WAR SYSTEM OF THE COMMONWEALTH

OF NATIONS.

ADDRESS BEFORE THE AMERICAN PEACE SOCIETY, AT ITS ANNIVERSARY MEETING IN THE PARK STREET CHURCH,

BOSTON, MAY 28, 1849.

That it may please Thee to give to all nations unity, peace, and concord. THE LITANY.

What angel shall descend to reconcile

The Christian states, and end their guilty toil?

WALLER.

Quæ harmonia a musicis dicitur in cantu, ea est in civitate concordia. CICERO, De Republica, Lib. II. Cap. 42.

Una dies Fabios ad bellum miserat omnes,

Ad bellum missos perdidit una dies.

OVID, Fasti, Lib. II. 235, 236.

Cum hac persuasione vivendum est: Non sum uni angulo natus; patria mea totus hic mundus est. SENECA, Epistola XXVIII.

Illi enim exorsi sunt non ab observandis telis aut armis aut tubis; id enim invisum illis est propter Deum quem in conscientia sua gestant. MARCUS AURELIUS, Epistola ad Senatum : S. Justini Apologia I. pro Christianis, Cap. 71.

War is one of the greatest plagues that can afflict humanity: it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge, in fact, is preferable to it. Famine and pestilence become as nothing in comparison with it..... Cannons and fire-arms are cruel and damnable machines. I believe them to have been the direct suggestion of the Devil. . . . . If Adam had seen in a vision the horrible instruments his children were to invent, he would have died of grief. - MARTIN LUTHER, Table-Talk, tr. Hazlitt, pp.

331-332.

Mulei Abdelummi, assaulted by his brother and wounded in the church, 1577, would not stirre till sala, or prayer, was done. — PURCHAS, Pilgrims, Part II. Book IX. Chap. 12, § 6, p. 1564.

A duel may still be granted in some cases by the law of England, and only there. That the Church allowed it anciently appears by this: In their public liturgies there were prayers appointed for the duellists to say; the judge used to bid them go to such a church and pray, etc. But whether is this lawful? If you grant any war lawful, I make no doubt but to convince it.SELDEN, Table-Talk: Duel.

I look upon the way of Treaties as a retiring from fighting like beasts to arguing like men, whose strength should be more in their understandings than in their limbs. - Eikon Basilike, XVIII.

Se peut-il rien de plus plaisant qu'un homme ait droit de me tuer parce qu'il demeure au delà de l'eau, et que son prince a querelle avec le mien, quoique je n'en aie aucune avec lui?- PASCAL, Pensées, Part. I. Art. VI. 9.

Pourquoi me tuez-vous? Eh quoi! ne demeurez-vous pas de l'autre côté de l'eau? Mon ami, si vous demeuriez de ce côté, je serais un assassin; cela serait injuste de vous tuer de la sorte: mais puisque vous demeurez de l'autre côté, je suis un brave, et cela est juste. — Ibid., Part. I. Art. IX. 3. De tout temps les hommes, pour quelque morceau de terre de plus ou de moins, sont convenus entre eux de se dépouiller, se brûler, se tuer, s'égorger les uns les autres; et pour le faire plus ingénieusement et avec plus de sûreté,

ils ont inventé de belles règles qu'on appelle l'art militaire: ils ont attaché à la pratique de ces règles la gloire, ou la plus solide réputation; et ils ont depuis enchéri de siècle en siècle sur la manière de se détruire réciproquement. LA BRUYÈRE, Du Souverain ou de la République.

La calamita esser innamorata del ferro. — Vico, Scienza Nuova, Lib. I., Degli Elementi, XXXII.

Unlistening, barbarous Force, to whom the sword

Is reason, honor, law.

THOMSON, Liberty, Part IV. 45, 46.

Enfin, tandis que les deux rois faisaient chanter des Te Deum, chacun dans son camp, il prit le parti d'aller raisonner ailleurs des effets et des causes. Il passa par-dessus des tas de morts et de mourants, et gagna d'abord un village voisin; était en cendres : c'était un village Abare, que les Bulgares avaient brûlé, selon les lois du droit public. - VOLTAIRE, Candide ou l' Optimiste, Chap. III.

The rage and violence of public war, what is it but a suspension of justice among the warring parties?- HUME, Essays: Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, Section III., Of Justice, Part I.

A single robber or a few associates are branded with their genuine name; but the exploits of a numerous band assume the character of lawful and honorable war. GIBBON, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chap. 50. The glory of a warrior prince can only be written in letters of blood, and he can only be immortalized by the remembrance of the devastation of provinces and the desolation of nations. A warrior king depends for his reputation on the vulgar crowd, and must address himself to prejudice and ignorance to obtain the applause of a day, which the pen of the philosopher, the page of the historian, often annul, even before death comes to enshroud the mortal faculties in the nothingness from which they came. Consult, Sire, the laws of the King of Kings, and acknowledge that the God of the Universe is a God of Peace. RIGHT HON. HUGH ELLIOT, British Minister in Sweden, to Gustavus III., November 10, 1788: Memoir, by the Countess of Minto, p. 324.

C'est un usage reçu en Europe, qu'un gentilhomme vende, à une querelle étrangère, le sang qui appartient à sa patrie; qu'il s'engage à assassiner, en bataille rangée, qui il plaira au prince qui le soudoie; et ce métier est regardé comme honorable. CONDORCET, Note 109 aux Pensées de Pascal. C'était un affreux spectacle que cette déroute. Les blessés, qui ne pouvaient se traîner, se couchaient sur le chemin; on les foulait aux pieds; les femmes poussaient des cris, les enfans pleuraient, les officiers frappaient les fuyards. Au milieu de tout ce désordre, ma mère avait passé sans que je la reconnusse. Un enfant avait voulu l'arrêter et la tuer, parce qu'elle fuyait. - MADAME DE LA ROCHEJAQUELEIN, Mémoires, Chap. XVII. p. 301. Let the soldier be abroad, if he will; he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage, a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed

with his primer, against the soldier in full military array. — BROUGHAM, Speech in the House of Commons, January 29, 1828.

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Was it possible for me to avoid the reflections which crowded into my mind,.. when I reflected that this peaceful and guiltless and useful triumph over the elements and over Nature herself had cost a million only of money, whilst fifteen hundred millions had been squandered on cruelty and crime, in naturalizing barbarism over the world, shrouding the nations in darkness, making bloodshed tinge the earth of every country under the sun, —in one horrid and comprehensive word, squandered on WAR, the greatest curse of the human race, and the greatest crime, because it involves every other crime within its execrable name? . . . . I look backwards with shame, with regret unspeakable, with indignation to which I should in vain attempt to give utterance, when I think, that, if one hundred, and but one hundred, of those fifteen hundred millions, had been employed in promoting the arts of peace and the progress of civilization and of wealth and prosperity amongst us, instead of that other employment which is too hateful to think of, and almost nowadays too disgusting to speak of (and I hope to live to see the day when such things will be incredible, when, looking back, we shall find it impossible to believe they ever happened), instead of being burdened with eight hundred millions of debt, borrowed after spending seven hundred millions, borrowed when we had no more to spend, we should have seen the whole country covered with such works as now unite Manchester and Liverpool, and should have enjoyed peace uninterrupted during the last forty years, with all the blessings which an industrious and a virtuous people deserve, and which peace profusely sheds upon their lot. - IBID., Speech at Liverpool, July 20, 1835.

Who can read these, and such passages as these [from Plato], without wishing that some who call themselves Christians, some Christian Principalities and Powers, had taken a lesson from the Heathen sage, and, if their nature forbade them to abstain from massacres and injustice, at least had not committed the scandalous impiety, as he calls it, of singing in places of Christian worship, and for the accomplishment of their enormous crimes, Te Deums, which in Plato's Republic would have been punished as blasphemy? Who, indeed, can refrain from lamenting another pernicious kind of sacrilege, an anthropomorphism, yet more frequent, that of making Christian temples resound with prayers for victory over our enemies, and thanksgiving for their defeat? Assuredly such a ritual as this is not taken from the New Testament. - IBID., Discourse of Natural Theology, Note VIII.

War is on its last legs; and a universal peace is as sure as is the prevalence of civilization over barbarism, of liberal governments over feudal forms. The question for us is only, How soon? - EMERSON, War: Esthetic Papers, ed. E. P. Peabody, p. 42.

A day will come when the only battle-field will be the market open to commerce and the mind opening to new ideas. A day will come when bullets and bomb-shells will be replaced by votes, by the universal suffrage of nations, by the venerable arbitration of a great Sovereign Senate, which