, venerable 
 shade, the most glorious immortality ! You have proved that the fanaticism of 
 honor can exist in the kitchen as well as the camp, and that the spit and sauce- 
 pan have also their Catos and their Deciuses." "Enfin,"are the words of a 
 French Vaudeville, "Manette, voila ce que c etoit que Madame de Sevigne, 
 et Vatel, ce sont les gens la qui ont honore le siecle de Louis Quatorze." See 
 London Quarterly Rev. Vol. 54. p. 122. 
 
 * Montesquieu, Esprit des Louis, Liv. 3. cap. 5, 6, 7. 
 
 t Don Pedre. Souhaitez-vous quelque chose de moi ? 
 
 Halt. Oui, un conseil sur un fait d honneur. Je sais qu en ces matieres il est 
 mal-aise de trouver un cavalier plus consomme que vous. 
 
 Seigneur, j ai recuun soufflet. Vous savez ce qu est un soufflet, lorsqu il se 
 donne a main ouverte sur le beau milieu de la joue. J ai ce soufflet fort sur le 
 coeur ; et je suis dans ^incertitude si, pour me venger de Vaffront,je dois me battre 
 avec mon homme, ou Men le faire assassiner. 
 
 Don Pedre. Assassiner c est le plus sur et le plus court chemin. Moliere, Le 
 Sicilien, Sc. 13. 
 
38 
 
 than to receive a wrong* And this benign sentiment com 
 mends itself, alike to the Christian, who is told to render good 
 for evil, and to the universal heart of man. But who that 
 confesses its truth, can vindicate a resort to force, for the sake 
 of honor ? Better far to receive the blow that a false morality 
 has thought degrading, than that it should be revenged by 
 force. Better that a nation should submit to what is wrong, 
 rather than vainly seek to maintain its honor by the great 
 crime of war. 
 
 It seems that in ancient Athens, as in unchristianized Chris 
 tian lands, there were sophists, who urged that to suffer was 
 unbecoming a man, and would draw down upon him incal 
 culable evils. The following passage will show the manner 
 in which the moral cowardice of these persons of little faith 
 was rebuked by him, whom the Gods pronounced wisest of 
 men : " These things being so, let us inquire what it is you 
 reproach me with ; whether it is well said, or not, that I, 
 forsooth, am not able to assist either myself, or any of my 
 friends or my relations, or to save them from the greatest 
 dangers; but that, like the outlaws, I am at the mercy of any 
 one, who may choose to smite me on the temple and this 
 was the strong point in your argument or to take away my 
 property, or to drive me out of the city, or (to take the ex 
 treme case) to kill me ; now, according to your argument, to 
 be so situated is the most shameful thing of all. But my view 
 is a view many times expressed already, but there is no 
 objection to its being stated again : my view., I say, is, O 
 Callicles, that to be struck unjustly on the temple is not 
 most shameful, nor to have my body mutilated, nor my 
 purse cut ; but to strike me and mine unjustly, and to mu 
 tilate me and to cut my purse is more shameful and worse; 
 and stealing too, and enslaving, and housebreaking, and in 
 general, doing any ivrong whatever to me and mine is more 
 shameful and worse for him who does the ivrong, than for 
 me who suffer it. These things, thus established in the former 
 arguments, as I maintain, are secured and bound, even if the 
 expression be somewhat too rustical, with iron and adaman 
 tine arguments, and unless you, or some one more vigorous 
 than you, can break them, it is impossible for any one, speak 
 ing otherwise than I now speak, to speak well : since, for my 
 part, I always have the same thing to say, that I know not 
 
 * This proposition is enforced by Socrates with admirable and unanswerable 
 reasoning and illustratiun, throughout the whole of the Gorgias. 
 
39 
 
 how these things are, but that of all whom I have ever dis 
 coursed with as now, not one is able to say otherwise with 
 out being 1 ridiculous." Such is the wisdom of Socrates.* 
 
 But the modem point of honor does not find a place in 
 warlike antiquity. Themistocles at Salamis did not send a 
 cartel to the Spartan commander, when threatened by a 
 blow. " Strike, but hear," was the response of that firm 
 nature, which felt that true honor was to be gained only in 
 the performance of duty. It was in the depths of modern 
 barbarism, in the age of chivalry, that this sentiment shot up 
 in the wildest and most exuberant fancies; not a step was 
 taken without reference to it ; no act was done which had 
 not some point tending to " the bewitching duel," and every 
 stage in the combat, from the ceremonies of its beginning to 
 its deadly close, were measured by this fantastic law.t The 
 Chevalier Bayard, the cynosure of chivalry, the knight with 
 out fear and without reproach, in a contest with the Spaniard 
 Don Alorizo de Soto Mayor, by a feint struck him such a 
 blow in the throat, that despite the gorget, the weapon pene 
 trated four fingers deep. The wounded Spaniard grasped 
 his adversary, and, struggling with him, they both rolled on 
 the ground, when Bayard, drawing his dagger, and thrusting 
 its point in the nostrils of the Spaniard, exclaimed, " Senor 
 Alonzo, surrender, or you are a dead man!" A speech 
 which appeared superfluous, as Don Diego de Guignones, his 
 second, exclaimed, " Senor Bayard, he is dead ; you have 
 conquered." Bayard, says the chronicler, would have given 
 one hundred thousand crowns to spare his life ; but, he now 
 fell upon his knees, kissed the ground three times and then 
 dragged his dead enemy out of the camp, saying to the sec 
 ond of his fallen foe, " Senor Don Diego, have I done 
 enough ?" To which the other piteousty replied, " too 
 much, Senor, for the honor of Spain !" when Bayard very 
 generously presented him with the corpse, although it was 
 his right, by the laws of honor, to do whatever he thought 
 proper with it ; an act which is highly commended by Bran 
 
 * Gorgias, Cap. LXIV. It appears that Cicero read the Gorgias diligently at 
 Athens; but his admiration was bestowed chiefly upon its distinguished rhetorical 
 excellence. (De Oratore, I. 11.) If his soul had been penetrated by its sublime 
 morality, he could never have written ; Fortes igitur et magnanimi sunt habendi, 
 non, qui faciunt, sed qui propulsant injuriam. De Offic. Lib. I. cap. 19. This 
 is an instance of the fickle eclectic philosophy of the great Roman, which renders 
 his writings so uncertain a rule of conduct. 
 
 t Nobody can forget the humorous picture of the progress of a quarrel to a 
 duel, through the seven degrees of Touchstone in vis You Like It. Act. 5, 
 Scene 4. 
 
40 
 
 tome, who thinks it difficult to say which did him most 
 honor not having ignominiously dragged the body like the 
 carcass of a dog by a leg out of the field, or having conde 
 scended to fight while laboring under an ague!* 
 
 If such a transaction conferred honor on the brightest son 
 of chivalry, we may understand therefrom something of the 
 real character of that age, the departure of which has been 
 lamented with such touching but inappropriate eloquence. 
 Do not condescend to draw a great rule of conduct from such 
 a period. Let the point of honor stay with the daggers, the 
 swords and the weapons of combat, by which it was guarded ; 
 let it appear only with its inseparable companions, the bowie- 
 knife, and the pistol ! 
 
 Be ours a standard of conduct derived, not from the de 
 gradation of our nature, though it affects the semblance of 
 sensibility and refinement, but having its sources in the loftiest 
 attributes of man, in truth, in justice, in duty; and may this 
 standard, which governs our relations to each other, be recog 
 nized among the nations ! When shall we behold the dawn 
 ing of that happy day, harbinger of infinite happiness beyond, 
 in which nations shall feel that it is better to receive a wrong 
 than to do a wrong. 
 
 Apply this principle to our relations with England at this 
 moment. Suppose that proud monarchy, refusing all sub 
 mission to negotiation or arbitration, should absorb the whole 
 Territory of Oregon into her own overgrown dominions, and 
 add, at the mouth of the Columbia River, a new morning 
 drum-beat to the national airs with which she has encircled 
 the earth, who, then, is in the attitude of the truest honor, Eng 
 land, who has appropriated, by an unjust act, what is not her 
 own, or the United States, the victim of the injustice ?t 
 
 5. There is still another influence which stimulates war, 
 and interferes with the natural attractions of Peace ; I refer 
 to a selfish and exaggerated love of country, leading to its 
 physical aggrandizement, and the strengthening of its institu 
 tions at the expense of other countries. Our minds, nursed 
 by the literature of antiquity, have imbibed the narrow senti- 
 
 * Millingen on Duels, I. 81, 82. 
 
 t If this view needs any confirmation in the minds of just and reasonable men, 
 having a true regard for the happiness and real greatness of their country, it may 
 be found in the clear and weighty reasoning of President Wayland on War, in 
 his Elements of Morals, which is in such harmony with the great truths sustained 
 throughout this Oration that I have taken the liberty to transfer some pages of it 
 to the Appendix, Note E. 
 
41 
 
 ment of heathen patriotism.* Exclusive love for the land of 
 birth was a part of the religion of Greece and Rome. It is 
 an indication of the lowness of their moral nature, that this 
 sentiment was so exclusive, and so material in its character. 
 The Oracle directed the returning Roman to kiss his mother, 
 and he kissed the Mother Earth. Agamemnon, on regaining 
 his home after a perilous separation of more than ten years 
 at the siege of Troy, before addressing his family, his friends, 
 his countrymen, first salutes Argos : 
 
 By your leave, Lords, first Argos I salute.t 
 
 The school-boy cannot forget the cry of the victim of Ver- 
 res, which was to stay the descending fasces of the lictor, " I 
 am a Roman citizen ;" nor those other words sounding in the 
 dark Past, " How sweet it is to die for one s country !" The 
 Christian cry did not rise, " I am a man ;" the Christian 
 ejaculation did not swell the soul, " How sweet it is to die 
 for duty !" The beautiful genius of Cicero, at times instinct 
 with truth almost divine, did not ascend to that highest 
 heaven, where is taught, that all mankind are neighbors and 
 kindred, and that the relations of fellow-countryman are less 
 holy than those of fellow-man. To the love of universal 
 man may be applied those words by which the great Roman 
 elevated his selfish patriotism to a virtue, when he said that 
 country alone embraced all the charities of all. \ Attach this 
 admired phrase for a moment to the single idea of country, 
 and you will see how contracted are its charities compared 
 
 * The legislation of Rome, which has exercised such an influence over mankind, 
 was inspired by selfishness. Self was at the foundation of all rights. Property 
 was held under rigorous and exclusive laws, which knew nothing of the spirit of 
 accommodation, or of good neighborhood. There were no common partition 
 walls; but houses stood apart (insula), to avoid all contact which could be only 
 hostile. In domestic life, the head of the family (pater familial) was a despot. 
 He held for a long time, the right of life and death over his wife and children ; 
 having no obligations towards them, but only rights over them. This great power 
 was not given for the benefit of the children ; securing to them a guardian in their 
 immature years, but selfishly, unnaturally, for the exclusive benefit of the father, 
 to whom belonged all the acquisitions of the son. We may well suspect any 
 principle of duty, public or private, which has its rise in fountains so strongly 
 impregnated with the iron of the soil. For an interesting view of the true charac 
 ter of the Roman Law, see Kleimrath, Travaux sur 1 Histoire de droit Francais, 
 Tom. 1, 39. 
 
 t Agamemnon of JEschylus ; translated by Symmons, p. 73. Cato in a didactic 
 work, says to the farmer on his return home, Primum Larem salutato. 
 
 \ Sed quum omnia ratione, animoque lustraris, omnium societatum nulla est 
 gravior, nulla carior, quam ea, quae cum republica est unicuique nostrum. Cari 
 sunt parentes, cari liberi, propinqui, familiares ; sed omnes omnium caritates patria 
 una complexa est; pro qua quis bonus dubitet mortem oppetere, si ei sit profutu- 
 rus ? De Offic. Lib. I, Cap. 17, $ 57. It is curious to observe how Cicero puts 
 aside that expression of true Humanity, which fell from Terence, Humani nihil a 
 
42 
 
 with the world-wide circle of Christian love, whose neighbor 
 is the suffering man, though at the farthest pole. Such a 
 sentiment would dry up those fountains of benevolence, which 
 now diffuse themselves in precious waters in distant unenlight 
 ened lands, bearing the blessings of truth to the icy mountains 
 of Greenland, and the coral islands of the Pacific sea. 
 
 It has been a part of the policy of rulers, to encourage 
 this exclusive patriotism; and the people of modern times 
 have each inherited the feeling of Antiquity. I do not know 
 that any one nation is in a condition to reproach the other 
 with this patriotic selfishness. All are selfish. Among us, 
 the sentiment has become active, while it has derived new 
 force from the point with which it has been expressed. An 
 officer of our Navy, one of the so called heroes nurtured by 
 war, whose name has been praised in churches, has gone 
 beyond all Greek, all Roman example. " Our country, be 
 she right or wrong" was his exclamation ; a sentiment 
 dethroning God and enthroning the devil, whose flagitious 
 character should be rebuked by every honest heart,* " Our 
 country, our whole country, and nothing but our country" 
 are other words, which have often been painted on banners, 
 and echoed by the voices of innumerable multitudes. Cold 
 and dreary, narrow and selfish, would be this life, if nothing 
 but our country occupied our souls : if the thoughts that 
 wander through eternity, if the infinite affections of our na 
 ture, were restrained to that spot of earth where we have been 
 placed by the accident of birth. 
 
 I do not inculcate an indifference to country. We incline, 
 by a natural sentiment, to the spot where we were born, to 
 the fields which witnessed the sports of childhood, to the seat 
 
 me alienum puto. He says, Est enim difficilis cura rerum alienarum. De Offic. 
 Lib. 1, Cap. 9. Since the delivery of this Oration, I have met the following 
 opportune testimony to the truth of the text, in the journals and opinions of the 
 late Blanco White, one of the most ingenuous and conscientious characters of 
 the age. " Would you have a clear, practical conception of Virtue ? Study the 
 early, the mythic history of Rome, and try to sympathize with her heroes, those 
 men who lived only for the State ; who appear to have lost their own personality, 
 and to have identified themselves with the republic. Having done this, reflect 
 upon the incompleteness (and we may well say, absurdity) of limiting our moral 
 relations to any portion of the whole mass of mankind, and embrace the immova 
 ble conviction, on this point, that every individual man belongs to the whole race 
 or, more properly speaking, to the Universe, more truly than Roman patriots 
 conceived themselves to belong to the State. And now you will have obtained 
 le true idea of national real virtue, if you conceive your duties to God and his 
 creation to be exactly analogous to those of those ancient heroes." Blanco 
 White s Journals and Correspondence, Vol. II. pp. 299, 300, 301. 
 
 Unlike this is what has been said of the virtuous Andrew Fletcher, in the days 
 : the English Revolution of 1688, who " would lose his life to serve his country, 
 at would not do a base thing to save it." Mackintosh, Eth. Philosophy. 
 
43 
 
 of youthful studies, and to the institutions under which we 
 have been trained. The finger of God writes in indelible 
 colors all these things upon the heart of man, so that in the 
 dread extremities of death, he reverts in fondness to early 
 associations, and longs for a draught of cold water from the 
 bucket in his father s well. This sentiment is independent of 
 reflection, for it begins before reflection, grows with our 
 growth, and strengthens with our strength. It is blind in its 
 nature ; and it is the duty of each of us to take care that it 
 does not absorb the whole character.* In the moral night 
 which has enveloped the world, each nation, thus far, has 
 lived ignorant and careless, to much extent, of the interests 
 of others, which it imperfectly saw ; but this thick darkness 
 has now been scattered, and we begin to discern, all gilded 
 by the beams of morning, the distant mountain-peaks of other 
 lands. We find that God has not placed us on this earth 
 alone ; that there are other nations, equally with us, children 
 of his protecting care. 
 
 The curious spirit goes further, and while it recognizes an 
 inborn sentiment of attachment to the place of birth, inquires 
 into the nature of the allegiance which is due to the State. 
 The old idea, still too much received, is, that man is made 
 for the State, and not the State for man. Far otherwise is 
 the truth. The State is an artificial body, intended for the 
 security of the people. How constantly do we find, in human 
 history, that the people have been sacrificed for the State ; 
 to build the Roman name, to secure to England the trident 
 of the sea. This is to sacrifice the greater for the less ; for 
 the fleeting possessions of earth to barter the immortal soul. 
 Let it be remembered that the State is not worth preserving 
 at the cost of the lives and happiness of the people. 
 
 It is not that I love country less, but Humanity more, that 
 now on this national Anniversary, I plead the cause of a 
 higher and truer patriotism. Remember that you are men, 
 by a more sacred bond than you are citizens ; that you are 
 children of a common Father more than you are Ameri 
 cans. 
 
 * " When any natural propensity is consecrated into a virtue, the greatest evils 
 ensue. Patriotism is an instance of this. We are naturally led to give undue 
 importance to ourselves; this, when the individual is clearly the object of his 
 own feeling, is called selfishness. But when under the name of patriotism, each 
 individual indulges himself in vanity, in pride, in ambition, in cruelty, and yet 
 does it as an Englishman, a Frenchman, as a Spaniard [he might have added as 
 an American] , all these vices are reckoned virtues." Life of Blanco White, 
 Vol. II. p. 6. 
 
44 
 
 Viewing, then, the different people on the globe, as all 
 deriving their blood from a common source, and separated 
 only by the accident of mountains, rivers and. seas, into those 
 distinctions around which cluster the associations of country, 
 we must regard all the children of the earth as members of 
 the great human family. Discord in this family is treason to 
 God; while all war is nothing else than civil wax. It will 
 be in vain that we restrain this odious term, importing so 
 much of horror, to the petty dissensions of a single State. It 
 belongs as justly to the feuds between nations. The soul 
 stands aghast, as we contemplate fields drenched in fraternal 
 gore, where the happiness of homes has been shivered by the 
 unfriendly arms of neighbors, and where kinsmen have sunk 
 beneath the cold steel that was nerved by a kinsman s hand. 
 This is civil war, which stands for ever accursed in the calen 
 dar of timo. But the Muse of History, in the faithful record 
 of the future transactions of nations, inspired by a new and 
 loftier justice, and touched to finer sensibilities, shall extend 
 to the general sorrows of Universal Man the sympathy which 
 has been profusely shed for the selfish sorrow of country, and 
 shall pronounce all war to be civil tuar, and the partakers 
 in it as traitors to God and enemies to man. 
 
 6. I might here pause, feeling that those of my hearers 
 who have kindly accompanied me to this stage, would be 
 ready to join in the condemnation of war, and hail peace, as 
 the only condition becoming the dignity of human nature, 
 and in which true greatness can be achieved. But there is 
 still one more consideration, which yields to none of the 
 others in importance ; perhaps it is more important than all. 
 It is at once cause and effect ; the cause of much of the feel 
 ing in favor of war, and the effect of this feeling. I refer to 
 the costly preparations for war, in time of peace. 
 
 I do not propose to dwell upon the immense cost of war 
 itself. That will be present to the minds of all in the moun 
 tainous accumulations of debt, piled like Ossa upon Pelion, 
 with which Europe is pressed to the earth. According to 
 the most recent tables to which I have had access, the public 
 debt of the different European States, so far as it is known, 
 amounts to the terrific sum of $6,387,000,000, all of this 
 the growth of War ! It is said that there are throughout 
 these states, 17,900,000 paupers, or persons subsisting at 
 the expense of the country, without contributing to its re 
 sources. If these millions of the public debt, forming only 
 
45 
 
 a part of what has been wasted in war, could be apportioned 
 among these poor, it would give to each of them $375, a 
 sum which would place all above want, and which is about 
 equal to the average value of the property of each inhabi 
 tant of Massachusetts. 
 
 The public debt of Great Britain amounted in 1839 to 
 $4,265,000,000, all of this the growth of War since 1688! 
 This amount is about equal to the sum total, according to the 
 calculations of Humboldt, of all the treasures which have 
 been reaped from the harvest of gold and silver in the mines 
 of Spanish America, including Mexico and Peru, since the 
 first discovery of our hemisphere by Christopher Columbus ! 
 It is much larger than the amount of all the precious metals, 
 which at this moment form the circulating medium of the 
 world ! It is said rashly by some persons, who have given 
 little attention to this subject, that all this expenditure was 
 good for the people ; but these persons do not bear in mind 
 that it was not bestowed on any useful object. It was wasted. 
 The aggregate capital of all the joint stock companies in 
 England, of which there was any known record in 1842, em 
 bracing canals, docks, bridges, insurance companies, banks, 
 gas-lights, water, mines, railways, and other miscellaneous 
 objects, was about $835,000,000 ; a sum which has been 
 devoted to the welfare of the people, but how infinitely less 
 in amount than the War Debt ! For the six years ending in 
 1836, the average payment for the interest on this debt was 
 about $140,000,000 annually. If we add to this sum, 
 $60,000,000 during this same period paid annually to the 
 army, navy and ordnance, we shall have $200,000,000 as the 
 annual tax of the English people, to pay for former wars and 
 to prepare for new. During this same period there was an 
 annual appropriation of only $20,000,000 for all the civil 
 purposes of the government. It thus appears that War ab 
 sorbed ninety cents of every dollar that was pressed by heavy 
 taxation from the English people, who almost seem to sweat 
 blood ! W T hat fabulous monster, or chimera dire, ever raged 
 with a maw so ravenous ! The remaining ten cents sufficed 
 to maintain the splendor of the throne, the administration of 
 justice, and the diplomatic relations with foreign powers, in 
 short all the proper objects of a Christian State.* 
 
 * I have here relied upon M Culloch s Commercial Dictionary ; The Edinburgh 
 Geography, founded on the works of Malte Brun and Balbi; and the calculations 
 of Mr. Jay in Peace and War, p. 16, and in his Address before the Peace Society, 
 pp. 28, 29. 
 
46 
 
 Let us now look exclusively at the preparations for war 
 in time of peace. It is one of the miseries of war that, even 
 in peace, its evils continue to be felt by the world, beyond 
 any other evils by which poor suffering humanity is oppressed. 
 If Bellona withdraws from the field, we only lose the sight of 
 her flaming torches ; the bay of her dogs is heard on the 
 mountains, and civilized man thinks to find protection from 
 their sudden fury, only by enclosing himself in the defences 
 of war. At this moment the Christian nations, worshipping 
 a symbol of common brotherhood, live as in entrenched 
 camps, in which they keep armed watch, to prevent surprise 
 from each other. 
 
 It is difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at any exact esti 
 mate of the cost of these preparations, ranging under four 
 different heads ; the standing army ; the navy ; the fortifica 
 tions, and ordnance ; and the militia or irregular troops. 
 
 The number of soldiers now keeping the peace of European 
 Christendom, as a standing army, without counting the 
 Navy, is upwards of two millions. Some estimates place it 
 as high as three millions.* The army of Great Britain ex 
 ceeds 300,000 men; that of France 350,000; that of Russia 
 730,000, and is reckoned by some as high as 1,000,000 ; that 
 of Austria about 275,000; that of Prussia 150,000. Taking 
 the smaller number, suppose these two millions to require for 
 their annual support an average sum of only $150 each, the 
 result would be $300,000,000, for their sustenance alone ; and 
 reckoning one officer to ten soldiers, and allowing to each of 
 the latter an English shilling a day, or $87 a year, for wages, 
 and to the former an average salary of $500 a year, we 
 should have for the pay of the whole no less than $256,000,- 
 000, or an appalling sum total for both sustenance and pay of 
 $556,000,000. If the same calculation be made, supposing 
 the forces to amount to three millions, the sum total will be 
 $835,000,000 ! But to this enormous sum another still more 
 enormous must be added on account of the loss sustained by 
 the withdrawal of two millions of hardy, healthy men, in the 
 
 * I have here relied upon the Edinburgh Geography founded on the works of 
 Make Brun and Balbi, which makes the standing army of the European Powers 
 upwards of two millions. The tract on the Waste of Property by War, which 
 illustrates this subject by many important statistics, makes it upward of three 
 millions. The annual expense of supporting a soldier differs in different countries. 
 In Austria it is about $130; in France $146; in Prussia nearly $200, and in 
 England still greater. 
 
47 
 
 bloom of life, from useful, productive labor. It has been 
 supposed that it costs an average of $500 to rear a soldier ; 
 and that the value of his labor if devoted to useful objects 
 would be $150 a year. The Christian Powers, therefore, in 
 setting apart two millions of men, as soldiers, sustain a loss of 
 $1,000,000,000 on account of their training ; and $300,000,000 
 annually, on account of their labor. So much for the cost 
 of the standing army of European Christendom in time of 
 Peace. 
 
 Glance now at the Navy of European Christendom. The 
 Royal Navy of Great Britain consists at present of 556 ships 
 of all classes ; but deducting such as are used as convict ships, 
 floating chapels, coal depots, the efficient navy consists of 88 
 sail of the line; 109 frigates; 190 small frigates, corvettes, 
 brigs and cutters, including packets; 65 steamers of various 
 sizes ; 3 troop-ships and yachts ; in all 455 ships. Of these 
 there were in commission in July, 1839, 190 ships, carrying 
 in all 4,202 guns. The number of hands employed in 1839, 
 was 34,465. The Navy of France, though not comparable in 
 size with that of England, is of vast force. By royal ordi 
 nance of 1st January, 1837, it was fixed in time of peace at 
 40 ships of the line, 50 frigates, 40 steamers, and 190 smaller 
 vessels; and the amount of crews in 1839, was 20,317 men. 
 The Russian Navy consists of two large fleets in the Gulf of 
 Finland and the Black Sea ; but the exact amount of their 
 force and their available resources has been a subject of dis 
 pute amongst naval men and politicians. Some idea may be 
 formed of the size of the navy from the number of hands 
 employed. The crews of the Baltic fleet amounted in 1837, 
 to not less than 30,800 men ; and those of the fleet in the 
 Black Sea to 19,800, or altogether 50,600. The Austrian 
 Navy consisted in 1837, of 8 ships of the line, 8 frigates, 4 
 sloops, 6 brigs, 7 schooners or galleys, and a number of smaller 
 vessels ; the number of men in its service in 1839, was 4,547. 
 The Navy of Denmark consisted at the close of 1837 of 7 
 ships of the line, 7 frigates, 5 sloops, 6 brigs, 3 schooners, 5 
 cutters, 58 gun-boats, 6 gun-rafts, and 3 bomb vessels, re 
 quiring about 6,500 men to man them. The Navy of Sweden 
 and Norway consisted recently of 238 gun-boats, 11 ships 
 of the line, 8 frigates, 4 corvettes, 6 brigs, with several smaller 
 vessels. The Navy of Greece consists of 32 ships of wai^ 
 carrying 190 guns, and 2,400 men. The Navy of Holland 
 in 1839 consisted of 8 ships of the line, 21 frigates, 15 cor- 
 
48 
 
 vettes, 21 brigs, and 95 gun-boats.* It is impossible to give 
 any accurate idea of the immense cost of all these mighty 
 preparations for war. It is melancholy to contemplate 
 such gigantic means, applied by European Christendom to the 
 erection of these superfluous wooden walls in time of Peace ! 
 
 In the fortifications and arsenals of Europe, crowning 
 every height, commanding every valley, and frowning over 
 every plain and every sea, wealth has been sunk which is 
 beyond calculation. Who can tell the immense sums that 
 have been expended in hollowing out, for the purposes of 
 defence, the living rock of Gibraltar ? Who can calculate 
 the cost of all the preparations at Woolwich, its 27,000 
 cannons, and its hundreds of thousands of small arms? 
 France alone contains upwards of one hundred and twenty 
 fortified places. And it is supposed that the yet unfinished 
 fortifications of Paris have cost upwards of fifty millions of 
 dollars ! 
 
 The cost of the militia or irregular troops, the Yeomanry 
 of England, the National Guards of Paris, and the Landwehr 
 and Landsturm of Prussia, must add other incalculable sums 
 to these enormous amounts. 
 
 Turn now to the United States, separated by a broad 
 ocean from immediate contact with the great powers of 
 Christendom, bound by treaties of amity and commerce with 
 all the nations of the earth; connected with all by the strong 
 ties of mutual interest ; and professing a devotion to the 
 principles of Peace. Are the Treaties of Amity mere words ? 
 Are the relations of commerce and mutual interest mere 
 things of a day ? Are the professions of Peace vain ? Else 
 why not repose in quiet unvexed by preparations for war ? 
 
 Enormous as are the expenses of this character in Europe, 
 those in our country are still greater in proportion to the 
 other expenditures of the Federal Government. 
 
 It appears that the average expenditures of the Federal 
 Government for the six years ending with 1840, exclusive of 
 payments on account of debt, were $26,474,892 ; of this sum, 
 the average appropriation each year for military and naval 
 purposes amounted to $21,328,903, being eighty per cent, 
 of the whole amount ? Yes ; of all the income which was 
 received by the Federal Government, eighty cents in every 
 dollar was applied in this useless way. The remaining 
 
 * I have drawn these details from the Edinburgh Geography ; and from McCul- 
 loch s Dictionary of Geography. 
 
49 
 
 twenty cents sufficed to maintain the Government, the ad 
 ministration of justice, our relations with foreign nations, the 
 light-houses which shed their cheerful signals over the rough 
 waves which beat upon our long and indented coast, from the 
 Bay of Fundy to the mouth of the Mississippi. Let us ob 
 serve the relative expenditures of the United States, in the 
 scale of the nations, for military preparations, in time of 
 Peace, exclusive of payments on account of the debts. These 
 expenditures are in proportion to the whole expenditure of 
 Government ; 
 
 In Austria, as 33 per cent.. 
 
 In France, as 38 per cent., 
 
 In Prussia, as 44 per cent., 
 
 In Great Britain, as 74 per cent., 
 
 In the UNITED STATES, as 80 per cent !* 
 
 To these superfluous expenditures of the Federal Govern 
 ment, are to be added the still larger and equally superfluous 
 expenses of the militia throughout the country, which have 
 been placed at $50,000,000 a year.t 
 
 By a tablej of the expenditures of the United States, ex 
 clusive of payments on account of the Public Debt, it ap 
 pears, that, in the fifty-three years from the formation of our 
 present Government, in 1789 down to 1843, there have been 
 $246,620,055 spent for civil purposes, comprehending the ex 
 penses of the executive, the legislative, the judiciary, the post- 
 office, light-houses, and intercourse with foreign governments. 
 During this same period there have been $368,526,594 de 
 voted to the military establishment, and $170,437,684 to 
 the naval establishment ; the two, forming an aggregate of 
 $538,964,278. Deducting from this sum the appropriations 
 during three years of war, and we shall find that more 
 than four hundred millions were absorbed by vain prepa 
 rations in time of peace for war. Add to this amount a mod 
 erate sum for the expenses of the militia during the same 
 period, which a candid and able writer places at present at 
 $50,000,000 a year; for the past years we may take an 
 average of $25,000,000, and we shall have the enormous 
 sum of $1,335,000,000 to be added to the $400,000,000; 
 the whole amounting to seventeen hundred and, thirty-jive 
 millions of dollars, a sum beyond the conception of human 
 
 * I have verified these results by the tables of expenditures of these different 
 nations, but I do little more than follow Mr. Jay, who has illustrated this impor 
 tant point with his accustomed accuracy. Address, p. 30. 
 
 t Jay s Peace and War, p. 13. t American Almanac for 1845, page 143. 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 faculties, sunk under the sanction of the Government of the 
 United States in mere peaceful preparations for war; more 
 than seven times as much as was dedicated by the Govern 
 ment, during the same period, to all other purposes whatsoever. 
 
 From this serried array of figures the mind instinctively 
 retreats. If we examine them from a nearer point of view, 
 and, selecting some particular part, compare it with the figures 
 representing other interests in the community, they will pre 
 sent a front still more dread. 
 
 Within a short distance of this city stands an institution of 
 learning, which was one of the earliest cares of the early 
 forefathers of the country, the conscientious Puritans. Fa 
 vored child of an age of trial and struggle, carefully nursed 
 through a period of hardship and anxiety, endowed at that 
 time by the oblations of men like Harvard, sustained from 
 its first foundation by the paternal arm of the Commonwealth, 
 by a constant succession of munificent bequests, and by the 
 prayers of all good men, the University of Cambridge now 
 invites our homage as the most ancient, the most interesting 
 and the most important seat of learning in the land ; possess 
 ing the oldest and most valuable library, one of the largest 
 museums of mineralogy and natural history, a School of 
 Law, which annually receives into its bosom more than one 
 hundred and fifty sons from all parts of the Union, where they 
 listen to instruction from professors whose names have be 
 come among the most valuable possessions of the land* a 
 School of Divinity, the nurse of true learning and piety one 
 of the largest and most flourishing Schools of Medicine in the 
 country besides these, a general body of teachers, twenty- 
 seven in number, many of whose names help to keep the 
 name of the country respectable in every part of the globe, 
 where science, learning and taste are cherished the whole, 
 presided over at this moment by a gentleman, early distin 
 guished in public life by his unconquerable energies and his 
 masculine eloquence, at a later period, by the unsurpassed 
 ability with which he administered the affairs of our city, 
 now, in a green old age, full of years and honors, preparing 
 to lay down his present high trust.t Such is Harvard Uni 
 versity; and as one of the humblest of her children, happy in 
 
 * Mr. Justice Story, whose various juridical writings have caused him to be 
 hailed, in foreign lands, among the first jurists of the age; and Professor Green- 
 leaf, whose classic work on the Law of Evidence has already become an autho 
 rity on both sides of the Atlantic. 
 
 t Hon. Joaiah Quincy. 
 
51 
 
 the recollection of a youth nurtured in her classic retreats, I 
 cannot allude to her without an expression of filial affection 
 and respect. 
 
 It appears from the last Report of the Treasurer,* that the 
 whole available property of the University, the various accu 
 mulations of more than two centuries of generosity, amounts 
 to $703,175. 
 
 There now swings idly at her moorings, in this harbor, a 
 ship of the line, the Ohio, carrying ninety guns, finished as 
 late as 1836 for $547,888; repaired only two years after 
 wards in 1838, for $223,012; with an armament which has 
 cost $53,945 ; making an amount of $834,845,t as the actual 
 cost at this moment of tjjat single ship ; more than $100,000 
 beyond all the available accumulations of the richest and 
 most ancient seat of learning in the land ! Choose ye, my 
 fellow citizens of a Christian State, between the two caskets 
 that wherein is the loveliness of knowledge and truth, or that 
 which contains the carrion death. 
 
 Let us pursue the comparison still further. The account 
 of the expenditures of the University during the last year, for 
 the general purposes of the College, the instruction of the 
 Undergraduates, and for the Schools of Law and Divinity, 
 amounts to $45,949. The cost of the Ohio for one year in 
 service, in salaries, wages, and provisions, is $220,000 ; being 
 $175,000 more than the annual expenditures of the Uni 
 versity; more than four times as much. In other words, for 
 the annual sum which is lavished on one ship of the line,^wr 
 Institutions like Harvard University, might be sustained 
 throughout the country ! 
 
 Still further let us pursue the comparison. The pay of the 
 Captain of a ship like the Ohio, is $4,500, when in service ; 
 $3,500 when on leave of absence, or off duty. The salary of 
 the President of the Harvard University is $2,205 ; without 
 leave of absence, and never being off duty! 
 
 If the large endowments of Harvard University are dwarfed 
 by a comparison with the expense of a single ship of the line, 
 how much more must it be so with those of other institutions 
 of learning and beneficence, less favored by the bounty of 
 many generations. The average cost of a sloop of war is 
 $315,000; more, probably, than all the endowments of those 
 
 * Hon. S. A. Eliot s Report in 1844. 
 
 t Document, No. 132, House of Representatives, 3d session, 27th Congress. 
 Reference is here made to the Ohio, because ehe happens to be in our waters. 
 The expense of the Delaware in 1842 had been $1,051,000. 
 
twin stars of learning in the Western part of Massachusetts, 
 the Colleges at Williamstown and Amherst, and of that single 
 star in the East, the guide to many ingenuous youth, the 
 Seminary at Andover. The yearly cost of a sloop of war in 
 service is above $50,000 ; more than the annual expenditures 
 of these three Institutions combined. 
 
 I might press the comparison with other Institutions of be 
 neficence ; with the annual expenditures for the Blind that 
 noble and successful charity, which has shed true lustre upon 
 our Commonwealth amounting to $12,000; and the annual 
 expenditures for the Insane of the Commonwealth, another 
 charity dear to humanity, amounting to $27,844. 
 
 Take all the Institutions of learning and beneficence, the 
 precious jewels of the Commonwealth, the schools, colleges, 
 hospitals and asylums, and the sums by which they have been 
 purchased and preserved are trivial and beggarly, compared 
 with the treasures squandered within the borders of Massa 
 chusetts in vain preparations for war. There is the Navy 
 Yard at Charlestown, with its stores on hand, all costing 
 $4,741,000; the fortifications in the harbors of Massachu 
 setts, in which have been sunk already incalculable sums, 
 and in which it is now proposed to sink $3,853,000 more ;"* 
 and besides, the Arsenal at Springfield, containing in 1842, 
 175,118 muskets, valued at $2,999,998,t and which is fed by 
 an annual appropriation of about 8200,000; but whose highest 
 value will ever be, in the judgment of all lovers of truth, that 
 it inspired a poem, which, in its influence shall be mightier 
 than a battle, and shall endure when arsenals and fortifica 
 tions have crumbled to the earth.J 
 
 Look for one moment at a high and peculiar interest of 
 the nation, the administration of justice. Perhaps no part 
 
 * Document; Report of Secretary of War; No. 2. Senate, 27th Congress, 
 2d session ; where it is proposed to invest in a system of land defences 
 $51,677,929. 
 
 t Exec. Documents of 1842-43, Vol. I. No. 3. 
 
 t From Mr. Longfellow s " Arsenal at Springfield" I extract two stanzas, which, 
 in poetical expression, are the least attractive of any in the poem, but which com 
 mend themselves by their intrinsic truth and moral force : 
 
 Were half the power that fills the world with terror, 
 Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps and courts, 
 
 Given to redeem the human mind from error, 
 There were no need of arsenals and forts. 
 
 The warrior s name would be a name abhorred ! 
 
 And every nation that should lift again 
 Its hand against its brother, on its forehead 
 
 Would wear for evermore the curse of Cain ! 
 
53 
 
 of our system is regarded with more pride and confidence by 
 the enlightened sense of the country. To this, indeed, all the 
 other concerns of Government, all its complications of ma 
 chinery, are in a manner subordinate, since it is for the sake 
 of justice that men come together in states and establish 
 laws. What part of the Government can compare in im 
 portance with the Federal Judiciary, that great balance 
 wheel of the Constitution, controlling the relations of the 
 States to each other, the legislation of Congress and of the 
 States, besides private interests to an incalculable amount ? 
 Nor can the citizen, who discerns the true glory of his coun 
 try, fail to recognize in the judicial labors of MARSHALL, now 
 departed, and in the immortal judgments of STORY, who is 
 still spared to us, serus in cesium redeat a higher claim to 
 admiration and gratitude than can be found in any triumph 
 of battle. The expenses of the administration of Justice, 
 throughout the United States, under the Federal Government, 
 in 1842, embracing the salaries of the judges, the cost of 
 juries, court-houses and all officers thereof, in short all the 
 outlay by which Justice, according to the requirements of 
 Magna Charta, is carried to every man s door, amounted to 
 $560,990, a larger sum than is usually appropriated for this 
 purpose, but how insignificant compared with the demands of 
 the army and navy ! 
 
 Let me allude to one more curiosity of waste. It appears, 
 by a calculation founded on the expenses of the Navy, that 
 the average cost of each gun, carried over the ocean, for 
 one year, amounts to about fifteen thousand dollars ;* a sum 
 sufficient to sustain ten professors of Colleges, and equal to 
 the salaries of all the judges of the Supreme Court of Mas 
 sachusetts and the Governor combined ! 
 
 Such are a few brief illustrations of the tax which the 
 nations of the world, and particularly our own country, im 
 pose on the people, in time of profound peace, for no purpose 
 of good, but only in obedience to the spirit of war. As we 
 wearily climb, in this survey, from expenditure to expendi 
 ture, from waste to waste, we seem to pass beyond the region 
 of ordinary calculation ; Alps on Alps arise, on whose crown 
 ing heights of everlasting ice, far above the habitations of 
 man, where no green thing lives, where no creature draws its 
 breath, we behold the cold, sharp, flashing glacier of War. 
 
 In the contemplation of this spectacle the soul swells with 
 
 * Mr. Coues tract, What is the use of the Navy of the United States ? 
 
54 
 
 alternate despair and hope ; with despair, at the thought of 
 such wealth, capable of rendering such service to humanity, 
 not merely wasted but given to perpetuate hate ; with hope, 
 as the blessed vision arises of the devotion of all these incal 
 culable means to the purposes of peace. The whole world 
 labors at this moment with poverty and distress ; and the 
 painful question occurs to every observer, in Europe as well 
 as at home, what shall become of the poor, the increasing 
 standing army of the poor. Could the humble voice that 
 now addresses you penetrate those distant counsels, or coun 
 sels nearer home, it would say, disband your standing armies 
 of soldiers; abandon your fortifications and arsenals, or dedi 
 cate them to works of beneficence, as the statue of Jupiter 
 Capitol inus was changed to the image of a Christian saint ; 
 apply your navy to purposes of commerce ; in fine, utterly 
 forsake the present incongruous system of armed peace ! 
 
 That I may not seem to press to this conclusion with too 
 much haste, at least as regards our own country, I shall con 
 sider briefly, as becomes the occasion, the asserted usefulness 
 of the national defences which it is proposed to abandon. 
 
 What is the use of the Standing Army of the United 
 States ? It has been a principle of freedom, during many 
 generations, to avoid a standing army ; and one of the com 
 plaints in the Declaration of Independence was that George 
 III. had quartered large bodies of troops in the colonies. For 
 the first few years, after the adoption of the Federal Consti 
 tution, during our weakness, before our power was assured, 
 before our name had become respected in the family of na 
 tions, under the administration of Washington, a small sum 
 was deemed ample for the military establishment of the 
 United States. It was only when the country, at a later day, 
 had been touched by the insanity of war, that it surrendered 
 to military prejudices, and, abandoning the true economy of 
 a Republic, cultivated a military spirit, and lavished the 
 means, which it begrudged to the purposes of Peace, in vain 
 preparation for War. It may now be said of the army of 
 the United States, as Dunning said of the prerogatives of 
 the crown, it has increased, is increasing, and ought to be 
 diminished. At this moment there are more than fifty-five 
 military posts in the country. Of what use is the detach 
 ment of the second regiment of Artillery in the quiet town 
 of New London in Connecticut? Of what use is the de 
 tachment of the first regiment of Artillery in that pleasant re 
 sort of fashion, Newport ? No person, who has not lost all 
 
55 
 
 sensibility to the dignity of human nature, can observe with 
 out mortification, the discipline, the drilling, the marching and 
 countermarching, the putting guns to the shoulder and the 
 dropping them to the earth, which fill the lives of the poor 
 soldiers, and prepare them to become the mere inanimate 
 parts of a mere machine, to which the great living master of 
 the art of war has likened an army. And this sensibility 
 must be much more offended when he beholds a number of 
 the ingenuous youth of the country, under the auspices of the 
 Government, amidst the bewitching scenery of West Point, 
 trained to these same farcical and humiliating exercises.* It 
 is time that the people should declare the army to be an 
 utterly useless branch of the public service ; but not merely 
 useless, also a seminary of idleness and vice, breeding man 
 ners uncongenial with our institutions, shortening the lives of 
 those whom it enlists, and maintained at an expense, as we 
 have already seen, which far surpasses all that is bestowed on 
 all the civil purposes of the Government. 
 
 But I hear the voice of some defender of this abuse, some 
 upholder of this "rotten borough" of our Constitution, 
 crying, the army is needed for the defence of the country ! 
 As well might you say, that the shadow is needed for the 
 defence of the body ; for what is the army of the United 
 States but the feeble shadow of the power of the American 
 people ! In placing the army on its present footing, so small 
 in numbers compared with the forces of the great European 
 States, our Government has tacitly admitted its superfluous- 
 ness as a means of defence. Moreover, there is one plea for 
 standing armies in Europe which cannot prevail here. They 
 are supposed to be needed by Governments, which do not 
 proceed from the popular voice, to sustain their power. The 
 monarchs of the Old World, like the chiefs of the ancient 
 German tribes, are upborne on the shields of the soldiery. 
 Happily with us the Government springs from the hearts of 
 the people, and needs no janizaries for its support. It only 
 remains to declare distinctly, that the country will repose, in 
 the consciousness of right, without the wasteful excess of 
 supporting soldiers, lazy consumers of the fruits of the earth, 
 who might do the State good service in the various depart 
 ments of useful industry. 
 
 What is the use of the Navy of the United States ? The 
 
 * The amount appropriated by Congress for the institution of West Point, since 
 its establishment, is $4,002,901 15. 
 
56 
 
 annual expense of our Navy for several years past has been 
 upwards of six millions of dollars. For what pupose is this 
 paid ? Not for the apprehension of pirates ; for frigates 
 and ships of the line are of too great bulk to be of service 
 for this purpose. Not for the suppression of the Slave 
 Trade ; for under the stipulations with Great Britain, we 
 employ only eighty guns in this holy alliance. Not to pro 
 tect our coasts ; for all agree that our few ships would form 
 an unavailing defence against any serious attack. Not for 
 these purposes all will admit; but for the protection of our 
 Navigation. This is not the occasion for minute calcula 
 tions. Suffice it to say, that an intelligent merchant, who has 
 been extensively engaged in commerce for the last twenty 
 years, and who speaks, therefore, with the authority of 
 knowledge, has demonstrated in a tract of perfect clearness, 
 that the annual amount of the freights of the whole mercan 
 tile marine of the country does not equal the annual expendi 
 ture of the Navy of the United States.* Protection at such 
 cost is more ruinous than one of Pyrrhus victories ! 
 
 In objecting to the Navy, I wish to limit myself to the 
 Navy as an asserted arm of national defence. So far as it 
 may be necessary, as a part of the police of the seas, to 
 purge them of pirates, and above all to defeat the hateful 
 traffic in human flesh, it is a proper arm of government. The 
 free cities of Hamburgh and Bremen, survivors of the great 
 Hanseatic League, with a commerce that whitens the most 
 distant seas, are without a single ship of war. Let the United 
 States be willing to follow their wise example, and abandon 
 an institution which has already become a vain and most ex 
 pensive TOY ! 
 
 What is the use of the fortifications of the United States ? 
 We have already seen the enormous sums which have been 
 locked in the dead hands, in the odious mortmain, of their 
 everlasting masonry. This is in the hope of saving the coun 
 try thereby from the horrors of conquest and bloodshed. 
 And here let me meet this suggestion with frankness and 
 distinctness. I will not repeat what has been set forth in an 
 earlier part of my remarks, the considerations showing that 
 in our age, no war of strict self-defence can possibly arise, no 
 
 * I refer to Mr. Coues tract, "What is the use of the Navy of the United 
 States?" which has already produced a strong effect on many minds, the natural 
 consequence of its unanswerable arguments and statements. No person should 
 undertake to vindicate the Navy, or sanction appropriations for its support, with 
 out answering this tract. 
 
57 
 
 war which can be supported by the consciences of those even 
 who disclaim the highest standard of the gospel ; but I will 
 suppose the case of a war, unjust and unchristian it must be, 
 between our country and one of the great powers of Europe. 
 In such a war, what would be the effect of the fortifications ? 
 Clearly to invite the attack, which they would in all proba 
 bility be inadequate to defeat. It is a rule now recognized 
 even in the barbarous code of war, one branch of which has 
 been illustrated with admirable ability in the diplomatic cor 
 respondence of Mr. Webster, that non-combatants shall not, 
 in any way, be molested, and that the property of private 
 persons shall in all cases be held sacred. So firmly did the 
 Duke of Wellington act upon this rule, that throughout the 
 murderous campaigns of Spain, and afterwards when he en 
 tered France, flushed with the victory of Waterloo, he di 
 rected that his army should pay for all provisions, and even 
 for the forage of their horses. The war is carried on against 
 public property,- against fortifications, navy-yards and arse 
 nals. But if these do not exist, there can be no aliment, no 
 fuel for the flarne. Every new fortification and every addi 
 tional gun in our harbor is, therefore, not a safeguard, but a 
 source of danger to our city. Better throw them in the sea, 
 than madly allow them to draw to our homes the lightning of 
 battle, without, alas, any conductor to hurry its terrors inno 
 cently beneath the concealing bosom of the earth ! 
 
 What is the use of the militia of the United States ? 
 This immense system spreads, with more than a hundred 
 arms over the whole country, sucking its best life-blood, the 
 unbought energies of the youth. The same farcical discipline, 
 shouldering arms and carrying arms, which we have observed 
 in the soldier, absorbs their time, though of course, to a much 
 less degree than in the regular army. We read with aston 
 ishment of the painted flesh, and uncouth vestments of our 
 progenitors, the ancient Britons. The generation will soon 
 come that will regard with equal wonder the pictures of their 
 ancestors, closely dressed in padded arid well-buttoned coats 
 of blue, " besmeared with gold," surmounted by a huge 
 mountain cap of shaggy bear-skin, and with a barbarous 
 device, typical of brute force, a tiger, painted on oil skin, 
 tied with leather to their backs ! In the streets of Pisa, the 
 galley-slaves are compelled to wear dresses stamped with the 
 name of the crime for which they are suffering punishment ; 
 as theft, robbery, murder. It is not a little strange, that 
 Christians, living in a land "where bells have tolled to 
 
58 
 
 church," should voluntarily adopt devices which, if they have 
 any meaning, recognize the example of beasts as worthy of 
 imitation by man.* The general considerations which belong 
 to the subject of preparations for war will illustrate the in 
 anity of the militia for purposes of national defence. I do 
 not know, indeed, that it is now strongly advocated on this 
 ground. It is most often spoken of as an important part of 
 the police of the country. I would not undervalue the bles 
 sings to be derived from an active, efficient, ever-wakeful 
 police ; and I believe that such a police has been long required 
 in our country. But the militia, composed of youth of un 
 doubted character, though of untried courage, is clearly in 
 adequate for this purpose. No person, who has seen them in 
 an actual riot, can hesitate in this judgment.t A very small 
 portion of the means which are absorbed by the militia, 
 
 * It is a curious illustration of the low standard of conduct to which men and 
 nations have appealed, that they have chosen emblems and armorial bearings 
 from beasts and birds of prey. The lion is rampant on the flag of England ; the 
 leopard on that of Scotland ; a double-headed eagle spreads its wings on the im 
 perial standard of Austria. After exhausting the known kingdom of nature, the 
 pennons of knights, like the knapsacks of our militia, were disfigured by imaginary 
 and impossible monsters, griffins, hippogriffs, unicorns, all intended to represent 
 the excess of brute force. Froissart records as a miracle, that a dove once rested 
 in its flight on the royal banner of France. The people of Massachusetts have 
 unconsciously adopted the same degrading standard. In the escutcheon which 
 is used as the seal of the State, there is a most unfortunate combination of dis 
 agreeable and unworthy suggestions. On that part which, in the language of 
 heraldry, is termed the shield, is placed an Indian, with a bow in his hand ; cer 
 tainly no agreeable memento, except to those who find honor in the disgraceful 
 wars in which our fathers robbed and murdered King Philip, of Pokanoket, and 
 his tribe, the rightful possessors of the soil. The crest is a raised arm, holding, 
 in a threatening attitude, a drawn sabre ; being precisely the emblem which is 
 borne on the flag of Algiers! The scroll, or legend, consists of the last of those 
 two lines, in bad Latin, from an unknown source, which we first encounter, as 
 they were inscribed by Algernon Sydney, in the Album at the University of Co 
 penhagen, in Denmark : 
 
 Minus hoBC inimica tyrannis, 
 Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem. 
 
 The Legislature of Massachusetts has adopted, with singular unanimity, resolu 
 tions expressing its earnest desire for the establishment of a General Convention, 
 or Congress of Nations, to adjudge questions between nations, and thus supersede 
 the imagined necessity of war. Would it not be an act of moral dignity, becom 
 ing the character which it vaunts before the world, to adopt a new seal ; at least to 
 erase that Algerine emblem, fit only for Corsairs, and those words of barbarous 
 Latin, which can awaken only the idea of ignorance, and brute force. If a Latin 
 motto be needed, it might be those words of Virgil, (( Pacisque imponere mo- 
 rem;" or that sentence of noble truth from Cicero, " Sine SUMMA JUSTITIA rem- 
 publicam geri nullo modo posse." De Republ. Lib. II. Cap. 44. 
 
 t The riot in Broad Street, in 1837, is often invoked by the devotees of the 
 militia (for it has devotees !) as an instance of the important aid derived from this 
 arm of the police. It will not be denied, however, that an apparatus much less 
 costly would have sufficed for the purpose. I hope I shall be pardoned if I ven 
 ture to correct a misapprehension which has extensively prevailed with regard to 
 
59 
 
 would provide a police that should be competent to all the 
 emergencies of domestic disorder and violence. 
 
 The City of Boston has long been convinced of the inex 
 pediency of a Fire Department composed of mere volunteers. 
 It is to be hoped that a similar conviction may pervade the 
 country with regard to the police. I am well aware, however, 
 that efforts to abolish the militia system will be encountered 
 by some of the dearest prejudices of the common mind ; not 
 only by the war spirit ; but by that other spirit, which first 
 animates childhood, and at a later day, " children of a larger 
 growth," inviting to finery of dress and parade, the same 
 spirit which fantastically bedecks the dusky feather-cinctured 
 chiefs of the soft regions warmed by the tropical sun ; which 
 inserts rings in the noses of the North American Indians; 
 which slits the ears of the Australian savages ; and tattoos 
 the New Zealand cannibals. 
 
 Such is a review of the true character and value of the 
 national defences of the United States ! It will be observed 
 that I have thus far regarded them in the plainest light of 
 ordinary worldly economy, without reference to those higher 
 considerations, founded on the history and nature of man, and 
 the truths of Christianity, which pronounce them to be vain. 
 It is grateful to know, that though they may yet have the 
 support of what Jeremy Taylor calls the " popular noises," 
 still the more economical, more humane, more wise, more 
 Christian system is daily commending itself to wide circles of 
 the good people of the land. All the virtues that truly elevate 
 a state are on its side. Economy, sick of the pigmy efforts 
 to staunch the smallest fountains and rills of exuberant ex 
 penditure, pleads that here is an endless, boundless river, 
 an Amazon of waste, rolling its turbid, unhealthy waters 
 vainly to the sea. It chides us with an unnatural inconsis 
 tency when we strain at a little twine and red tape, and 
 swallow the monstrous cables and armaments of war. Hu 
 manity pleads for the poor from whom such mighty means 
 are withdrawn. Wisdom frowns on these preparations as cal 
 culated to nurse sentiments inconsistent with Peace. Christi 
 anity calmly rebukes the spirit in which they have their 
 
 the services of the militia on that occasion. I had been on the ground, and in 
 the very houses the scene of the riot, for an hour previous to the appearance of 
 the militia, and am able to state distinctly, that before this arm of the police was 
 discerned in the street moving along " by blore of trump, and thump of drum," 
 the riot had ceased. A small number of intelligent, fearless and unarmed men 
 could have quelled it at a much earlier moment. 
 
60 
 
 origin, as being of little faith, and treacherous to her high 
 behests ; while History shows the sure progress of man, like 
 the lion in Paradise still " pawing to get free his hinder parts," 
 but certain, if he be true to his nature, to emancipate himself 
 from the restraints of earth. 
 
 The sentiment, that in time of peace we must prepare for 
 war, has been transmitted from distant ages when brute force 
 prevailed. It is the terrible inheritance, the darnnosa hxre- 
 ditas, which painfully reminds the people of our day of their 
 relations with the Past. It belongs to the rejected dogmas 
 of barbarism. It is the companion of those harsh rules of 
 tyranny by which the happiness of the many has been offered 
 up to the propensities of the few. It is the child of suspicion 
 and the forerunner of violence. Having in its favor the 
 almost uninterrupted usage of the world, it possesses a hold 
 on the common mind, which is not easily unloosed. And 
 yet the conscientious soul cannot fail, on careful observation, 
 to detect its most mischievous fallacy a fallacy the most 
 costly the world has witnessed, and which dooms nations to 
 annual tributes in comparison with which all that have been 
 extorted by conquests are as the widow s mite by the side of 
 Pharisaical contributions. So true is what Rousseau said, 
 and Guizot has since repeated, " that a bad principle is far 
 worse than a bad fact ;" for the operations of the one are 
 finite, while those of the other are infinite. 
 
 I speak of this principle with earnestness , for I believe it 
 to be erroneous and false, founded in ignorance and barbarism, 
 unworthy of an age of light, and disgraceful to Christians. 
 I have called it a principle ; but it is a mere prejudice sus 
 tained by human example only, and not by lofty truth in 
 obeying which we imitate the early mariners, who steered 
 from headland to headland and hugged the shore, unwilling 
 to venture upon the broad ocean, where their guide should 
 be the luminaries of Heaven. 
 
 Dismissing from our minds, the actual usage of nations on 
 the one side, and the considerations of economy on the other, 
 and regarding preparations for war in time of peace in the 
 clear light of reason, in a just appreciation of the nature of 
 man, and in the injunctions of the highest truth, and they 
 cannot fail to be branded as most pernicious. They are per 
 nicious on two grounds ; first, because they inflame the 
 people, who make them, exciting them to deeds of violence 
 which otherwise would be most alien to their minds ; and 
 second, because having their origin in the low motive of dis- 
 
61 
 
 trust and hate, they inevitably, by a sure law of the human 
 mind, excite a corresponding feeling in other nations. Thus 
 they are in fact not the preservers of peace, but the provokers 
 of war. 
 
 In illustration of the first of these grounds, it will occur to 
 every inquirer, that the possession of power is always in itself 
 dangerous, that it tempts the purest and highest natures to 
 self-indulgence, that it can rarely be enjoyed without abuse; 
 nor is the power to employ force in war, or otherwise, an 
 exception to this law. History teaches that the nations 
 possessing the greatest military forces, have always been the 
 most belligerent ; while the feebler powers have enjoyed, for 
 a longer period, the blessings of Peace. The din of war 
 resounds throughout more than seven hundred years of 
 Roman history, with only two short lulls of repose ; while 
 smaller states, less potent in arms, and without the excite 
 ment to quarrels on this account, have enjoyed long eras of 
 Peace. It is not in the history of nations only, that we find 
 proofs of this law. Like every great moral principle, it applies 
 equally to individuals. The experience of private life, in all 
 ages, confirms it. The wearing of arms has always been 
 a provocative to combat. It has excited the spirit and fur 
 nished the implements of strife. As we revert to the progress 
 of society in modern Europe, we find that the odious system 
 of private quarrels, of hostile meetings even in the street, 
 continued so long as men persevered in the habit of wearing 
 arms. Innumerable families were thinned by death received 
 in these hasty and often unpremeditated encounters; and the 
 lives of scholars and poets were often exposed to their rude 
 chances. Marlowe, " with all his rare learning and wit," 
 perished ignominiously under the weapon of an unknown ad 
 versary; and Savage, whose genius and misfortune inspired 
 the friendship and the eulogies of Johnson, was tried for mur 
 der committed in a sudden broil. " The expert swordsman," 
 says Mr. Jay,* " the practised marksman, is ever more ready 
 to engage in personal combats, than the man who is unaccus 
 tomed to the use of deadly weapons. In those portions of 
 our country where it is supposed essential to personal safety 
 to go armed with pistols and bowie-knives, mortal affrays 
 are so frequent as to excite but little attention, and to secure, 
 with rare exceptions, impunity to the murderer ; whereas, at 
 the North and East, where we are unprovided with such 
 
 * Address before the American Peace Society, pp. 23, 24. 
 
62 
 
 facilities for taking life, comparatively few murders of the 
 kind are perpetrated. We might, indeed, safely submit the 
 decision of the principle we are discussing to the calculations 
 of pecuniary interest. Let two men, equal in age and health, 
 apply for an insurance on their lives ; one known to be ever 
 armed to defend his honor and his life against every assail 
 ant; and the other a meek, unresisting Quaker. Can we 
 doubt for a moment which of these men would be deemed 
 by the Insurance Company most likely to reach a good old 
 age?" 
 
 The second of these grounds is a part of the unalterable 
 nature of man, which was recognized in early ages, though 
 unhappily it has been rarely made the basis of intercourse 
 among nations. It is an expansion of the old Horatian adage, 
 Si vis me Jlere, dolendum est primum ipsi tibi; if you 
 wish me to weep, you must yourself first weep. So are we 
 all knit together that the feelings in our own bosom awaken 
 corresponding feelings in the bosoms of others ; as harp an 
 swers to harp in its softest vibrations; as deep responds to deep 
 in the might of its passions. What within us is good invites 
 the good in our brother; generosity begets generosity; love 
 wins love ; Peace secures Peace ; while all within us that is 
 bad challenges the bad in our brother ; distrust engenders 
 distrust; hate provokes hate; War arouses War. Life is full 
 of illustrations of this beautiful law. Even the miserable 
 maniac, in whose mind the common rules of conduct are 
 overthrown, confesses its overruling power, and the vacant 
 stare of madness may be illumined by a word of love. The 
 wild beasts confess it; and what is the interesting story of Or 
 pheus, whose music drew in listening rapture the lions and pan 
 thers of the forest, but an expression of this prevailing law?* 
 
 Literature abounds in illustrations of this principle. Look 
 ing back to the early dawn of the world, one of the most 
 touching scenes which we behold, illumined by that Auroral 
 light, is the peaceful visit of the aged Priam to the tent of 
 Achilles to entreat the body of his son. The fierce combat 
 has ended in the death of Hector, whose unhonored corse the 
 
 * There is a striking illustration of this law in the incident recorded by Homer, 
 in the Odyssey (XIV. 30, 31), where Ulysses, on reaching his loved Ithaca, is 
 beset by dogs, who are described as wild beasts in ferocity, and who barking 
 rushed towards him; but he, with craft, (that is the word of Homer) seats him- 
 self upon the earth, and lets his staff fall from his hands ; thus in unarmed repose 
 finding protection. A similar incident is noticed by Mr. Mure in his entertaining 
 travels in Greece ; and also by Mr. Borrow in his Bible in Spain. Pliny remarks 
 that all dogs may be appeased in the same way. Impetus eorum, et saevitia miti- 
 gantur ab homine coneidente humi. Nat. Hist. Lib. VIII. cap. 40. 
 
63 
 
 bloody Greek has already trailed behind his chariot. The 
 venerable father, after twelve days of grief, is moved to efforts 
 to regain the remains of the Hector he had so dearly loved. 
 He leaves his lofty cedarn chamber, and with a single aged 
 attendant, unarmed, repairs to the Grecian camp, by the side 
 of the distant sounding sea. Entering alone, he finds Achil 
 les within his tent ; in the company of two of his chiefs. He 
 grasps his knees, and kisses those terrible homicidal hands, 
 which had taken the life of his son. The heart of the in 
 flexible, the angry, the inflamed Achilles is touched by the 
 sight which he beholds, and responds to the feelings of Priam. 
 He takes the suppliant by the hand, seats him by his side, 
 consoles his grief, refreshes his weary body, and concedes to 
 the prayers of a weak, unarmed old man, what all Troy in 
 arms could not win.* In this scene the poet, with uncon 
 scious power, has presented a picture of the omnipotence of 
 that law of our nature, making all mankind of kin, in obedi 
 ence to which no word of kindness, no act of confidence, falls 
 idly to the earth. 
 
 Among the legendary passages of Roman history, perhaps 
 none makes a deeper impression, than that scene, after the 
 Roman youth had been consumed at Allia, and the invading 
 Gauls under Brennus had entered the city, where we behold 
 the venerable Senators of the Republic, too old to flee, and 
 careless of surviving the Roman name, seated each on his 
 curule chair, in a temple, unarmed, looking, as Livy says, 
 more august than mortal, and with the majesty of the gods. 
 The Gauls gaze on them as upon sacred images, and the 
 hand of slaughter, which had raged through the streets of 
 Rome, is stayed by the sight of an assembly of unarmed old 
 men. At length a Gaul approaches and gently strokes with 
 his hands the silver beard of a Senator, who, indignant at the 
 license, smites the barbarian with his ivory staff; which was 
 the signal for general vengeance. Think you, that a band of 
 savages could have slain these Senators, if the appeal to 
 force had not first been made by one of their own number, t 
 
 * This scene fills a large part of a book of the Iliad. (XXIV.) It is instructive 
 to all, who would know what commends itself most truly to the heart of man, 
 what is most truly grand, to observe that the passages of Homer which receive 
 the most unquestioned admiration are not the bloody combats even of the bravest 
 chiefs, even of the gods themselves but those two passages in which he has 
 painted the gentle, unwarlike affections of our nature; the parting of Hector and 
 Andromache, and the supplication of Priam. 
 
 t This story is recounted by Livy, Lib. V. Cap. 4, 2; also by Plutarch in his 
 life of Camillas. It is properly repudiated by Niebuhr as a legend ; but is none 
 
64 
 
 Following this sentiment in the literature of modern times 
 we find its pervading presence. I will not dwell on the 
 examples which arise to the mind.* I will allude only to 
 that scene in Swedish poetry, where Frithiof, in deadly com 
 bat with Atle, when the falchion of the. latter broke, said, 
 throwing away his own weapon ; 
 
 Swordless foeman s life 
 
 Ne er dyed this gallant blade. 
 
 The two champions now closed in mutual clutch ; they hugged 
 like bears, says the Poet ; 
 
 Tis o er; for Frithioff s matchless strength 
 
 Has felled his ponderous size ; 
 And neath that knee, at giant length, 
 
 Supine the Viking lies. 
 " But fails my sword, thou Berserk swart !" 
 
 The voice rang far and wide, 
 "Its point should pierce thy inmost heart, 
 
 Its hilt should drink the tide." 
 " Be free to lift the weaponed hand," 
 
 Undaunted Atle spoke, 
 <e Hence, fearless, quest thy distant brand T 
 
 Thus I abide the stroke." 
 
 Frithiof regains his sword, intent to close the dread debate, 
 while his adversary awaits the stroke ; but his heart responds 
 to the generous courage of his foe ; he cannot injure one 
 who has shown such confidence in him ; 
 
 This quelled his ire, this checked his arm, 
 Outstretched the hand of peace. ."t 
 
 I cannot leave these illustrations without alluding particu 
 larly to the history of the treatment of the insane, which is 
 full of deep instruction, showing how strong in nature must 
 be the principle, which leads us to respond to the conduct 
 and feelings of others. When Pinel first proposed to remove 
 the heavy chains from the raving maniacs of the hospitals of 
 
 the less important, as an illustration of that law, which is considered in the text. 
 The heart of man confesses that the Roman Senator provoked denth for himself 
 and associates. 
 
 * Guizot preserves an instance of the effect which was produced by an unarmed 
 man before a violent multitude, employing the word instead of the sword. (Gui 
 zot, Histoire de la Civilization, Tom. II. p. 36.) Who can forget that finest scene 
 in that noble historical romance, the Promessi Sposi, where Fra Christofero, in 
 an age of violence, after slaying a comrade in a broil, in unarmed penitence, 
 seeks the presence of the family and retainers of his victim, and awakens by his 
 dignified gentleness, the admiration of those who were mad with the desire of 
 vengeance? A popular romance, which has just left the press, and is now read 
 in both hemispheres, Le Juif Errant, by Eugene Sue, has an interesting picture, 
 at the close of the second volume, of the superiority of Christian courage over 
 the hired and trained violence of soldiers. See Appendix, Note F. 
 
 t Tegner s Frithiof s Sago, Canto XI. translated by Strong ; Longfellow s Poets 
 and Poetry of Europe, p. Ml. 
 
65 
 
 Paris, he was regarded as one who saw visions, or dreamed 
 dreams. His wishes were gratified at last ; and the change 
 in the conduct of his patients was immediate ; the wrinkled 
 front of evil passions was smoothed into the serene counte 
 nance of Peace. The old treatment by force is now univer 
 sally abandoned ; the law of love has taken its place ; and 
 all these unfortunates mingle together, unvexed by those 
 restraints, which implied suspicion, and, therefore, aroused 
 opposition. The warring propensities, which once filled with 
 confusion and strife the hospitals for the insane while they 
 were controlled by force, are a dark but feeble type of the 
 present relations of nations, on whose hands are the heavy 
 chains of military preparations, assimilating the world to one 
 great mad-house ; while the peace and good-will which now 
 abound in these retreats, are the happy emblems of what 
 awaits the world when it shall have the wisdom to recognize 
 the supremacy of the higher sentiments of our nature ; of 
 gentleness, of confidence, of love ; 
 
 making their future might 
 
 Magnetic o er the fixed untrembling heart. 
 
 I might also dwell on the recent experience, so full of 
 delightful wisdom, in the treatment of the distant, degraded 
 convicts of New South Wales,* showing the importance of 
 confidence and kindness on the part of their overseers, in 
 awakening a corresponding sentiment even in these outcasts, 
 from whose souls virtue seems, at first view, to be wholly 
 blotted out. Thus from all quarters, from the far-off past, 
 from the far-away Pacific, from the verse of the poet, from 
 the legend of history, from the cell of the mad-house, from 
 the assembly of transported criminals, from the experience of 
 daily life, from the universal heart of man, ascends the spon 
 taneous tribute to the prevailing power of that law, according 
 to which the human heart responds to the feelings by which 
 it is addressed, whether of confidence or distrust, of love or 
 hate. 
 
 It will be urged that these instances are exceptions to the 
 general laws by which mankind are governed. It is not so. 
 They are the unanswerable evidence of the real nature of 
 man. They reveal the divinity of humanity, out of which 
 all goodness, all happiness, all true greatness can alone 
 proceed. They disclose susceptibilities which are general, 
 which are confined to no particular race of men, to no period 
 
 * The reader is referred to the several publications of Captain Machonichie, 
 whose labors of beneficence entitle him to more than a vulgar military laurel. 
 
 5 
 
66 
 
 of time, to no narrow circle of knowledge and refinement 
 susceptibilities which are present wherever two or more 
 human beings come together. It is, then, on the impregnable 
 ground of the universal and unalterable nature of man, that 
 I place the fallacy of that prejudice, in obedience to which in 
 time of peace we prepare for war. 
 
 But this prejudice is not only founded on a misconception 
 of the nature of man ; it is abhorrent to Christianity, which 
 teaches that Love is more puissant than Force. To the 
 reflecting mind the Omnipotence of God himself is less dis 
 cernible in the earthquake and the storm than in the gentle 
 but quickening rays of the sun, and the sweet descending 
 dews. And he is a careless observer who does not recognize 
 the superiority of gentleness and kindness, as a mode of 
 exercising influence, or securing rights among men. As the 
 winds of violence beat about them, they hug those mantles, 
 which they gladly throw to the earth under the genial warmth 
 of a kindly sun. Thus far, nations have drawn their weapons 
 from the earthly armories of Force, unmindful of those others 
 of celestial temper from the house of Love. 
 
 But Christianity not only teaches the superiority of Love 
 over Force ; it positively enjoins the practice of the one, and 
 the rejection of the other. It says : " Love your neighbors ;" 
 but it does not say : " In time of Peace rear the massive 
 fortification, build the man of war, enlist armies, train the 
 militia, and accumulate military stores to be employed in 
 future quarrels with your neighbors." Its precepts go still 
 further. They direct that we should do unto others as we 
 would have them do unto us a golden rule for the conduct 
 of nations as well as individuals, called by Confucius the 
 virtue of the heart, and made by him the basis of the nine 
 maxims of Government which he presented to the sovereigns 
 of his country ;* but how inconsistent with that distrust of 
 others, in wrongful obedience to which nations, in time of 
 Peace, seem to sleep like soldiers on their arms. But its pre 
 cepts go still further. They enjoin patience, suffering, for 
 giveness of evil, even the duty of benefiting a destroyer, " as 
 the sandal wood, in the instant of its overthrow, sheds per 
 fume on the axe which fells it." And can a people, in whom 
 this faith is more than an idle word, consent to such enormous 
 sacrifices of money, in violation of its plainest precepts ? 
 
 The injunction, "Love one another," is applicable to 
 nations as well as individuals. It is one of the great laws of 
 
 * Oeuvres de Bernardin de St. Pierre, Harmonies de la Nature, Tom. 10, p. 138 
 
67 
 
 Heaven. And any one may well measure his nearness to God 
 by the degree to which he regulates his conduct by this truth. 
 
 In response to these successive views, founded on consid 
 erations of economy, of the true nature of man, and of 
 Christianity, I hear the skeptical note of some defender of 
 the transmitted order of things, some one who wishes " to 
 fight for Peace," saying, these views are beautiful but 
 visionary ; they are in advance of the age ; the world is not 
 yet prepared for their reception. To such persons (if there 
 be such), I would say ; nothing can be beautiful that is not 
 true ; but these views are true ; the time is now come for 
 their reception ; now is the day and now is the hour. Every 
 effort to impede their progress arrests the advancing hand on 
 the great dial-plate of human happiness. 
 
 The name of Washington is invoked as an authority for a 
 prejudice which Economy, Humanity and Christianity all 
 declare to be false. Mighty and reverend as is his name, 
 more mighty and more reverend is truth. The words of 
 counsel which he gave were in accordance with the spirit of 
 his age, an age which was not shocked by the slave-trade. 
 But his lofty soul, which loved virtue, and inculcated justice 
 and benevolence, frowns upon the efforts of those who would 
 use his authority as an incentive to war. God forbid that 
 his sacred character should be profanely stretched, like the 
 skin of John Ziska, on a militia drum to arouse the martial 
 ardor of the American people !* 
 
 * The following table of the Military and Naval Expenditures of the United 
 tates, during the eight years of the administration of Washington, compared 
 with those for the last eight years, to which I have had access, will show how 
 his practice accords with that of our day : 
 
 Years. 
 
 Military Establishment. 
 
 Naval Establishment. 
 
 1789-91 
 1792 
 1793 
 1794 
 1795 
 1796 
 Total during the ei^ht years 
 
 $ 835,000 
 1,223,594 
 1,237,620 
 2,733,540 
 2,573,059 
 1,474,661 
 
 $570 
 53 ! 
 
 61,409 
 410,562 
 
 274,784 
 
 of Washington, 
 
 1835 
 1836 
 1837 
 1838 
 1839 
 1S40 
 1842 
 1843 
 
 $10,078,092 
 
 9,420,313 
 18,466,110 
 19,417,274 
 19,936,412 
 14,268,981 
 11,621,438 
 13,903,898 
 8,248,918 
 
 $847,378 
 
 3,864,939 
 5,800,763 
 6,852,060 
 5,175,771 
 6,225,003 
 6,124,445 
 6,246,503 
 7,963,678 
 
 Total during eight years. 
 
 ^114.283.244 
 
 &49.053 473 
 
 ring eigni years, $114,283,244 $49,053.473 
 
 Thus it appears that the expenditures for the defences of the country, under 
 
68 
 
 It is melancholy to consider the impediments which truth 
 encounters on its first appearance. A large portion of man 
 kind, poising themselves on the flagitious fallacy, that What 
 ever is, is right, avert their countenances from all that is 
 inconsistent with established usage. I have already, in 
 another part of this address, set forth the superiority of prin 
 ciple to any human example ; I would here repeat that the 
 practice of nations can be no apology for a system which is 
 condemned by such principles as I have now considered. 
 Truth enters the world like a humble child, with few to re 
 ceive her; it is only when she has grown in years and 
 stature, and the purple flush of youthful strength beams from 
 her face, that she is sought and wooed. It has been thus in 
 all ages. Nay, more ; there is often an irritation excited by 
 her presence ; and men who are kind and charitable forget 
 their kindness and lose their charity towards the unaccus 
 tomed stranger. It was this feeling which awarded a dungeon 
 to Galileo, when he declared that the earth moved round the 
 sun ; which neglected the great discovery of the circulation of 
 the blood by Harvey ; and which bitterly opposed the divine 
 philanthropy of Clarkson, when he first denounced the wick 
 edness of the slave-trade. But the rejected truths of to-day 
 shall become the chief corner-stones to the next generation. 
 
 Auspicious omens in the history of the past and in the 
 present, cheer us for the future. The terrible wars of the 
 French Revolution were the violent rending of the body 
 which preceded the exorcism of the fiend. Since the morn 
 ing stars first sang together, the world has not witnessed a 
 peace so harmonious and enduring as that which now blesses 
 the Christian nations. Great questions between them, 
 fraught with strife, and in another age, sure heralds of war, 
 are now determined by arbitration or mediation. Great po 
 litical movements, which only a few short years ago must 
 have led to forcible rebellion, are now conducted by peaceful 
 discussion. Literature, the press, and various societies, all 
 join in the holy work of inculcating good-will to man. The 
 spirit of humanity now pervades the best writings, whether 
 
 the sanction of Washington, amounted to about eleven million dollars, while those 
 during a recent similar period of eight years, stretch to upwards of one hundred 
 and sixty four million of dollars / To him who quotes the precept of Washing 
 ton, I commend the practice. All will agree that, in this age, when the whole 
 world is at peace, and when our power is assured, there is less need of these pre 
 parations than in an age convulsed with war, when our power was little respected. 
 The only semblance of an argument in their favor is founded in the increased 
 wealth of the country ; but the capacity of the country to endure taxation is no 
 criterion of its justice! 
 
69 
 
 the elevated philosophical inquiries of the Vestiges of Crea 
 tion, the ingenious but melancholy moralizings of the Story 
 of a Feat her, or the overflowing raillery of Punch.* Genius 
 can never be so Promethean as when it bears the heavenly 
 fire of love to the hearths of men. 
 
 It was Dr. Johnson, in the last age, who uttered the de 
 testable sentiment, that he liked "a good hater 5" the man of 
 this age shall say he likes " a good lover." A poet, whose 
 few verses will bear him on his immortal flight with unflag 
 ging wing, has given expression to this sentiment in words of 
 uncommon pathos and power :t 
 
 He prayeth well who loveth well 
 All things, both great and small. 
 
 He prayeth best who loveth best 
 Both man, and bird, and beast, 
 For the dear God who loveth us, 
 He made and loveth all. 
 
 Every where the ancient law of hate is yielding to the law 
 of love. It is seen in the change of dress ; the armor of 
 complete steel was the habiliment of the knight ; and the 
 sword was an indispensable companion of the gentleman of 
 the last century ; but he would be thought a madman or a 
 bully who should wear either now. It is seen in the change 
 in domestic architecture ; the places once chosen for castles or 
 houses, were in the most savage, inaccessible retreats, where 
 the massive structure was reared, destined solely to repel at 
 tacks, and to enclose its inhabitants. The monasteries and 
 churches were fortified, and girdled by towers, ramparts and 
 ditches, and a child was often stationed as a watchman, 
 not of the night, but to observe what passed at a distance, 
 and announce the approach of the enemy !J The houses of 
 the peaceful citizens in towns were castellated, often without 
 so much as an aperture for light near the ground, and with 
 
 * While this Oration was passing through the press, I read in one of the public 
 prints, a letter, dated Birmingham, July 3, 1845, from which I make the following 
 extract- " The Peace Question makes rapid progress in this country. I verily 
 believe that if the people were polled to-morrow, nine-tenths of them would 
 pronounce all war to be unchristian, and not a few would vote for the entire abro- 
 aation of our military and naval forces. The London Peace Society is doing 
 much to deepen and confirm this feeling, and nearly all our cheap periodicals are 
 peace-toned." The last fact is of peculiar importance ; for it is in this way that 
 the hearts of the people are to be touched. The agitation in Ireland, and that 
 gigantic combination in England, the Anti Corn Law League, proceed on the 
 peace principle. " Remember," says Mr. O Connell, in words that will be im 
 mortal, "that no political change is worth a single crime, or above all, a single 
 drop of human blood." 
 
 t Coleridge; Ancient Mariner. 
 
 } Guizot, Histoire de la Civilization, Tom. Ill, 
 
70 
 
 loop-holes above, through which the shafts of the cross-bow 
 might be aimed.* In the system of fortifications and pre 
 parations for war, nations act towards each other in the spirit 
 of distrust and barbarism, which we have traced in the in 
 dividual, but which he has now renounced. In so doing, 
 they take counsel of the wild boar in the fable, who whetted 
 his tusks on a tree of the forest, when no enemy was near, 
 saying that in time of peace he must prepare for war. But 
 has not the time now come, when man whom God created in 
 his own image, and to whom He gave the heaven-directed 
 countenance, shall cease to look down to the beasts for ex 
 amples of conduct ? 
 
 We have already offered our homage to an early monarch 
 of France, for his efforts in abolishing the Trial by Battle and 
 in the cause of Peace. To another monarch of France, in 
 our own day, a descendant of St. Louis, worthy of the illus 
 trious lineage, Louis Philippe, belongs the honest fame of 
 first publishing from the thronet the truth, that Peace was 
 endangered by preparations for War. " The sentiment, or 
 rather the principle," he says, "that in peace you must 
 prepare for war, is one of difficulty and danger ; for while 
 we keep armies on land to preserve peace, they are, at the 
 same time, incentives and instruments of war. He rejoiced 
 in all efforts to preserve peace, for that was what all need. 
 He thought the time was coming when we shall get rid 
 entirely of war in all civilized countries/ This time has 
 been hailed by a generous voice from the army itself, by a 
 Marshal of France, who gave as a toast at a public dinner in 
 Paris,J the following words of salutation to a new and 
 approaching era of happiness : " To the pacific union of the 
 great human family, by the association of individuals, nations 
 and races ! to the annihilation of war ! To the transforma 
 tion of destructive armies into corps of industrious laborers, 
 
 * The two volumes of colored plates from the illuminations of Froissart, which 
 have been recently published, will give an accurate idea of the system of de 
 fences within which private individuals sheltered themselves. For other illustra 
 tions, see Appendix, Note G. 
 
 t In reply to an address by the deputation from the London Peace Convention, 
 in 1843. 
 
 | Marshal Bugeaud, Governor of Algiers, gave this toast April 7, 1840, at one 
 of several public dinners at that time, to commemorate the character and services 
 of Fourier. How unlike this humane and noble sentiment of the Marshal of 
 France, are the braggart standing toasts at the celebrations of our National Anni 
 versary, vaunting in swelling phrase, the glories of the P rmy, the navy, and the 
 militia, while the great interests of civilization, the administration of justice, 
 education, humanity, are neglected, or only introduced, like sour olives and mouldy 
 cheese, at the end of the feast. 
 
71 
 
 who will consecrate their lives to the cultivation and embel 
 lishment of the world !" Be it our duty to speed this con 
 summation ! 
 
 To William Penn belongs the distinction, destined to 
 brighten as men advance in virtue, of first, in human history, 
 establishing the Law of Love as a rule of conduct for the 
 intercourse of nations. While he recognized as a great end 
 of government, " to support power in reverence with the 
 people, and to secure the people from abuse of power,"* he 
 declined the superfluous protection of arms against foreign 
 force, and "aimed to reduce the savage nations by just and 
 gentle manners to the love of civil society and the Christian 
 religion." His serene countenance, as he stands with his 
 followers in what he called the sweet and clear air of Penn 
 sylvania, all unarmed, beneath the spreading elm, forming 
 the great treaty of friendship with the untutored Indians, 
 who fill with savage display the surrounding forest as far as 
 the eye can reach, not to wrest their lands by violence, but 
 to obtain them by peaceful purchase, is to my mind, the 
 proudest picture in the history of our country. " The great 
 God," said this illustrious Quaker, in his words of sincerity 
 and truth, addressed to the Sachems, " has written his law 
 in our hearts, by which we are taught and commanded to 
 love, and to help, and to do good to one another. It is not 
 our custom to use hostile weapons against our fellow crea 
 tures, for which reason we -have come unarmed. Our object 
 is not to do injury, but to do good. We have met, then, in 
 the broad pathway of good faith and good will, so that no ad 
 vantage can be taken on either side, but all is to be openness, 
 brotherhood and love ; while all are to be treated as of the 
 same flesh and blood."t These are, indeed, words of true 
 greatness. " Without any carnal weapons," says one of his 
 companions, " we entered the land, and inhabited therein as 
 safe as if there had been thousands of garrisons." " This 
 little State," says Oldmixon, " subsisted in the midst of six 
 Indian nations, without so much as a militia for its defence." 
 A great man, worthy of the mantle of Perm, the venerable 
 philanthropist, Clarkson, in his life of the founder of Penn 
 sylvania, says, " The Pennsylvanians became armed, though 
 without arms ; they became strong, though without strength ; 
 they became safe, without the ordinary means of safety. The 
 constable s staff was the only instrument of authority amongst 
 
 * Preface to Perm s Constitution. t Clarkson s Life of Penn, I. cap. 18. 
 
12 
 
 them for the greater part of a century, and never, during the 
 administration of Penn, or that of his proper successors, was 
 there a quarrel or a war."* 
 
 Greater than the divinity that doth hedge a king, is the 
 divinity that encompasses the righteous man, and the right 
 eous people. The flowers of prosperity smiled in the blessed 
 footprints of William Penn. His people were unmolested 
 and happy, while (sad, but true contrast !) those of other 
 colonies, acting upon the policy of the world, building forts, 
 and showing themselves in arms, not after receiving provoca 
 tion, but merely in the anticipation, or from the fear, of insults 
 or danger, were harassed by perpetual alarms, and pierced 
 by the sharp arrows of savage war.t 
 
 This pattern of a Christian Commonwealth never fails to 
 arrest the admiration of all who contemplate its beauties. It 
 drew an epigram of eulogy from the caustic pen of Voltaire, 
 and has been fondly painted by many virtuous historians. 
 Every ingenuous soul in our day offers his willing tribute to 
 those celestial graces of justice and humanity, by the side of 
 which the flinty hardness of the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock 
 seems earthly and coarse. 
 
 But let us not confine ourselves to barren words in recog 
 nition of virtue. While we see the right, and approve it, too, 
 let us dare to pursue it. Let us now, in this age of civiliza 
 tion, surrounded by Christian nations, be willing to follow 
 the successful example of Williajn Penn, surrounded by 
 savages. Let us, while we recognize those transcendent 
 ordinances of God, the Law of Right and the Law of Love, 
 the double suns which illumine the moral universe, 
 aspire to the true glory, and what is higher than glory, the 
 great good, of taking the lead in the disarming of the nations. 
 Let us abandon the system of preparation for war in time of 
 peace, as irrational, unchristian, vainly prodigal of expense, 
 and having a direct tendency to excite the very evil against 
 which it professes to guard. Let the enormous means thus 
 released from iron hands, be devoted to labors of beneficence. 
 Our battlements shall be schools, hospitals, colleges and 
 churches ; our arsenals shall be libraries ; our navy shall be 
 peaceful ships, on errands of perpetual commerce ; our army 
 shall be the teachers of youth, and the ministers of religion. 
 This is indeed, the cheap defence of nations. In such en- 
 
 * Life of Penn, II. cap. 23. 
 
 t Ample illustrations of this striking difference between the fate of the colony 
 of Pennsylvania, and its sister colonies, may be found in Clarkson, II. cap. 22. 
 
73 
 
 trenchments what Christian soul can be touched with fear. 
 Angels of the Lord shall throw over the land an invisible, but 
 impenetrable panoply ; 
 
 Or if virtue feeble were 
 
 Heaven itself would stoop to her.* 
 
 At the thought of such a change in policy, the imagina 
 tion loses itself in the vain effort to follow the various streams 
 of happiness, which gush forth as from a thousand hills. 
 Then shall the naked be clothed and the hungry fed. Insti 
 tutions of science and learning shall crown every hill-top ; 
 hospitals for the sick, and other retreats for the unfortunate 
 children of the world, for all who suffer in any way, in mind, 
 body or estate, shall nestle in every valley ; while the spires 
 of new churches shall leap exulting to the skies. The whole 
 land shall bear witness to the change ; art shall confess it in 
 the new inspiration of the canvass and the marble ; the harp 
 of the poet shall proclaim it in a loftier rhyme. Above all, 
 the heart of man shall bear witness to it, in the elevation of 
 his sentiments, in the expansion of his affections, in his devo 
 tion to the highest truth, in his appreciation of true greatness. 
 The eagle of our country, without the terror of his beak, and 
 dropping the forceful thunderbolt from his pounces, shall soar 
 with the olive of Peace, into untried realms of ether, nearer 
 to the sun. 
 
 And here let us review the field over which we have 
 passed. We have beheld war, a mode of determining justice 
 between nations, having its origin in an appeal, not to the 
 moral and intellectual part of man s nature, distinguishing him 
 from the beasts, but to that low part of his nature, which he 
 
 * These are the concluding words of that most exquisite creation of early 
 genius the Comus. I have seen them in Milton s own hand-writing, inscribed by 
 himself, during his travels in Italy, as a motto, in an Album ; thus showing that 
 they were regarded by him as expressing an important moral truth. The truth, 
 which is thus embalmed by the grandest poet of modern times, is also illustrated, 
 in familiar words, by the most graceful poet of antiquity. 
 
 Integer vita? scelerisque purus, 
 Non eget Mauri jaculis, neque arcu, 
 Nee venenatis gravida sagittia, 
 
 Fusee, pharetra. 
 
 Dryden pictures the same idea in some of his most magical lines ; 
 A milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged, 
 Fed on the lawns, and in the forest ranged, 
 Without unspotted, innocent within, 
 She feared n o danger, for she knew no sin. 
 
74 
 
 has in common with the beasts ; we have contemplated its 
 infinite miseries to the human race ; we have weighed its 
 sufficiency as a mode of determining justice between nations, 
 and found that it is a rude appeal to force or a gigantic game 
 of chance, in which God s children are profanely dealt with 
 as a pack of cards, while in its unnatural and irrational wick 
 edness, it is justly to be likened to the monstrous and impious 
 usage of Trial by Battle which disgraced the dark ages, thus 
 showing that, in this age of boasted civilization, justice be 
 tween nations is determined by the same rules of barbarous 
 brutal force which once controlled the relations between indi 
 viduals. We have next considered the various prejudices by 
 which War is sustained ; founded on a false belief in its 
 necessity; on the practice of nations past and present; on 
 the infidelity of the Christian Church; on a false idea of 
 honor ; on an exaggerated idea of the duties of patriotism ; 
 and lastly that monster prejudice, which draws its vampire 
 life from the vast preparations in time of peace for war; 
 dwelling at the last stage upon the thriftless, irrational and 
 unchristian character of these preparations, and catching a 
 vision of the exalted good that will be achieved when our 
 country, learning wisdom, shall aim at the true grandeur 
 of Peace. 
 
 And now, if it be asked why, on this National Anniversary, 
 in the consideration of the TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS, I 
 have thus dwelt singly and exclusively on war, it is, because 
 war is utterly and irreconcilably inconsistent with true great 
 ness. Thus far mankind has worshipped, in military glory, 
 an idol, compared with which the colossal images of ancient 
 Babylon or modern Hindostan are but toys ; and we, in this 
 blessed day of light, in this blessed land of freedom, are among 
 the idolaters. The Heaven-descended injunction, know 
 thyself, still speaks to an ignorant world from the distant 
 letters of gold at Delphi ; know thyself; know that the moral 
 nature is the most noble part of man ; transcending far that 
 part which is the seat of passion, strife and war ; nobler than 
 the intellect itself. Suppose war to be decided by force, 
 where is the glory? Suppose it to be decided by chance, 
 where is the glory ? No ; true greatness consists in imitating 
 as near as is possible for finite man, the perfections of an 
 Infinite Creator ; above all, in cultivating those highest per 
 fections, Justice and Love ; Justice, which like that of St. 
 Louis, shall not swerve to the right hand or to the left ; Love, 
 which like that of William Penn, shall regard all mankind of 
 
75 
 
 kin. " God is angry," says Plato, " when any one censures 
 a man like himself, or praises a man of an opposite cha 
 racter. And the God-like man is the good man,"* And 
 again, in another of those lovely dialogues, vocal with im 
 mortal truth, " Nothing resembles God more than that man 
 among us who has arrived at the highest degree of justice/ 5 ! 
 The true greatness of nations is in those qualities which con 
 stitute the greatness of the individual. It is not to be found 
 in extent of territory, nor in vastness of population, nor in 
 wealth; not in fortifications, or armies, or navies; not in the 
 phosphorescent glare of fields of battle ; not in Golgothas, 
 though covered by monuments that kiss the clouds ; for all 
 these are the creatures and representatives of those quali 
 ties of our nature, which are unlike any thing in God s 
 nature. 
 
 Nor is the greatness of nations to be found in triumphs of 
 the intellect alone, in literature, learning, science or art. The 
 .polished Greeks, the world s masters in the delights of lan 
 guage, and in range of thought, and the commanding Romans, 
 overawing the earth with their power, were little more than 
 splendid savages ; and the age of Louis XIV. of France, 
 spanning so long a period of ordinary worldly magnificence, 
 thronged by marshals bending under military laurels, en 
 livened by the unsurpassed comedy of Moliere, dignified by 
 the tragic genius of Corneille, illumined by the splendors of 
 Bossuet, is degraded by immoralities that cannot be men 
 tioned without a blush, by a heartlessness in comparison with 
 which the ice of Nova Zembla is warm, and by a succession 
 of deeds of injustice not to be washed out by the tears of all 
 the recording angels of Heaven. ij: 
 
 The true greatness of a nation cannot be in triumphs of 
 the intellect alone. Literature and art may widen the sphere 
 of its influence; they may adorn it; but they are in their 
 nature but accessaries. The true grandeur of humanity is 
 
 * Minos, $ 12. t Theaetetus, 87. 
 
 t The false glory of Louis XIV. which procured for him, from flattering cour 
 tiers and a barbarous world, the title of Great, was questioned by one of his own 
 subjects, the good Abbe de Saint Pierre. To this early Apostle of Humanity and 
 Peace, the author of the Projet de paix perpetuelle, the advocate of good will to 
 man, the world, as it wakes from its martial trance, shall offer large tributes of 
 admiration and gratitude. His voice was that of one crying in the wilderness ; 
 but it was the herald of the reign of Peace. He enriched the French language 
 with the word bienfaisance ; and D Alembert said that it was right that he should 
 have invented the word, who practised so largely the virtue which it expressed. 
 The good Abbe is not to be confounded with the eccentric and eloquent Bernardin 
 de Saint Pierre, the author of Paul and Virginia. 
 
76 
 
 in moral elevation, sustained, enlightened and decorated by 
 the intellect of man. The truest tokens of this grandeur in a 
 State are the diffusion of the greatest happiness among the 
 greatest number, and that passionless God-like Justice, which 
 controls the relations of the State to other States, and to all 
 the people, who are committed to its charge. 
 
 But war crushes with bloody heel all justice, all happiness, 
 all that is God-like in man. " It is," says the eloquent Robert 
 Hall, "the temporary repeal of all the principles of virtue." 
 True, it cannot be disguised, that there are passages in its 
 dreary annals cheered by deeds of generosity and sacrifice. 
 But the virtues which shed their charm over its horrors are 
 all borrowed of Peace ; they are emanations of the spirit of 
 love, which is so strong in the heart of man, that it survives 
 the rudest assaults. The flowers of gentleness, of kindliness, 
 of fidelity, of humanity, which flourish in unregarded luxu 
 riance in the rich meadows of Peace, receive unwonted ad 
 miration when we discern them in war, like violets shedding 
 their perfume on the perilous edges of the precipice, beyond 
 the smiling borders of civilization. God be praised for all the 
 examples of magnanimous virtue which he has vouchsafed to 
 mankind ! God be praised that the Roman Emperor, about 
 to start on a distant expedition of war, encompassed by 
 squadrons of cavalry and by golden eagles which moved in 
 the winds, stooped from his saddle to listen to the prayer of 
 the humble widow, demanding justice for the death of her 
 son !* God be praised that Sydney, on the field of battle, 
 gave with dying hand the cup of cold water to the dying 
 soldier ! That single act of self-forgetful sacrifice has conse 
 crated the fenny field of Zutphen, far, oh! far beyond its 
 battle; it has consecrated thy name, gallant Sydney, beyond 
 any feat of thy sword, beyond any triumph of thy pen. But 
 there are hands outstretched elsewhere than on fields of blood, 
 for so little as a cup of cold water ; the world is full of oppor 
 tunities for deeds of kindness. Let me not be told, then, of 
 the virtues of War. Let not the acts of generosity and 
 sacrifice, which have triumphed on its fields, be invoked in 
 its defence. In the words of Oriental imagery, the poisonous 
 tree, though watered by nectar, can produce only the fruit of 
 death ! 
 
 3|* This most admired instance of justice, according to the legends of the Catho 
 lic Church, opened to Trajan, although a heathen, the gates of salvation. Dante 
 found the scene and the visible parlare of the widow and Emperor storied on the 
 walls of Purgatory, and he has transmitted them in a passage which commends 
 itself hardly less than any in the Divine Poem. Purgatorio, Canto X. 
 
77 
 
 As we cast our eyes over the history of nations we discern 
 with horror the succession of murderous slaughters by which 
 their progress has been marked. As the hunter traces the 
 wild beast, when pursued to his lair by the drops of blood on 
 the earth, so we follow Man, faint, weary, staggering with 
 wounds, through the Black Forest of the Past, which he has 
 reddened with his gore. Oh ! let it not be in the future ages 
 as in those which we now contemplate. Let the grandeur 
 of man be discerned in the blessings which he has secured; 
 in the good he has accomplished ; in the triumphs of benevo 
 lence and justice; in the establishment of perpetual peace.* 
 
 As the ocean washes every shore, and clasps, with all-em 
 bracing arms, every land, while it bears on its heaving bosom 
 the products of various climes ; so Peace surrounds, protects 
 and upholds all other blessings. Without it commerce is 
 vain, the ardor of industry is restrained, happiness is blasted, 
 virtue sickens and dies. 
 
 And Peace has its own peculiar victories, in comparison 
 with which Marathon and Bannockburn and Bunker Hill, 
 fields held sacred in the history of human freedom, shall lose 
 their lustre. Our own Washington rises to a truly Heavenly 
 stature, not when we follow him over the ice of the Dela 
 ware to the capture of Trenton, not when we behold him 
 victorious over Cornwallis at Yorktown; but when we regard 
 him, in noble deference to justice, refusing the kingly crown 
 which a faithless soldiery proffered, and at a later day, up 
 holding the peaceful neutrality of the country, while he re 
 ceived unmoved the clamor of the people wickedly crying 
 for war. What glory of battle in England s annals will not 
 fade by the side of that great act of Justice, by which her 
 Legislature, at a cost of one hundred million dollars, gave 
 freedom to eight hundred thousand slaves! And when the 
 day shall come, (may these eyes be gladdened by its beams !) 
 that shall witness an act of greater justice still, the peaceful 
 emancipation of three millions of our fellow-men, "guilty of 
 a skin not colored as our own," now held in gloomy bondage, 
 
 * Man alone of the animal creation preys upon his own species ! The kingly 
 lion does not prey upon his brother lion ; the ferocious tiger does not prey upon 
 Kindred tigers. 
 
 Sedjam serpentum major concordia ; parcit 
 Cognatis maculis similis fera. Quando leoni 
 Fortior eripuit vitam leo ? quo nemore unquam 
 Exspiravit aper majoris dentibus apri ? 
 Indica tigris agit rabida cum tigride pacem 
 r Perpetuam. 
 
 Juvenal, Sat. XV. 159. 
 
78 
 
 under the constitution of our country, then shall there be a 
 victory, in comparison with which that of Bunker Hill shall 
 be as a farthing-candle held up to the sun. That victory 
 shall need no monument of stone. It shall be written on the 
 grateful hearts of uncounted multitudes, that shall proclaim 
 it to the latest generation. It shall be one of the great land 
 marks of civilization ; nay more, it shall be one of the links 
 in the golden chain by which Humanity shall connect itself 
 with the throne of God. 
 
 As the cedars of Lebanon are higher than the grass of the 
 valley ; as the heavens are higher than the earth ; as man is 
 higher than the beasts of the field ; as the angels are higher 
 than man ; as he that ruleth his spirit is higher than he that 
 taketh a city ; so are the virtues and victories of Peace higher 
 than the virtues and victories of War. 
 
 Far be from us, fellow-citizens, on this Anniversary, the 
 illusions of National freedom in which we are too prone to 
 indulge. We have but half done, when we have made our 
 selves free. Let not the scornful taunt be directed at us ; 
 "They wish to be free ; but know not how to be just"* 
 Freedom is not an end in itself; but a means only; a means 
 of securing Justice and Happiness, the real end and aim of 
 States, as of every human heart. It becomes us to inquire 
 earnestly if there is not much to be done by which these can 
 be promoted. If I have succeeded in impressing on your 
 minds the truths, which I have upheld to-day, you will be 
 ready to join in efforts for the Abolition of War, and of all 
 preparation for War, as indispensable to the true grandeur of 
 our country. 
 
 To this great work let me summon you. That Future 
 which filled the lofty visions of the sages and bards of Greece 
 and Rome, which was foretold by the prophets and heralded 
 by the evangelists, when man in Happy Isles, or in a new 
 Paradise, shall confess the loveliness of Peace, may be se 
 cured by your care, if not for yourselves, at least for your 
 children. Believe that you can do it, and you can do it. 
 The true golden age is before you, not behind you. If man 
 has been driven once from Paradise, while an angel with a 
 flaming sword forbade his return, there is another Paradise, 
 even on earth, which he may form for himself, by the culti 
 vation of the kindly virtues of life, where the confusion of 
 tongues shall be dissolved in the union of hearts, where there 
 
 * l\a veulent etre libres et ne savent pas etre justes. Abbe Sieyes. 
 
79 
 
 shall be a perpetual jocund spring, and sweet strains borne 
 on " the odoriferous wings of gentle gales," more pleasant 
 than the Vale of Tempe, richer than the garden of the Hes- 
 perides, with no dragon to guard its golden fruit. 
 
 Let it not be said that the age does not demand this work. 
 The mighty conquerors of the Past, from their fiery sepul 
 chres, demand it; the blood of millions unjustly shed in war 
 crying from the ground demands it ; the voices of all good 
 men demand it ; the conscience even of the soldier whispers 
 "Peace." There are considerations, springing from our 
 situation and condition, which fervently invite us to take the 
 lead in this great work. To this should bend the patriotic 
 ardor of the land ; the ambition of the statesman : the efforts 
 of the scholar ; the pervasive influence of the press ; the 
 mild persuasion of the sanctuary; the early teachings of the 
 school. Here, in ampler ether and diviner air, are untried 
 fields for exalted triumphs, more truly worthy the American 
 name, than any snatched from rivers of blood. War is 
 known as the Last Reason of Kings. Let it be no reason 
 of our Republic. Let us renounce and throw off for ever 
 the yoke of a tyranny more oppressive than any in the annals 
 of the world. As those standing on the mountain-tops first 
 discern the coming beams of morning, let us, from the van 
 tage-ground of liberal institutions, first recognize the ascend 
 ing sun of a new era ! Lift high the gates, and let the 
 King of Glory in the King of true Glory of Peace. I 
 catch the last words of music from the lips of innocence and 
 beauty ;* 
 
 And let the whole earth be filled with his glory ! 
 
 It is a beautiful picture in Grecian story, that there was at 
 least one spot, the small Island of Delos, dedicated to the 
 Gods, and kept at all times sacred from war, where the citi 
 zens of hostile countries met and united in a common wor 
 ship. So let us dedicate our broad country ! The Temple 
 of Honor shall be surrounded by the Temple of Concord, so 
 that the former can be entered only through the portals of 
 the latter ; the horn of Abundance shall overflow at its gates ; 
 the angel of Religion shall be the guide over its steps of 
 flashing adamant ; while within JUSTICE, returned to the 
 earth from her long exile in the skies, shall rear her serene 
 and majestic front. And the future chiefs of the Republic, 
 
 * The services of the choir at the Church, where the Oration was delivered, 
 were performed by the youthful daughters of the public schools of Boston. 
 
80 
 
 destined to uphold the glories of a new era, unspotted by 
 human blood, shall be " the first in PEACE, and the first in 
 the hearts of their countrymen." 
 
 But while we seek these blissful glories for ourselves, let 
 us strive to extend them to other lands. Let the bugles 
 sound the Truce of God to the whole world for ever. Let 
 the selfish boast of the Spartan women become the grand 
 chorus of mankind, that they have never seen the smoke of 
 an enemy s camp. Let the iron belt of martial music which 
 now encompasses the earth, be exchanged for the golden 
 cestus of Peace, clothing all with celestial beauty. History 
 dwells with fondness on the reverent homage, that was be 
 stowed, by massacreing soldiers, on the spot occupied by the 
 Sepulchre of the Lord. Vain man ! to restrain his regard to 
 a few feet of sacred mould ! The whole earth is the Sepul 
 chre of the Lord ; nor can any righteous man profane any 
 part thereof. Let us recognize this truth; and now, on this 
 Sabbath of our country, lay a new stone in the grand Temple 
 of Universal Peace, whose dome shall be as lofty as the 
 firmament of Heaven, as broad and comprehensive as the 
 earth itself. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 NOTE A. 
 
 [Referred to on page 8.] 
 
 THE following letter has been published at the suggestion of several friends, as 
 illustrating a topic considered in the text. 
 
 JULY 6th, 1845. 
 MY DEAR , 
 
 It has occurred to me that you might have thought me wanting in frankness, 
 when I avoided expressing a positive opinion with regard to the righteousness of 
 the resistance of our Fathers to taxation by the British Parliament. I am very 
 desirous, on many accounts, of not disturbing that question ; " Let the Dead Past 
 bury its Dead." I wish to confine myself to the Present and the Future. 
 
 There is one conclusion, following with irresistible force, from the assumptioa 
 that our Fathers were justifiable in their course, which neither of us would wish 
 to have promulgated. It relates to the present condition of our slaves. At the 
 time of the Stamp Act and Tea Tax, the population of the Colonies amounted to 
 about two millions (according to Mr. Burke, though our writers have called it 
 three); their grievance, their slavery, was the necessity of paying a few pence, 
 more or less on certain things, under the direction of a Parliament in which they 
 were not represented. No just or humane person can fail to perceive that all this 
 was as a feather compared with the rod of oppression, now held by our country 
 over more than three millions of fellow-men. If two millions were justified in re 
 sisting by force the assumptions of the British Parliament, as contrary to the* lavr 
 of nature, the principles of the common law, and the rights of Freedom; then, a 
 fortiori, the three millions of blacks, into whose souls we thrust the iron of the 
 deadliest slavery the world has yet witnessed, would be justified in resisting by 
 force the power that holds them in bondage. Can we proclaim such a truth ? 
 
 To me, the more humane, the more Christian, the more expedient course, seems 
 to be to leave that great question undisturbed in the coffins of our Fathers. There 
 are minor rules of propriety, not to say of politeness and good breeding, that seem 
 to indicate the same conclusion. The customary tone of reference to the war of 
 the Revolution is in a spirit which would be considered indelicate with regard to 
 any private or personal experience; and it seems to me well worthy of considera 
 tion, whether the time has not come for nations to put aside their habits of boast 
 ing, as indecorous, if not unchristian. The propriety of this course must com 
 mend itself, not only to those who may regard the conduct of the Fathers of the 
 Revolution as questionable, but even to those who think it entirely justifiable. 
 
 6 
 
82 
 
 Even if the great trial by battle be regarded as a rational mode of determining 
 justice between nations ; should not the place of encounter be held rather as a 
 iield of execution than of triumph ? We do not erect monuments to commemo 
 rate the scenes of public executions. * * * * 
 
 Very faithfully yours, 
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 
 
 NOTE B. 
 
 [Referred to on page 23.] 
 
 IN this note I propose to present a sketch of the history of Private Wars and 
 of the Trial by Battle. Let it be borne in mind, that the same sentiments which 
 lead us to condemn these as impious and monstrous, equally condemn wars be 
 tween nations. I cannot dwell too much upon the importance of this parallel ; 
 and I would here repeat what is set forth in the text, though not with sufficient 
 prominence, that all war between civilized Christian nations is a mere TRIAL OF 
 HIGHT, or a mode of determining justice between them, in this respect resembling 
 precisely the Trial by Battle. It is a mode of litigation, or of determining a Lis 
 Pendens between nations. This, of course, excludes the idea of self-defence. The 
 supposed right of self-defence might arise, if a pirate should enter our harbors, for 
 the mere purpose of murder or plunder; but it is irrational and vain to suppose 
 that there is any element of self-defence in a war to determine a dispute or litiga 
 tion between nations. I hope to brand the phrase defensive wars as absurd, and 
 expressing in our age, and among Christian nations, an impossible idea. It is a 
 part of the " flash language" of war and diplomacy, which should be now exploded. 
 I repeat, again, that all war is a mere Trial by Battle between nations ; and 
 as such, no one can fail to pronounce it, in the language of Montesquieu, mon 
 strous, and in the language of the old Lombard monarch, impious. 
 
 PRIVATE WARS. The system of private wars may be traced to the dark woods 
 of Ancient Germany, where the right of avenging injuries was treated as a private 
 and personal right, exercised by force of arms, without reference to an umpire, or 
 appeal to a magistrate for decision. Emerging from thence, it prevailed in the 
 early centuries of modern times, in all the countries of Europe, though few traces 
 of it are to be found in England after the Conquest, except in times of civil trou 
 ble and commotion. Though the avenging of injuries was the only motive that 
 could legally authorize private wars, yet they often arose from disputes concerning 
 civil property. They were carried on with all the destructive rage which is to be 
 dreaded from violent resentment when armed with force and authorized by law. 
 The invasion of the most barbarous enemy was not more desolating to a country 
 or more grievous to its inhabitants. Various ineffectual efforts were made for their 
 suppression. A Bishop of Aquitaine, A. D. 1032, pretended that an angel had 
 appeared to him, and brought him a writing from Heaven, enjoining men to cease 
 from their hostilities, and be reconciled to each other. It was during a season of 
 public calamity that he published this revelation ; the minds of men were disposed 
 to receive supernatural impressions, and consented to a general peace and cessation 
 of hostilities, which continued for seven years. A resolution was formed that no man 
 should, in time to come, attack or molest his adversaries during the seasons set apart 
 for celebrating the great festivities of the church, or from the evening of Thurs 
 day in each week to the morning of Monday in the week ensuing, the intervening 
 days being considered as particularly holy, the Lord s Passion having happened on 
 one of these days, and his Resurrection on another. A change in the disposition 
 of men so sudden, and producing a resolution so unexpected, was considered as 
 miraculous, and the respite of hostilities, which followed upon it, was called The 
 Truce of God. This, from being a regulation or concert in one kingdom, became a 
 general law in Christendom, and was confirmed by the authority of the Pope, and 
 the violators of it were subject to the penalty of excommunication. The custom 
 of private war still continued ; but was discountenanced by St. Louis, until finally 
 Charles VI, in 1413, issued an ordinance expressly prohibiting it on any pretext 
 whatsoever, with power to the magistrates to compel all persons to comply with 
 this injunction, and to punish such as should prove refractory or disobedient. Later 
 
83 
 
 than this there is an instance of a pitched battle in the reign of Edward IV of 
 England, at Nibley Green, in Gloucestershire, on the 10th of August, 1470, be 
 tween two powerful nobles, William, Lord Berkley, and Thomas, Viscount Lisle. 
 Both brought a large number of men into the field; an hundred and fifty men were 
 killed in the action. After the battle. Lord Berkley repaired to the Castle of Lord 
 Lisle, at Wotton, and it was ransomed as a place taken in regular war. The cause 
 of this feud was the right of succession to the lands of Berkley. The law suit, 
 which gave occasion to this battle, lasted a hundred and ninety-two years, and 
 during its progress the Castle of Berkley was once taken by surprise, and its inhabi 
 tants thrown into prison; it was, besides, frequently attacked and defended with 
 much effusion of blood. (Foreign Quarterly Review, No. G9, for April 1845.) 
 
 Let us close this sketch in the words of Robertson, in allusion to the regulations 
 for the abolition of private war: " How slow is the progress of reason and civil 
 order ! Regulations which to us appear so equitable, obvious and simple, re 
 quired the efforts of civil and ecclesiastical authority, during several centuries, to 
 introduce and establish them."* 
 
 TRIAL BY BATTLE. The trial by battle, or the judicial combat, was a formal and 
 legitimate mode of determining disputes. This, likewise, may be traced to the 
 ancient Germans ; for it appears by a passage in Velieius Paterculus (L. II. c. 
 118), that all questions which were decided among the Romans by trial, were termi 
 nated among them by the sword; the Roman laws and method of trial, which 
 Quintilius Varus attempted to introduce among them, were regarded as noritas 
 incognita discipline, ut solita armis decerni jure terminarentur. It afterwards 
 extended to the other countries of Europe, though it does not seem to have estab 
 lished itself completely in France till after the time of Charlemagne. It seems 
 to have been popular in Lombardy, though Luitprand, King of the Lombards, in 
 one of his laws in 713, expressly admits its impiety: Incerti sumus de judicio Dei 
 et quosdam audivimus per pugnam sine justa causa suam causam perdere. Sed 
 propter consuetudinem gentis nostren Longobardorum legem impiam vetare non pos- 
 sumus. (Muratori, Rerum Italic. Script, t. 2. p. 65.) Like the other ordeals, by 
 the burning ploughshares, by the holding hot iron, by dipping the hand in hot 
 water, or hot oil, it was a presumptuous appeal to Providence, under an apprehen 
 sion and hope that Heaven would give the victory to him who had the right. It 
 was the child of superstition and brute force. 
 
 It seems probable that the trial by battle was originally permitted, in order to 
 determine points respecting the personal character, or reputation of individuals, 
 and was afterwards extended, not only to criminal cases, but to questions con 
 cerning property. In the year 961, a controversy concerning the church of St. 
 Medard, whether it belonged to the Abbey of Beaulieu, was terminated by judicial 
 combat. The Abbot Wittikindus considered it as the best and most honourable 
 mode of determining a grave point of law. " It was a matter of doubt and dispute," 
 says the Abbot, " whether the sons of a son ought to be reckoned among the 
 children of the family, and succeed equally with their uncles if their father hap 
 pened to die while their grandfather was alive. An assembly was called to de 
 liberate on this point, and it was the general opinion that it ought to be remitted 
 to the examination and decision of judges. But the Emperor, [Otho II] following 
 a better course, and desirous of dealing HONOURABLY with his people and nobles, 
 appointed the matter to be decided between two champions. He who appeared in 
 behalf of the right of children to represent their deceased father was victorious ; 
 and it was established by a perpetual decree, that they should hereafter share in 
 the inheritance together with their uncles." This was under the German Emperor, 
 Otho II in the tenth century. But the folly of man did not end here. A question 
 of religion, as well as of law, was submitted to the same arbitrament. In the 
 eleventh century the question was agitated in Spain, whether the Musarabic Lit 
 urgy which had been used in the Churches of Spain, or the Liturgy approved by 
 the See of Rome, differing in many particulars from the other, contained the form 
 of worship most acceptable to the Deity. The Spaniards contended zealously for 
 
 * The subject of private war is treated with an exactness, perspicuity and comprehensive 
 ness by Dr. Robertson (Hist, of Charles V. Vol. I. note 21). whicJi have inspired the warm 
 commendation of Mr. llallam. (History of Middle Ages, Vol. II loo, cnp. 2. pt. 2.) It also 
 occupies the attention of our countryman (Mr. Wheaton) in his History of the Northmen : 
 and of the humane and accomplished historian of France, Sismondi. (tlistoire des Franoais, 
 Tome VIII. 72-77.) 
 
84 
 
 the liturgy of their ancestors. The Popes urged the reception of that which had 
 their infallible sanction. The question was referred to the trial by battle. Two 
 knights in complete armour entered the lists. John Iluys de Matanca, the cham 
 pion of the Musarabic Liturgy, was victorious. 
 
 While the trial by battle subsisted, proofs by charter, contracts or persons, be 
 came ineffectual. When a charter or other instrument was introduced by one of 
 the parties, his opponent might challenge it, affirm that it was false and forged, and 
 offer to prove this by combat. So he might accuse a witness, whom he suspected 
 of being about to give testimony against him, of being suborned, give him the lie, 
 and challenge him to combat; and if the witness was vanquished, no other evi 
 dence was admitted, and the party by whom he was summoned lost his cause. The 
 reason given for obliging a witness to accept of defiance, and to defend himself by 
 combat, contains the idea of what is called the point of honour ; " for it is just, that 
 if any one affirms that he perfectly knows the truth of anything, and offers to give 
 oath upon it, that he should not hesitate to maintain the veracity of his affirmation 
 in combat." Leg. Burgund. tit. 45. 
 
 The trial by battle extended itself so generally in France, if not in other parts 
 of Europe, as at one time to supersede all other ordeals, which were regarded also 
 as judgments of God, and even the mode by proofs. In Orleans it was restrained 
 to civil matters, involving upwards of six sous in amount. [Montesquieu. Esp, des 
 Lois, Liv. 28, cap. 20.] Regulations of great minuteness were established with 
 regard to the ceremonies ; and this monstrous usage, as it is called by Montesquieu, 
 was reduced to a system, and illustrated by an extensive jurisprudence. Men, 
 says this ingenious Frenchman, subject to rules even their prejudices. Nothing 
 was more contrary to good sense than the judicial combat, but being once recog 
 nized, it was conducted with a certain prudence. In this respect, as in many 
 others, it bears a resemblance to the great trial by battle which still prevails be 
 tween nations ; and which has its artificial and complex regulations, the so called 
 laws of war. 
 
 The field for the combat was selected with care ; and in many places there was 
 an open space for this purpose in the neighbourhood of the Church. We learn by 
 an accidental notice in Froissart, that there was a tribune attached to the walls of 
 the Abbey of St. German des Prcs, in Paris, which was destined for the judges of 
 the combat, and which overlooked the meadow aux Clercs, which served for a 
 field. (Froissart, c. 383, p. 290 ; Sismondi, Histoire, X. 514.) The ground being 
 selected, a large fire was kindled, and a gallows erected for the vanquished. Two 
 seats covered with black were also prepared for the combatants, on which they 
 received certain admonitions, and were made to swear on the Holy Evangelists 
 that they had not had recourse to sorcery, witchcraft, or incantation. They had 
 previously attended the celebration of mass, the forms of which for such occasions 
 are still to be found in certain old missals, where it is called missa pro duello. In 
 certain cases of physical inability, and where women and the clergy were con 
 cerned, a battle by proxy was allowed, and regular bravoes, called champions, were 
 hired for this purpose ; dreadful trade, it would seem, since the right hand of the 
 champion was lopped off in the event of his being worsted. Meanwhile the prin 
 cipals were kept out of the lists with ropes about their necks, and he who was 
 beaten by proxy was forthwith hanged in person, although in certain cases he was 
 allowed to be decapitated. (Millingen, Hist, of Duelling, Vol. I. 31, 32; Montes 
 quieu, Esprit des Lois, Liv. 28, cap. 19.) 
 
 In England, trial by battle was conducted with peculiar form, in the presence of 
 the judges in their scarlet robes, who presided over the field which was duly set 
 out of sixty feet square, and enclosed by lists. It appears that trials of this kind were 
 so frequent, that fines, paid on these occasions, made no inconsiderable branch of 
 the King s Revenue. (Madox, Hist. Excheq. Vol. I. 349.) For some time after 
 the Conquest the only mode of trying a writ of right, for the determination of the 
 title to real property was this barbarous proceeding; but Henry II, by consent of 
 parliament, introduced the grand assise, a peculiar species of trial by jury, in con 
 currence therewith ; giving the party against whom the action is brought his choice 
 of either the one or the other. The establishment of this alternative is pronounced 
 by Glanville, his Chief Justice, and probably his adviser therein, a certain benefit. 
 He says : duelli casum declinare possint homines ambiguum. Jus enim, quod post 
 multas ct longas dilationes vix evincitur per duellum, per beneficium istius constitu- 
 tionis comrnodius et acceleratius expeditur. (1. 2. c. 7.^ A trial by combat was 
 appointed in England in 1571, under the inspection of the judges of the Court of 
 
85 
 
 Common Pleas ; but Queen Elizabeth interposed her authority, and enjoined the 
 parties to compound the matter ; yet in order to preserve what was called their 
 honor, the lists were marked out, and all the forms previous to the combat were 
 observed with much ceremony. (Spelrn. Gloss, veb. campus, p. 103.) The last 
 time that this trial was actually awarded in England, was in 1631, between Lord 
 Rae and Mr. Ramsey. King Charles I appointed, by commission, a constable of 
 England to preside over it, who proclaimed a day, on which the combatants were 
 to appear with a spear, a long sword, a short sword, and a dagger; but this was 
 accommodated without bloodshed. (Hargrave, State Trials, XI. 124.^ The form 
 of proceeding fell into desuetude, overruled by the advancing spirit of civilization.- 
 but, to the disgrace of the English law, it was not legislatively abolished till in 1817 
 the right to it had been distinctly claimed in the Court of King s Bench. Abraham 
 Thornton, in an appeal against him for murder, when brought into court, pleaded 
 as follows : "Not Guilty, and I am ready to defend the same by my body;" and 
 thereupon taking off his glove, he threw it upon the floor of the court. The appel 
 lant did not choose to submit to this trial, and abandoned his proceedings. In the 
 next session of parliament, trial by battle was abolished in England. (Blackstone, 
 Com. Vol. III. 337, Chitty s note.) The Attorney-General, in introducing the bill 
 for this purpose, remarked, that " if the party had persevered, he had no doubt 
 the legislature would have felt it their imperious duty to interfere and pass an ex 
 post facto law, fo_ prevent so degrading a spectacle from taking place." Annual 
 Register, Vol. LXI. p. 52. (1819). Is not war between nations an equally de^rad- 
 ing spectacle ? 
 
 93" The principal modern authorities for the history of the judicial combat are 
 the admirable note by Robertson (History of Charles V. Vol. I. note 22); Montes 
 quieu (Esprit des Lois, Liv. 28, cap. 17-29), whose luminous mind has cast upon 
 it a brilliant flood of light; Blackstone (Commentaries, Vol. III. 337-351 ; Vol. IV. 
 346-348, 419); Hallam (Middle Ages, Vol. I. 187, cap. 2, pt. 2); the humane and 
 accomplished Sismondi (Histoire des Franqais VIII. 77-78) ; Guizot, in a work of 
 remarkable beauty of historical inquiry and depth of philosophy, more grave than 
 the Esprit des Lois, and enlightened by loftier ideas of human progress and virtue 
 (Hisloire de la Civilization en France depuis la chute de 1 Empire Remain, Tome 
 IV. 89, 149-166); our learned countryman, Mr. Wheaton (History of the North 
 men, Cap. III. and XII.); and Milling en, (History of Duelling, 2 vols.,) a writer 
 hardly deserving the character of an authority, and utterly unworthy a place in this 
 fellowship of authors. 
 
 NOTE C. 
 
 [Referred to on page 29.] 
 
 A CONGRESS OF NATIONS AND ARBITRATION. It is intended to offer in this Note, 
 a sketch of the efforts of private men, and the examples of Nations tending to a 
 Congress of Nations, or an established system of Arbitration without anneal to 
 War. 
 
 The duty and importance of Universal Peace was recommended by the early 
 Fathers of the Christian Church. The character of the good Man of Peace was 
 described in the 15th century, in that work of unexampled circulation, which has 
 been translated into all modern languages, and republished more than a thousand 
 times. (De Imitatione Christi, by Thomas a Kempis, Lib. 2. cap. 3.) The writ 
 ings of Erasmus, at the close of the same century, abound in the spirit of Peace. 
 In the 17th century, Nicole, a friend of Pascal, one of the fellowship of Port Royal, 
 and one of the highest names in the Church of France, in his Essais de Morale, in 
 six volumes, gave to the world Traite des Moyens de conserver la Paix avec les 
 Hommcs, a treatise which Voltaire terms " a master-piece to which nothing equal 
 has been left to us by Antiquity." (Siecle de Louis XIV. See Hallam s History 
 of Literature, Vol. III. 383, part IV. cap. 4). It is to be found in a recent edition 
 of the Pensccs de Pascal, The reader of our day cannot perceive in it the exalted 
 merit which drew forth the eulogy of Voltaire. At the beginning of the 18th cen 
 tury appeared the Projst de Paix Perpetuelle, in three volumes, by the Abbe Saint 
 Pierre, which the benevolent author, by a species of pious fraud, attributed to 
 
86 
 
 Henry IV and his Minister Sully, with the view of recommending it to the adop 
 tion of the Sovereigns and Ministers, to whom the authority of these great names 
 would be more imposing than the intrinsic merit of the scheme itself. His ideas 
 were characterized by the profligate minister and cardinal Dubois as les reves frun 
 homme de bicn. Afterwards in 1761, that great genius, Rousseau, published a little 
 work to which he modestly gave the title, Extrait du Projct de Paix perpetuelle de 
 M l Abbe. de Saint Pierre. Without appealing to those higher motives, for address 
 ing which to sovereigns Saint Pierre had most unjustly incurred the ridicule of 
 practical statesmen, such as the love of true glory, of humanity, and a regard to 
 the dictates of conscience and the precepts of religion, Rousseau merely supposes 
 princes to be endowed with common sense, and capable of estimating how much 
 their interests would be promoted by submitting their respective pretensions to the 
 arbitration of an impartial tribunal, rather than resorting to the uncertain issue of 
 arms, which even to the victor cannot bring adequate cempensation for the blood 
 and treasure expended in the contest. (See Wheaton s History of the law of Na 
 tions, part 2, <S 17.) 
 
 There are fragments of a Project of Perpetual Peace, by the late Jeremy Bentham, 
 recently published from MSS. bearing date from 1786 to 1789, under the superin 
 tendence of his Executor, Dr. Bowring (Part 8, pp. 537-554, London, 1839), which 
 are marked by the penetrating sense and humanity of their author. 
 
 Of late years, several writers of the different schools of German philosophy 
 have proposed the establishment of an Amphictyonic council of Nations, by which 
 their mutual differences might be judiciously settled, and the guilt and misery of 
 war for ever abolished among civilized nations. One of the most remarkable of 
 these projects of Perpetual Peace was that published by Kant in 1795. He says : 
 " What we mean to propose is a general Congress of Nations, of which both the meet 
 ing and the duration are to depend entirely on the sovereign wills of the League, 
 and not an indissoluble Union like that which exists between the several States 
 of North America founded on a Municipal constitution. Such a Congress, and such 
 a League, are the only means of realizing the idea of a true public law, according 
 to which the difference between nations would be determined by civil proceedings 
 as those between individuals are determined by civil judicature, instead of resort 
 ing to war, a means of redress worthy only of barbarians." Kant, Rechtslehre, 
 Zweiten Theil, 61. The principles of Kant on this subject have been contested 
 by another celebrated German Philosopher, Hegel, in the spirit of one whose mind 
 was so imbued with the history of the Past, as to be insensible to the charms of 
 Peace. A state of perpetual peace, he says, if it could be realized, would produce 
 a moral stagnation among nations. Hegel, Philosophic des Rechts, herausgegeben 
 Von Gans 321-339. See also Wheaton s History of the Law of Nations, part 4, 
 \S 36, 37. 
 
 Most important information on this subject is collected in the volume of Prize 
 Essays published by the American Peace Society, and in a little tract entitled a 
 Congress of Nations, by the same Society. The useful life of the late William 
 Ladd was devoted to the diffusion of information on this subject. 
 
 A General Peace Convention was held in London, in June, 1843, composed of 
 delegates from various countries, which was organized by the choice of Charles 
 Hindley, Esq., M. P., as President, and the Marquis de la Rochefoucault Lian- 
 court, a member of the French Chamber of Deputies, as Vice President. The 
 Convention was graced by the presence of many persons, well known for their la 
 bours of philanthropy. Among those prominent in political life v. ho took a part 
 in its proceedings, were Lord Robert Grosvenor, William Sherman Crawford, M. P., 
 Richard Cobden, M. P., Joseph Hume, M.P., W. Ewart, M.P., Dr. Bowring, 
 M. P. 
 
 The Convention was called together on the principle, " that war is inconsistent 
 with the spirit of Christianity and with the true interests of mankind." The fol 
 lowing are among the Resolutions which it adopted : 
 
 On Arbitration instead of War. " That this Convention earnestly recommends 
 to Governments, Members of Legislative bodies, and public functionaries, the 
 adoption of the principle of arbitration for the adjustment of all international differ 
 ences ; and that stipulations be introduced into all international treaties to provide 
 for this mode of adjustment ; whereby recourse to war may be entirely avoided 
 between such nations as shall agree to abide by such stipulation." 
 
 On a Congress of Nations. " That while recommending the plan of Judge Jay, 
 which proposes that Nations should enter into treaty stipulations to refer their dif- 
 
87 
 
 ferences to the arbitration of a friendly power, as a measure the most immediately 
 available for the prevention of war, we still regard, as peace societies have from 
 their origin regarded, especially as set forth by the late WILLIAM LADD Esq a 
 Congress of Nations to settle and perfect the code of international law, and a High 
 Court of Nations to interpret and apply that for the settlement of all National dis 
 putes, as that which should be further kept in view by the friends of peace, and 
 urged upon the Governments as one of the best practical modes of settling peace 
 fully and satisfactorily such international disputes. 
 
 On Preparation for War. " That in the opinion of this Convention, prepara 
 tions for war are so many incentives to war, and ought to be discouraged bv all 
 friends of peace." 
 
 There are now Peace Societies at London, at Paris, at Brussels, at Geneva, 
 all cooperating in this holy cause. The American Peace Society is the oldest, 
 and has already been the means of great good. It has adopted as a fundamental 
 article in its constitution the declaration that all war is forbidden by Christianity. 
 Its officers and principal members include some of the most prominent divines 
 and public characters of our country; among whom are the President, S. E. 
 Coues; Rev. Andrew P. Peabody, of Portsmouth, N. H.; Rev. Charles Lowell, 
 of Boston; Rev. Ezra S. Gannett, of Boston ; Rev. Francis Wayland, of Provi 
 dence, R. I.; Rev. C. E. Stowe, of Cincinnati; Rev. Howard Malcolm, of 
 Georgetown, Ky.; Theodore Frelinghuysen, of New York; William W. Ells 
 worth, of Hartford, Conn.; Gerrit Smith, of Peterborough, N. Y.; William Jav, 
 of Bedford, N. Y.; Professor Greenleaf, of Cambridge ; Samuel A. Elliot of 
 Boston ; Sidney Willard, of Cambridge ; Thomas W. Ward, of Boston ; Rev. 
 William Jenks ; Rev. Orville Dewey, of New York ; Jonathan Chapman ; Martin 
 Brimrner, of Boston ; Amasa Walker. 
 
 Of a society, composed of such names, subscribing to such a principle, it 
 would be difficult for Southey to repeat the gibe, which he allowed himself to 
 utter in his Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, I. 224: " I say 
 nothing of the Society for the Abolition of War (Heaven bless the mark !) ; it has 
 not obtained sufficient notice even to be in disrepute." 
 
 History furnishes various illustrations of the principle of a Congress of Nations, 
 underline name of Councils, Leagues, Diets or Congresses. 1. The Amphicty- 
 onic Council, embracing at first twelve and finally thirty-one states or cities, was 
 established in the year 497 B. C. Each city sent two deputies, and had two votes 
 in the Council, which had full power to discuss all differences which might arise 
 between the Amphictyonic cities. 2. The Acfuean League, founded at a very 
 early period, and renewed in 284 B. C. Although each member of the League 
 was independent of the others, yet they formed one body, and so great was their 
 reputation for justice and probity, that the Greek cities of Italy referred disputes 
 to their arbitration. 3. Passing over other confederacies of antiquity, we come 
 down to the Hanseatic League, begun in the twelfth century and completed near 
 the middle of the thirteenth. It comprised at one time ne"arly eighty cities. A 
 system of international law was adopted in their general assemblies. While pur 
 suing a pacific policy, they flourished beyond all precedent. 4. In the twelfth 
 and thirteenth centuries in Germany, various other cities and nobles entered into 
 alliances and associations for mutual protection, under various names, as the 
 League of the Rhine and of Suabia. (Robertson, Hist, of Charles V. Note 21.) 
 5. The Helvetic Union began so long ago as 1308, and has preserved peace among 
 its members during the greater part of five centuries. It is covenanted by this 
 Union that all public dissensions shall be settled between the parties in an amica 
 ble manner ; and with this view, particular judges and arbitrators are appointed 
 with power to compose any strife that may arise. 6. The Grand Scheme of Henry 
 IV, of France, for the blending of the Christian States of Europe in one Confe 
 deracy, had its rise more in selfish ambition than in true humanity ; but it has 
 served to keep before Christendom the idea of the same common tribune for the 
 great brotherhood of nations. 7. The United States of America furnish an 
 instance of the union of twenty-six different States, all having peculiar interests, 
 in bonds of peace, with a tribunal which has jurisdiction over the controversies 
 of the States. 
 
 William Penn once said of the schemes of Henry IV, " his example tells us 
 that it is fit to be done; Sir William Temple s History of the United Provinces 
 shows, by a surpassing instance, that it may be done; and Europe, by her incom 
 parable miseries, that it ought to be done." 
 
88 
 
 It seems, in the order of Providence, that the families, tribes and nations of 
 the earth should tend, by means of association, to a final Unity. The seven 
 kingdoms of England became one under the Saxon Edgar; Wales was forcibly 
 absorbed into England under Edward I ; Ireland, after a protracted resistance, 
 was finally absorbed under Edward III ; Scotland became connected with Eng 
 land by the accession of James I to the throne of the Tudors, and the two coun 
 tries afterwards, under Queen Anne, were united by an act of peaceful legislation. 
 The great nations of France and Austria have passed through similar stages ; dis 
 jointed fragments and scattered limbs have been brought together; provinces, 
 which once possessed an equivocal independence, now feel new power and hap 
 piness in their common union. This is the great process of crystallization, which 
 is constantly going on among nations. The next stage will be the association of 
 Christian States. 
 
 Our country possesses peculiar advantages for taking the initiative in the diplo 
 matic measures by which this great event is to be hastened. A Committee of 
 Congress, in a Report ascribed to the late Mr. Legare, recommended in 1838, 
 a reference to a third power of all such controversies as can be safely confided 
 to any tribunal unknown to the Constitution of our country. Such a practice, 
 (say the Committee) will be followed by other powers, and will soon grow up 
 into the customary law of civilized nations." The Legislature of Massachusetts, 
 by a series of Resolutions, passed with great unanimity in 1844, declare it their 
 " earnest desire that the government of the United States would, at the earliest 
 opportunity, take measures for obtaining the consent of the powers of Christ 
 endom to the establishment of a General Convention or Congress of Nations, 
 for the purpose of settling the principles of international law, and of organizing 
 a high court of nations, to adjudge all cases of difficulty which may be brought 
 before them by the mutual consent of two or more nations." Mr. Jay, in his 
 work on Peace and War, while he foresees the ultimate establishment of a Con 
 gress of Nations, recommends as a preliminary step the formation of Treaties 
 with the different powers of Christendom, providing for the adjustment of diffi 
 culties by arbitration. 
 
 There is no work to which an American statesman may devote himself, in the 
 hope of fame, or in the desire to be of service to the world, that can compare in 
 grandeur with the cause which is now most earnestly recommended to all who 
 have any influence over the public mind. Let the President of the United States 
 empower our ministers at all the Courts to which they are accredited, to open 
 negotiations at once for this holy purpose. 
 
 NOTE D. 
 
 [Referred to on page 32.] 
 
 DR. VINTON S SERMON. The sermon of the Rev. Dr. Vinton, pronounced be 
 fore the Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company, is a most disheartening pro 
 duction. It is the subtle effort of an excellent mind to reconcile what he calls 
 defensive war (he does not show that such a war is possible, in this age, among 
 Christian nations) with the injunctions of Christianity, severing and dividing, 
 as with profane metaphysical scissors, a most intelligible verse of the Gospel, 
 wholly neglecting others of great and controlling significance, and seeking to 
 overturn one of the most blessed truths. The sermon was delivered on a public 
 occasion of ceremony, before a military body ; it was voted by the martial critics 
 " able, eloquent, and interesting," and at their request was printed. It has been 
 praised in newspapers ; though to the credit of a wakeful press, which now exer 
 cises a restraining influence over the clergy, as well as the laity, its pernicious 
 doctrines and its unfair reasoning have already been rebuked by two able writers 
 in different journals. It has thus become public property, and as such, I venture 
 to dwell on its character. 
 
 This sermon is particularly sinister at this moment, when the country stands 
 on the verge of two wars, which will be proclaimed to be defensive in their cha 
 racter, though having in them no element of self-defence, and being mere trials of 
 title to distant territories. It is also unfair in its peculiar mode of treating the 
 
89 
 
 question. There is an honest hardihood in the military ardour with which Grotius 
 (De jure Belli ac Pacis) and, since him, Mr. Lieber, (Political Ethics), march 
 against the direct injunctions of the Saviour, the ipsissima verba of the Gospel, 
 treating them as of little or no account, as extravagances or exaggerations. But 
 Dr. Vinton founds his defence of war on a single verse of the Gospel, leaving all 
 others untouched and even concealing them from the view. In this way he may 
 avoid seeming directly to stultify Him whom he calls Master, by declaring that 
 his words do not mean what they seem to mean ; that He did not know what he 
 meant when he said, " Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbour and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies;" anil 
 that Paul indulged in an impracticable extravagance when he said, "Overcome 
 evil with good." But placing his whole argument upon a single verse, the whole 
 superstructure rushes to the earth when the interpretation by which it is supported 
 is shown to be inconsistent with the general character and teachings of Christ; 
 inconsistent with the fair and natural sense of the words in the English version; 
 utterly and flagrantly inconsistent with the plain and grammatical construction of 
 the original Greek ; so much so as to lead to the conclusion that Dr. Vinton did not 
 refer to the original Greek, or did not understand it. I am indebted to a friend, 
 whose name it would be superfluous in me to mention, for the following masterly- 
 criticism of Dr. Vinton s treatment of this verse. After reading this, no person can 
 regard it otherwise than monstrous to found a Scriptural defence of so great a crime 
 as war on an unfair, ignorant and ungrammatical perversion of a few short words in 
 the Gospel of peace. 
 
 To those who are desirous of reading a natural and unanswerable expression of 
 the true doctrine of Christianity on the subject of war, where the different injunc 
 tions of the Saviour seem to come together and arrange themselves, not by subtle 
 force, but spontaneously and by divine harmony, I would refer to the elaborate 
 work of Dymond on War; to the essay by Gurney, entitled, " War unlawful under 
 the Christian dispensation ;" the Address of the Rev. Andrew P. Peabody, before 
 the American Peace Society ; and the truly Christian sermon of Rev. Mr. Bogue 7 
 of England. 
 
 If the habit of delivering sermons before a military company should be continued., 
 and another Christian minister be found consenting another year to degrade the 
 c; blessedness" of the Gospel to the " blasphemy" of war, I hope he will be willing 
 to attend to the following points: First, the numerous direct texts in the Gospel, 
 all of them embracing war in their general condemnation, or enjoining peace; se 
 cond, the character of Christ and his immediate disciples, and the question, whe 
 ther it is possible to suppose Christ, or the youthful John, or even the fiery Peter, 
 doing duty as soldiers, either in the militia, or the regular army, or preaching ser 
 mons in praise of the profession of arms, or riding as chaplains of a military parade ; 
 third, the history of the Christian church during the first four centuries, showing 
 conclusively that it was then regarded as wrong in a Christian to bear arms ; fourth, 
 if any kind of war is consistent with Christianity, let him explain precisely what, 
 to the end that its sacred sanctions may not be thrown over all wars, a piratical 
 contest for Texas, or a mere quarrel about the title to Oregon ; fifth, if he should 
 assert that what are called defensive wars are consistent with Christianity, let him 
 explain precisely what is meant by a defensive war, and show the possibility, the 
 most distant possibility, of the occurrence of such a war in this age, among Chris 
 tian nations ; sixth, if he should conclude that Christianity forbids all wars, or all 
 wars but defensive wars, while it is impossible and monstrous to suppose the case 
 of such a war in our age, let him then consider whether all preparations for war 
 are not improper, and whether a Christian minister is not justly reprehensible who 
 lends them the sanction of his presence. 
 
 The following criticism, which I hasten to present, will render it necessary for 
 any successor of Dr. Vinton in the church militant, to occupy a position on some 
 other verse of the Gospel than that on which he chose to throw up his entrench 
 ments. As the majestic elms on the Boulevards of Paris, affording a generous 
 shade to the people, were hewn down to become barricades in the Revolution of 
 July, so the blessed texts of the Gospel, under whose broad and sacred shelter all 
 mankind might repose in peace, from generation to generation, are felled to th.& 
 earth, and converted into defences of war. 
 
90 
 
 The first four pages of Dr. VintorTs Artillery Election Sermon contain a good 
 and Christian-like exposition of the text, " If my kingdom were of this world, then 
 would my servants fight." But as this plain and pious course of remark is not 
 adapted to the military exigencies of the occasion, it is necessary for the sermon 
 to change front, and turn its battery, as it were, upon the position it began by de 
 fending. This manoeuvre, more martial than clerical, is executed by substituting 
 for the words of the Saviour a paraphrase which contradicts them. They have 
 " an indirect meaning," says Dr. Vinton, and so acting upon the principles of Po- 
 lonius advice to Laertes, he proceeds by " indirections" to " find directions out." 
 " Their paraphrase," he continues, would be thus: " If my kingdom were of the 
 sort which my enemies supposed, if the object of my government were specially to 
 establish personal security, to promote social comfort, or to maintain national inde 
 pendence, or any other objects for which human governments are formed, then it 
 would be both necessary and right to resist the injustice which has delivered me to 
 this tribunal." 
 
 The formal division of the Scriptures into minute portions, called verses, gives 
 great license to ingenious misinterpretation, and is the occasion of much ecclesi 
 astical sophistry- The preacher takes a sentence, clause, or even a single phrase 
 out of its connection, and instead of interpreting it in the broad light of the general 
 truths of Christianity., wrests it from the combination in which it stands, and makes 
 it the theme of a sermon. Like the ancient Sophists he can thus sustain any 
 side of any question. " Hang all the law and prophets" is a familiar and ludicrous 
 instance of textual perversion; but it is not more untenable and distorted than the 
 graver paraphrase on which Dr. Vinton has founded the main part of his discourse. 
 Where did he learn that the language of Christ contains such double and contra 
 dictory meanings as his paraphrase superinduces upon that text? that besides the 
 idea which the Saviour s words obviously expressed, there was an arriere pensce, 
 a sort of mental reservation, to be drawn out ages after they were spoken, but 
 sealed against the understanding of the man to whom they were addressed by the 
 living tongue ? 
 
 The first thing that strikes the mind on reading the paraphrase is, that this inter 
 pretation puts into the mouth of the Lord a platitude and a paralogism. For on 
 such an occasion it would have been a very inept proceeding to enter even by 
 implication upon a general political thesis. Next it would have been an extraor 
 dinary piece of logic to affirm that force might rightly be used in establishing 
 organizations so imperfect as human governments always have been, and so irreli 
 gious in their practices, and yet that it would not be right to use force to protect 
 the perfect innocence and godlike sanctity of Christ, in his labours to reform and 
 save the world. If force could be rightly used in the former case, it might a 
 fortiori be rightly used in the latter. If wars may rightly be waged in defence or 
 support of the imperfect and the sinful, they may for still stronger reasons be rightly 
 waged for the perfect and the sinless. 
 
 The circumstances under which Christ addressed to Pontius Pilate the remark 
 able words, "My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, 
 then would my servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews," place 
 their meaning beyond a doubt. 
 
 The Saviour, well knowing that his ministry on earth was nearly finished, had 
 met his disciples and delivered to them his last and most affecting instructions. 
 In the meantime the Jewish authorities, the Priests, and Pharisees, and Scribes, 
 whose hardened hearts had been pierced, and whose hypocritical lives had been 
 rebuked by the divine teachings of the Son of Man, corrupted the fidelity of one of 
 his professed followers, who agreed for a sum of money to betray his master into 
 their hands. Wrought up to fury by Christ s searching denunciations, which their 
 consciences had been utterly helpless to gainsay, they were resolved to shed his 
 blood, be the means and the consequences what they might. To make sure of their 
 victim they called in the aid of a military band, the ready instruments of every 
 deed of wickedness and blood ; and appointing the traitor, Judas Iscariot, their 
 guide, despatched them in martial array to steal upon the holiest of the messengers 
 of God in the silence and retirement of the night, and to arrest him with every cir 
 cumstance of insult, like a vulgar malefactor. But when the myrmidons of guilt 
 and hate were led by the betrayer into the presence of that mysterious man, unable 
 to stand before the terrors of his countenance, "they went backward and fell to 
 the ground." Overcoming at length the awe which had struck them powerless, 
 the rude soldiery laid their hands on Jesus and bound him. They conducted him 
 
91 
 
 first to the house of Annas, and then arraigned him before Caiaphas, the high priest 
 of that year. At the palace of this priest, the Sanhedrim, or Supreme Council of 
 the Jewish nation, consisting of the bitterest foes of Jesus, who were bent with 
 unpitying rage upon his murder, was hurriedly assembled ; and the brief and pas 
 sionate debate ended with the predetermined judgment of death. But the Jews 
 were under a foreign yoke. Judea was but a province added by conquest to the 
 vast empire of Rome. A procurator, representing the imperial power, was sta 
 tioned as governor at Jerusalem. Knowing the obstinate and rebellious character 
 of the people, it was his duty to watch with sleepless eye every sign of insubordi 
 nation in the conquered province. Without his sanction, no capital sentence could 
 be carried into execution. And so the procession formed anew, priests, and rabbis, 
 and the martial array, to conduct the serene and unresisting victim to the judgment 
 hall of Pilate. This company, stranger than was ever assembled before or since 
 in the history of the world, approached the Roman tribunal just as the morning was 
 breaking over the dread scene. The tragedy of the Saviour s life, crowded with 
 eternal consequences to the happiness of man, was swiftly drawing towards its catas 
 trophe. His enemies, maddened by unreasoning hatred, shrank not from the foulest 
 means to bring about their fell intent ; and incident after incident in the awful 
 drama, pregnant with inappreciable significance for the destiny of the human soul, 
 pressed the great action forward with startling rapidity. 
 
 The Jews resolved to employ the easily excited jealousy of the Roman governor 
 to strike their victim down. To accomplish their fiendish purpose the more rea 
 dily, they charged him with a political design against the sovereign power ; a 
 design, which in their gross conceptions of the predicted Messiah, they imagined 
 and hoped he would appear on earth to execute ; an imagination and a hope which 
 the language and actions of Christ had pointedly contradicted again and again, and 
 thus added to the exasperation which they felt, on other grounds, against his per 
 son. They charged him, in effect, with a conspiracy against the Imperial power ; 
 with intending to make himself a king and to shake off the Roman yoke ; and to 
 substantiate this treasonous charge, they dishonestly perverted the figurative lan 
 guage which they had heard him use on several occasions. They could not enter 
 the pretorium with their destined victim, because the feast of the passover w^s 
 near at hand, and they desired to eat of it, which they could not religiously do, if 
 they went in, good, pious men that they were, but they could knowingly forge 
 a lie, and for the sake of shedding innocent blood, swear falsely to a crime which, 
 by the Roman law, was punishable with an ignominious death upon the cross. 
 Pilate having listened outside of the hall to the accusation so insidiously shaped 
 and adapted to rouse all his Roman fears, suspicions and prejudices against the 
 prisoner, r.e-entered the pretorium and questioned him upon this very point. What 
 was Christ s answer ? A positive, intelligible asseveration, as plain as words could 
 express any thought of the mind, and as exclusive of the possibility of any sup 
 posed indirect or hidden meaning, as the most transparent singleness of heart 
 could make it: " My kingdom is not of this world ; if my kingdom were of this 
 world, then would my servants fight for me that I might not be delivered to the 
 Jews." All these words of the Saviour are limited by the last clause, i( That I 
 might not be delivered to the Jews," to his own case ; nor, whatever their mean 
 ing may be, can they be tortured by any ingenious sophistry into a general thesis, 
 express or implied, upon the rightfulness of sustaining government by force, still 
 less into an authoritative sanction of any kind of war. What Christ said, he 
 meant; no more, and no less. Pilate understood his words, and was satisfied of 
 his innocence. But if Christ had said what the preacher s paraphrase represents 
 him to have indirectly implied, Pilate could not possibly have gone out and de 
 clared to the Jews that he found no fault in him; for Pilate must have understood 
 him to mean, that though as a matter of fact, he entertained no such design as was 
 charged upon him by the Jews, still, had he been a temporal leader, he might right 
 fully have maintained his cause by an appeal to arms; that is, under the peculiar 
 circumstances of the case, Pilato must have understood Christ to maintain and de 
 clare a set of political or patriotic principles wholly at variance with submission to 
 the Roman Supremacy. Looking at the case, then, from the Roman point of 
 view, and under a sense of weighty responsibility to the central power whose dele 
 gate he was, he would have said to the Jews, with perfect truth, " I cannot, in 
 deed, find that this man has been guilty of any overt act of rebellion; but he is a 
 dangerous person and disloyal to Rome; he declares, that were he a temporal prince, 
 he might rightfully draw the sword. When he says that his kingdom is not of this 
 
92 
 
 world, he is doubtless making a cunning fetch to extricate himself from the pre 
 sent danger. It is a distinction without a difference. I am not to be cheated with 
 these fraudulent subtleties. The principles he professes to my face, would justify 
 him in rebelling whenever he might think he possessed the ability to command suc 
 cess. It is my duty to Rome to put him out of the way. Do with him what you 
 will." But Pilate drew no such meaning from the Saviour s words ; he saw with 
 perfect clearness into the true state of the case, and told the Jews, not that he 
 could discover no actj^ov, but that he perceived no fault, or ground of charge, alrictv, 
 against the prisoner, and with importunate eagerness urged them to let him go. 
 The Jews could not help perceiving that their attempt to fasten upon Christ a poli 
 tical crime had so far failed, nor did they, until some time afterwards, repeat the 
 charge, but in the senseless, brutal rabidness of disappointed malice, shrieked out, 
 " Crucify him, crucify him. We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, be 
 cause he has made himself a Son of God." 
 
 If Christ meant what the paraphrase makes him to imply, he was guilty of a dis 
 honest trick ; a Jesuitical playing with the ambiguities of human speech. This 
 conclusion any reader, of common sense, must arrive at, upon a careful considera 
 tion and comparison of the incidents in the marvellous history. But an examination 
 of the Greek original of the passage in which these transactions are related makes 
 assurance doubly sure. The interpretation of Dr. Vinton will be defended by no 
 tolerable Greek scholar on philological or hermeneutic grounds. The words are, 
 " C H /3a<riXE;a tj l^ni oux. ?TIV EX. rev jcoVjUoy TO UTOU. Ei Ix TOV xoa-[*ov rwrcv "vv n /3ao-[Xsta 
 rj l/otJi, o! i/7T>]eTaj civ cl \fj>.ot Jjy*iv;ovTo, va (An TTa^aJoQiS ToTf loyJatoij vv E ri 6a,a~t- 
 Xgi a n Ifjiri ovu l<nw Ivrti/Qsv." It should be re marked, first, that the preposition !*, 
 translated in our English version of, means from, and denotes origin from a place 
 or source ; second, that the two expressions on which the sense of the passage de 
 pends, each being qualified, one by the particle It, the other by the particle v, stand 
 to each other in the relation of conditioning and conditioned clauses ; third, that the 
 verbs ^y and tywv^ovro are in the indicative mode ; fourth, that they are in the 
 imperfect tense ; and fifth, that the word xoy/uov, world, is used by the sacred writ 
 ers in a bad sense, as contrasted with goodness, piety or God. Literally trans 
 lated, then, the passage would run, " My kingdom is not from this world ; if my 
 kingdom were from this world, then my servants would fight that I might not be 
 delivered to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from hence." Expanding the 
 language, not for the sake of paraphrasing, but of illustrating it, the sense may be 
 thus expressed : " My authority does not, like that of temporal rulers, originate in 
 this evil world; if my authority did originate in this world, like that of temporal 
 rulers, then (as a matter of fact, not of right, v iyam ovTO, indicative mode) would 
 my servants be fighting now (imperfect tense) to defend me from my enemies. But 
 my kingdom is from a higher source; my kingdom is a spiritual authority, bestowed 
 on me by the Heavenly Father. I am the Prince of Peace. I have nothing to do 
 with violence, rebellion and war; but my mission is to teach those doctrines 
 which will for ever put an end to violence, rebellion, and war. Were it other 
 wise, I should not be standing before thy tribunal, in this lowly guise and appa 
 rently helpless condition; but, sword in hand, like other temporal chieftains, I 
 should be leading armed cohorts, and drenching the earth in blood. But I say 
 again, my authority comes not from hence; and deeds like these have no sanction 
 from me or from my doctrines." 
 
 The laws of the language imperatively require this construction. The princi 
 ples of interpretation, which Pilate instinctively applied, require it. Had the 
 verbs in the two selected clauses been in the optative mode, g?gv and ayam oivTo, 
 then a correct translation would have been, If my kingdom were of this world, 
 then might my servants fight," though even in this case, the rightfulness of fight 
 ing would not necessarily be inferred. To justify such an interpretation, even 
 with the optative mode, the verb aj/am oivro, might fight, would need to be quali 
 fied by the adverb o^Btu; or j>taif, rightly or justly. 
 
 The thoughtless paraphrase in the Artillery Election Sermon is an example of 
 that ecclesiastical sophistry which in all ages of the Christian church, except the 
 earliest, has struggled, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, to abase 
 the lofty principles of the Gospel to the low standard of the existing cotemporary 
 world. 
 
93 
 NOTE E . 
 
 [Referred to on page 40.] 
 
 DR. WAYLAND S VIEWS ON WAR. When the foregoing Oration was delivered, 
 I was not aware that its principles were sustained so entirely by an authority like 
 Dr. Wayland, in a work, Elements of Moral Science, which, it is grateful to know, 
 enjoys an immense circulation, and cannot fail, therefore, to exercise an import 
 ant influence over the youth of the country. It is with great pleasure that I 
 make the following extract, to which I invite the particular attention of the read 
 er : 
 
 " Let us suppose a nation to abandon all means, both of offence and of defence, 
 to lay aside all power of inflicting injury, and to rely for self-preservation solely 
 upon the justice of its own conduct, and the moral effect which such a course of 
 conduct would produce upon the consciences of men. How would such a nation 
 procure redress of grievances? and how would it be protected from foreign aggres 
 sion ? 
 
 <f I. Qf redress of grievances. Under this head would be comprehended vio 
 lation of treaties, spoliation of property, and ill-treatment of its citizens. I reply, 
 
 " 1. The very fact that a nation relied solely upon the justice of its measures, 
 and the benevolence of its conduct, would do more than anything else to prevent 
 the occurrence of injury. The moral sentiment of every human community would 
 rise in opposition to injury inflicted upon the just, the kind, and the merciful. 
 Thus, by this course, the probabilities of aggression are rendered as few as the 
 nature of man will permit. 
 
 " 2. But suppose injury to be done. I reply, the proper appeal for moral beings 
 upon moral questions, is not to physical force, but to the consciences of men. 
 Let the wrong be set forth, but be set forth in the spirit of love ; and in this man 
 ner, if in any, will the consciences of men be aroused to justice. 
 
 " 3. But suppose this method to fail. Why, then, let us suffer the injury. This 
 is the preferable evil of the two. Because they have injured us a little, it does 
 not follow that we should injure ourselves much. But it will be said, what is 
 then to become of our national honour ? I answer, first, if we have acted justly, 
 we surely are not dishonoured. The dishonour rests upon those who have done 
 wickedly. I answer again, national honour is displayed in forbearance, in forgive 
 ness, in requiting faithlessness with fidelity, and grievances with kindness and 
 good-will. These virtues are surely as delightful and as honourable in nations as 
 in individuals. 
 
 " But it may be asked, what is to prevent repeated and continued aggression? 
 I answer, first, not instruments of destruction, but the moral principle which God 
 has placed in the bosom of every man. I think that obedience to the law of God, 
 on the part of the injured, is the surest preventive against the repetition of injury. 
 I answer, secondly, suppose that acting in obedience to the law of benevolence 
 will not prevent the repetition of injury, will acting upon the principle of retalia 
 tion prevent it? This is really the true question. The evil tempers of the 
 human heart are allowed to exist, and we are inquiring in what manner shall we 
 suffer the least injury from them; whether by obeying the law of benevolence, or 
 that of retaliation ? It is not necessary, therefore, to show, that by adopting the 
 law of benevolence we shall not suffer at all, but that, by adopting it, we shall 
 suffer less than by the opposite course ; and that a nation would actually thus 
 suffer less upon the whole, than by any other course, cannot, I think, be doubted 
 by any one who will calmly reflect upon the subject. 
 
 " II. How would such a nation be protected from external attack and entire 
 subjugation? I answer, by adopting the law of benevolence, a nation would 
 render such an event in the highest degree improbable. The causes of national 
 war are, most commonly, the love of plunder, and the love of glory. The first of 
 these is rarely, if ever, sufficient to stimulate men to the ferocity necessary to 
 war, unless when assisted by the second. And by adopting as the rule of our 
 conduct the law of benevolence, all motive arising from the second cause is taken 
 away. There is not a nation in Europe that could be led on to war against a 
 harmless, just, forgiving and defenceless people. 
 
 " But suppose such a case really should occur, what are we then to do ? I an- 
 
94 
 
 swer, suffer injury with forgiveness and love, looking up to God, who, in his holy 
 habitation, is the Judge of the whole earth. And if it be said, we shall then all 
 be subjected and enslaved, I answer again, have wars prevented men from being 
 subjected and enslaved ? Is there a nation on the continent of Europe that has 
 not been, overrun by foreign troops several times, even within the present cen 
 tury ? And still more, is it not most commonly the case, that the very means by 
 which we repel a despotism from abroad, only establishes over us a military 
 despotism at home ? Since, then, the principle of retaliation will not, with any 
 certainty, save a country from conquest, the real question, as before, is, By obe 
 dience to which law will a nation be most likely to escape it, by the law of re 
 taliation, or by that of benevolence ? It seems to me that a man who will calmly 
 reflect, can have but little doubt on this matter. 
 
 " But I go still farther. The Scriptures teach us that God has created men, 
 both as individuals and as societies, under the law of benevolence ; and that he 
 intends this law to be obeyed. Societies have never yet thought of obeying it in 
 their dealings with each other ; and statesmen would generally consider the 
 allusion to it as puerile. But this alters not the law of God, nor the punishment 
 which he inflicts upon nations for the violation of it. This punishment I suppose 
 to be war. I believe aggression from a foreign nation to be the intimation from 
 God that we are disobeying the law of benevolence, and that this is his mode of 
 teaching nations their duty, in this respect, to each other. So that aggression 
 seems to me to be in no manner a call to retaliation and injury, but rather a call 
 to special kindness and good will. And still farther, the requiting evil with good 
 tends just as strongly to the cessation of all injury, in nations as in individuals. 
 Let any man reflect upon the amount of pecuniary expenditure, and the awful 
 waste of human life, which the wars of the last hundred years have occasioned, 
 and then I will ask him whether it be not self-evident, that the one-hundredth 
 part of this expense and suffering, if employed in the honest effort to render 
 mankind wiser and better, would, long before this time, have banished wars from 
 the earth, and rendered the civilized world like the garden of Eden ? 
 
 " If this be true, it will follow that the cultivation of a military spirit is the 
 cultivation of a great curse to a community; and that all means, both of offence 
 and defence, are worse than useless, inasmuch as they aggravate the very source 
 of the evil, the corrupt passions of the human heart, by the manner in which they 
 ineffectually attempt to check the evil itself. 
 
 " I am aware that all this may be called visionary, romantic and chimerical. 
 This, however, neither makes it so, nor shows it to be so. The time to apply 
 these epithets will be, when the justness of their application has been proved. 
 And if it be said, these principles may all be very true, but you can never induce 
 nations to act upon them ; I answer, this concession admits that such is the lav/ 
 of God. If this be the case, that nation will be the happiest and the wisest which 
 is the first to obey it. And if it be said, it would be wisest and best to obey the 
 law of benevolence, but men will never obey it, I answer, here is manifestly the 
 end of the argument. If we show men what is wisest and best, and according to 
 the will of their Creator, we can do no more. If they disobey it, this is a matter 
 to be settled between them and their God. It remains, however, to be seen, 
 whether God will or will not cause his laws to be obeyed ; and whether Omni 
 science and Omnipotence have not the means of teaching his creatures submission 
 to his will. "pp. 397-401. 
 
 NOTE F. 
 
 [Referred to on page 04.] 
 
 THE following beautiful anecdote from the second series of Mrs. Child s Letters 
 from New York., the production of a brave and beautiful soul, furnishes an in 
 structive illustration of the text : 
 
 " I have somewhere read of a regiment ordered to march into a small town and 
 take it. I think it was in the Tyrol ; but wherever it was, it chanced that the 
 place was settled by a colony who believed the Gospel of Christ and proved their 
 faith by works. A courier from a neighbouring village informed them that troops 
 were advancing to take the town. They quietly answered, If they, will take it, 
 
95 
 
 they must. Soldiers soon came riding in, with colours flying, and fifes piping 
 their shrill defiance. They looked round for an enemy, and saw the farmer at 
 his plough, the blacksmith at his anvil, and the women at their churns and spin 
 ning-wheels. Babies crowded to hear the music, and boys ran out to see the 
 pretty trainers, with feathers and bright buttons, the harlequins of the nineteenth 
 century. Of course none of these were in a proper position to be shot at. 
 f Where are your soldiers? they asked. We have none, was the brief reply. 
 But we have come to take the town. Well, friends, it lies before you. * But 
 is there nobody here to fight ? < No ; we are all Christians. 
 
 " Here was an emergency altogether unprovided for; a sort of resistance which 
 no bullet could hit; a fortress perfectly bomb-proof. The commander was per 
 plexed. < If there is nobody to fight with, of course we cannot fight, said he. < It 
 is impossible to take such a town as this. So he ordered the horses heads to be 
 turned about, and they carried the human animals out of the village as guiltless as 
 they entered, and perchance somewhat wiser. 
 
 " This experiment on a small scale indicates how easy it would be to dispense 
 with armies and navies, if men only had faith in the religion they profess to be 
 lieve. When France lately reduced her army, England immediately did the same ; 
 for the existence of one army creates the necessity for another, unless men are 
 safely ensconced in the bomb-proof fortress above mentioned." 
 
 NOTE G. 
 
 [Referred to on page 70.] 
 
 THE following extracts from two different sources, will show that private persons 
 once lived in relations of distrust towards each other, similar to those of nations of 
 the present day. The first extract is from the Paston Letters, written in the time 
 of Henry VII of England, and is, perhaps, the most curious and authentic illustra 
 tion of the armed life of that period which can be found. The other is from Sir 
 Walter Scott s picturesque Lay of the Last Minstrel. Who does not rejoice that 
 such days have passed ? Who will not join in labours to establish among nations 
 the same harmonious, unarmed intercourse which now prevails among individuals ? 
 
 " Right worshipful husband/I recommend me to you, and pray you to get me some 
 cross-bows andwyndnacs* (windlasses), to bind them with, and quarrels,! for your 
 houses here be so low that there may none man shoot out with no long bow, though 
 we had never so much need. 
 
 " I suppose ye should have such things of Sir John Fastolf if ye would send to 
 him; and also I would ye should get two or three short pole axes to keep with [in] 
 doors, and as many jackets and [if] ye may. 
 
 " Partrich and his fellowship are sore afraid that ye would enter again upon them, 
 and they have made great ordnance within the house, and it is told me that they 
 have ma de bars to bar the doors crosswise, and they have made wickets on every 
 quarter of the house to shoot out at, both with bows and with hand-guns ; and the 
 holes that be made from hand-guns they be scarce knee high from the plancher 
 [floor] , and of such holes be made five, there can none man shoot out at them 
 with no hand-bows." Paston Letters, CXIII, (LXXVII. vol 3, p. 31.) Margaret 
 Paston to her husband. 
 
 * 
 
 Nine-and-twenty knights of fame 
 
 Hung their shields in the Branksome hall! 
 
 Nine-and-twenty squires of name 
 
 Brought them their steeds from bower to stall ; 
 
 Nine-and-twenty yeoman tall 
 
 Waited, duteous, on them all : 
 
 They were all knights of metal true, 
 
 Kinsmen to the bold Buccleuch. 
 
 * Wyndacs are what are called grappling irons, with which the bow-string is drawn 
 home, 
 t Arrows with a square head. 
 
96 
 
 Ten of them were sheathed in steel, 
 With belted sword, and spur on heel: 
 They quitted not the harness bright. 
 Neither by day, nor yet by night; 
 
 They lay down to rest, 
 
 With corslet laced, 
 Pillowed on buckler cold and hard; 
 
 They carved at the meal 
 
 With gloves of steel, 
 And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred. 
 
 Ten squires, ten yeomen, mail-clad men, 
 Waited the beck of the warders ten ; 
 Thirty steeds, both fleet and wight, 
 Stood saddled in stable day and night, 
 Barbed with frontlet of steel I trow, 
 And with Jedwood axe at saddle bow. 
 A hundred more fed free in stall ; 
 Such was the custom at Branksome hall. 
 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto I. 
 
DEPARTMENT 
 198 Main Stacks 
 
 LOAN PERIOD 1 
 
 Home Use 
 
 3 
 "6 
 
 
 DEC 7 2004 
 
 FORM NO. DD6 
 50M 4-04