founded on the treaty of Sempatch, in 1393, on the Convention of Stantz, and the treaty of peace in 1712 at Arau between the Protestant and Catholic cantons. From these several treaties, it appears, that the Helvetic Union is a perpetual defensive alliance between independent powers, to protect each other by their united force against all foreign enemies. Another essential object is, to preserve general peace and good order, for which purpose it is covenanted, that all public dissensions shall finally be settled between the parties in an amicable manner; and, with this view, particular judges and arbitrators are appointed with power to compose the dissensions which may arise. To this is added a reciprocal guarantee of their respective forms of government. No separate engagement of the cantons can be valid, if it be inconsistent with the fundamental articles of this general union; but, with these exceptions, the combined states are independent of each other, and may perform every act of absolute sovereignty. The ordinary meeting of the general diet is annually in January; and each canton sends as many deputies as it thinks proper."

"No diversities of character and state," says another writer," are greater than those which exist in this confederation. It comprises people of three distinct nations, speaking three of the prominent languages of Europe;-the German in the east, the French in the west, and the Italian in the south-east. They are divided into twenty-two independent states, each of which has a dress and manners in some degree peculiar to itself, and a dialect often scarcely intelligible to those around it. The forms of government vary from the purest democracy, in which every male above the age of seventeen is a member of the body which makes the laws, to the most rigorous aristocracy, in which the offices are confined almost entirely to patrician families. Their diet is a mere convention of ambassadors who merely treat with each other according to the strict tenor of their instructions, and can vote for no law without the consent of the government which sends them."

5. The Grand Scheme of Henry IV., called by the French their Good King, was started in 1601. Whether his real aim was to defend Christendom against Mohammedans, or, more probably, to humble the house of Austria, he proposed to divide Europe into fifteen states, six hereditary monarchies, five elective monarchies, and four republics,-all of which he would fain have united in one grand confederacy, pledged with the sword to preserve peace among its members, and to resist all foreign invasion. Henry gained the consent of Holland, Hesse Cassel, Anhalt, Hungary, Bohemia, Lower Austria, several towns and provinces in Germany, the republic of Switzerland, and Queen Elizabeth of England; but the dag

ger of the assassin Ravillac put an end in 1610 to the life of Henry, and to his great scheme.

The

Since the death of Henry IV., no government has agitated the question of a permanent international congress. Holy Alliance of 1815 did not aim at any such result; and, though the allied sovereigns did well in "declaring their unalterable determination to take for the rule of their conduct alike in the administration of their respective states, and in their political relations with other governments, the precepts of our holy religion, which, far from being applicable only to private life, ought on the contrary to influence directly the resolves of princes, and guide all their measures, as being the only means of consolidating human institutions, and remedying their imperfections," yet the sudden death, if not the jealousy, of Alexander, the leader in the movement, prevented any serious benefit from it to the world. It was in itself a noble avowal; and well did Ex-President Adams say to the late William Ladd, "the Holy Alliance was itself a tribute from the mightiest men of the European world to the purity of your principles, and the practicability of your system for the general preservation of peace."

Nor can we regard the Congress of Panama (1826)` as nearly resembling our scheme. It was a grand movement; and its failure was owing not so much to the nature of its objects, as to the character of the people who called it, to the obscure and inconvenient place where it was convened, and still more to its chief promoter, Bolivar, "the Napoleon of this hemisphere," as John Quincy Adams called him, "who had no more honest regard for peace or human liberty than had his prototype in Europe."

The movement of Henry IV. has served to keep before Christendom, the idea of some common tribunal for the great brotherhood of nations. In 1693 William Penn wrote an essay, in which he says of Henry's scheme, "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 incomparable miseries, that it ought to be done." Saint Pierre, who died in 1743, published on the same subject, and by his zeal provoked from Voltaire the petulant remark, that "he was forever insisting on the project of a perpetual peace, and of a sort of parliament of Europe, which he called the European Diet." Rousseau, charmed with the scheme, reviewed it, and lent to it all the power and fascination of his genius. We are not aware that any other men of note took up the subject before the rise of peace societies near the downfall of Napoleon.

From the first, however, have these societies aimed at a

congress of nations as the perfection of all expedients for the adjustment of national disputes without the sword. The London Society early said, that "a court of nations is the end of the operations of the peace societies." The American Society from its origin took so deep an interest in the subject as to publish, soon after its organization, the first essay in modern times on a congress of nations, from the pen of the late William Ladd, and, in 1840, a large and splendid volume of Essays for which a premium of one thousand dollars had been offered, and more than forty competitors had contended for the prize. The First General Peace Convention (1843) in London recommended " A CONGRESS OF NATIONS to settle and perfect the code of international law, and a HIGH COURT OF NATIONS to interpret and apply that law for the settlement of all national disputes.”

Before the year 1830, a devoted friend of peace in Boston had circulated a document recommending "the reference of all international disputes to a Court of Nations," and readily obtained from individuals of every rank and profession, the signature of nine in ten of those to whom he presented it. The Legislature of Massachusetts, in the year 1837, recommended "a Congress or Court of Nations as at present the best practical method by which disputes between nations can be adjusted, and an appeal to arms avoided;" and requested "the Executive of the United States to open a negotiation with other governments with a view to effect so important an arrangement." In 1838 the same legislature, with perfect unanimity in the House, and only two dissenting votes in the Senate, passed resolves still more explicit, in favor of " Congress of Nations for the purpose of framing a code of international law, and establishing a high court of arbitration for the settlement of controversies between nations;" and desired "the Governor to transmit a copy to the President of the United States, and to the Executive of each State, to be communicated to their respective Legislatures, inviting their co-operation."

a

While the subject was thus pending in Massachusetts, friends of peace in several states petitioned Congress in 1837 to settle by mutual reference our difficulties with Mexico, and also to incorporate the same principle in a Congress of Nations as a permanent substitute for war. The subject was referred; and the committee in their report acknowledged, "that the union of all nations in a state of peace under the restraints and protection of law, is the ideal perfection of civil society; that they concurred fully in the benevolent object of the memorialists, and believed there is a visible tendency in the spirit and institutions of the age towards the practical accomplishment of it at some future period; that they heartily

agree in recommending a reference to a third power of all such controversies as can safely be confided to any tribunal unknown to the constitution of our country; and that such a practice will be followed by other powers, and will soon grow up into the customary law of civilized nations."

Such a response might well encourage the friends of peace to continue their petitions. It is still before Congress; and, in 1844, the Legislature of Massachusetts, in reply to a single petitioner, took the noblest stand ever yet taken in favor of this scheme. After representing war as "among the chief destroyers of human happiness," and saying that, "if any method can be devised for the settlement of national controversies without the evils of war, the adoption of that method is 'a consummation devoutly to be wished,'" they state, that "the peace societies formed in this country and in Europe within the last twenty-eight years, and enrolling some of the purest and most gifted minds in either hemisphere, have poured the light of reason and revelation upon the practice of war, until multitudes have come to the conclusion, that a custom so fraught with evil, and so hostile to the first principles of religion, cannot be necessary. It begins to be extensively acknowledged, that individuals and communities are subject to the same divine authority, and are bound to conduct their affairs, and regulate their mutual intercourse on the same principles; and therefore, that legal adjudication should take the place of physical force, for the maintenance of national rights and interests, as it has already with regard to those of a personal and domestic nature."

In the spirit of these suggestions, the Legislature, with great unanimity, passed the following resolves:

1. That we regard arbitration as a practical and desirable substitute for war, in the adjustment of international differences.

2. That a system of adjudication, founded on a well-digested code of international laws, and administered by a standing court or board of mutual reference, is preferable to the occasional choice of umpires, who act without the aid or restriction of established principles and rules.

3. That it is our earnest desire that the government of the United States would, at the earliest opportunity, take measures for obtaining the consent of the powers of Christendom 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.

4. That His Excellency the Governor be requested to transmit a copy of these resolves, with the accompanying report, to the Senators and Representatives of Massachusetts in the Congress of the United States, with instructions to use their influence, as they may find occasion, in furtherance of this important object.

AMERICAN PEACE SOCIETY, BOSTON, MASS.

EXTINCTION OF WAR.*

BY HON. JOSIAH QUINCY, L.L. D.

"In all experience and stories," says the great Bacon, "you shall find but three things that prepare and dispose an estate for war-the ambition of the governors, a state of soldiery professed, and the hard means to live among many subjects, whereof the last is the most forcible and the most constant."

In reference to these causes of war, it may be asserted that three facts exist in the nature of man, and the condition of society, which give rational ground for the opinion, that they will be gradually limited in their influence, and may be made ultimately to cease altogether. The first fact is, that man is a being capable of intellectual and moral improvement; the second, that the intellectual and moral improvement of our species has already advanced in this very direction and on this very subject, wars being in fact far less bloody than in former periods of society; and the third, that the intellectual and moral influences which have arisen, and are extending themselves in the world, necessarily lead to a favorable change in all the enumerated causes on which the existence of war depends, repressing the ambition of rulers, diminishing the influence of the soldiery, and ameliorating the condition of the multitude.

At what previous time did the world exhibit the scenes we at this day witness? When did science ever, until this period, present itself to the entire mass of the community as their inheritance and right? No more immured in cells, no more strutting with pedant air and forbidding looks, in secluded halls, it adapts itself to real life, to use, and to man. It is seen in the field, leaning on the plough; at the work-bench, directing the plane and the saw; in the high places of the city, converting by their wealth and their liberality, merchants into princes; in the retirement of domestic life, refining the virtues of a sex in whose purity and elevation man attains at once the noblest earthly reward, and the highest earthly standard of his moral and intellectual nature. And can knowledge advance, and virtue be retrograde?

If such be the fact, why should not the species continue to advance? Is nature exhausted? On the contrary, what half century can pretend to vie with the last in improvement in the arts, in advancement in the sciences, in the zeal and success of intellectual labors? Time would fail to enumerate all; let one suffice. Scarcely ten years have elapsed, since the projects of Fulton were the common sneer of multitudes. He indeed has already joined the great congregation of departed men of genius; but where are his

* From Pres. Quincy's Address before the Mass. Peace Society in 1820. P. T. NO. XXXI.