No. LXIV.

CLAIMS OF PEACE ON LITERARY MEN.

THE general claims of peace are common to all mankind. Every one that wisely regards his own welfare, as well as every sincere lover of God, his country or his species, must desire the abolition of a custom which has from time immemorial filled the earth with crime and wo. But I will not now attempt to tell how it wastes property and life by wholesale;-how it breaks up families, and lays villages in ruins ;-how it plunders cities, desolates provinces, and rolls its waves of blood and devastation over empires ;-what sufferings it heaps upon the field of battle, scatters along the march, and crowds into the camp, the siege and the hospital;-how it preys, like a shoal of countless vampyres, on the character and happiness of individuals, communities and nations;-how it checks the progress of knowledge and freedom, of virtue, religion and general improvement ;-how it debases the intellect, blunts the conscience, and brutalizes the heart;-how it fosters ignorance, and feeds intemperance, and panders to the basest passions, and make? the resting-place of soldiers and seamen an emblem of Sodom itself;-how it multiplies almost every species of vice and crime imaginable, and taints the moral atmosphere of the whole world ;— how it neutralizes the power of the gospel in Christendom, and retards its spread and triumph over the earth;-how fast it ripens mankind for perdition, and sweeps them into the bottomless pit by thousands and millions. Here are topics immensely important; but, passing from all these, I shall now glance only at some that are more or less peculiar to literary men.

1. The very nature of this cause commends it to their special regards. It embraces all the great interests of our race; nor do I see how any inquisitive or generous mind can quietly rest in ignorance of a subject so vast, so interesting in itself, and so closely linked with the welfare of mankind. You can find no theme involving more points of importance in politics, morality or religion. It spreads itself over the entire surface of human nature, and presents some of its most startling developments. It touches the main-springs of human action. It forms the web and woof of all history. It pervades and leavens the literature of every age. It enters into the theory and practice of all governments. It must shape, more or less, every system of ethics and political economy. There is no end to the points which it starts for discussion. It embraces an infinity of facts important as the weal or wo of our whole race, and involves principles which lie at the very foundation of society, morals and religion. It affects the condition, character and interest of all mankind. No nation, no community, not a solitary individual on earth, but is concerned in this subject.

I can hardly conceive any topic more important in its nature, more extensive in its connections and bearings, or more vital to the welfare of individuals and nations.

Here is a vast field well nigh unexplored. The principles of peace, applicable alike to individuals and communities, have never been fully applied to nations; and such an application is regarded by not a few as preposterous and impracticable. Yet something has been done to pave the way for a result so devoutly to be wished. Grotius, in his great work on the Rights of Peace and War, led the van of this inquiry, and collected no small part of the materials requisite for such a system of international law as must one day regulate the intercourse of all civilized nations without the sword. Still many points of this code remain untouched, and some of its fundamental principles are neither rightly applied, nor properly understood. Here is a department of jurisprudence the most profound, extensive and important that philosophy ever investigated; and I have often wondered that men of science and letters have given it so small a share of their attention. Shall such a field be neglected by the studious and the cultivated? It surely deserves their special and most earnest attention. It will richly repay all the labor they may bestow upon it, and will bear a favorable comparison in every respect with any of those to which the scholar gives the full vigor of his powers. You can find none more important in history, mathematics or philosophy, in astronomy or chemistry, in any of the arts or sciences, in any branch of a common or liberal education; and if you spend year after year in learning languages spoken by no nation now on the globe, in tracing the movements of the planetary system, in mastering the dry abstractions of mathematics, in conning the rules of rhetoric, in threading the labyrinths of metaphysical science, or in classifying rocks and stones, pebbles and shells, birds and fishes, reptiles and insects, can you overlook such a subject as the world's entire, perpetual pacification?

2. Another special claim of this cause arises from your capacity for its proper investigation. More than ordinary cultivation is requisite for such a purpose. It is easy to interest common minds in the details of war; but the cause of peace has aspects, relations and bearings, which an intellect either superficial, undisciplined, or poorly furnished, will never be able fully to comprehend. To master such a subject, demands an extent of knowledge, a reach of thought, and habits of inquiry and reflection, possessed only by caltivated minds. Here is a field emphatically their own; and they ought to enter it as pioneers of the people. Scholars must first take hold of peace in earnest, and press its claims on the community, before the millions will wake to its real importance.

3. Glance, morcover, at the mental effects of war. Its ironhanded sway over the minds as well as the bodies of its minions, must give the cause of peace peculiar claims upon intellectual men who demand freedoin of thought, speech and action. The mental despotism of war is the worst form of oppression on earth. It allows the soldier neither liberty of speech, nor freedom of in

quiry, nor the safe, unshackled exercise of his own conscience; it turns him into a mere wheel in the vast machinery of war, and forbids his moving beyond his prescribed sphere in the work of carnage and devastation. It well nigh annihilates all individuality of mind and character. The will of thousands it holds in stern subjection to a single mind, and keeps them in a state of bondage more galling to the soul than that of a Polish serf, a Turkish peasant, or a galley slave.

All history, all observation, confirm these statements. "It has been a generally received opinion," says Franklin in one of his let ters to Vaughan, "that a military man is not to inquire whether a war be just or unjust; he is to execute his orders! All princes that are disposed to become tyrants, must probably approve of this opinion, and be willing to establish it; but is it not a dangerous one? On this principle," a principle essential to the war system, "if the tyrant commands his army to attack and destroy not only an unoffending neighbor nation, but even his own subjects, his army is bound to obey. A negro slave in our colonies, being commanded by his master to rob or murder a neighbor, or do any other immoral act, may refuse, and the magistrate will protect him in his refusal. The slavery of a soldier then is worse than that of a negro."

War allows to its agents no real freedom of mind. Lord Wellington once said in a public debate, that no man of religious principles, of such scruples as would interfere with any deeds of atrocity required in this trade of human butchery, should be a soldier; and two British officers, having conscientiously refused to take any part in certain Popish ceremonies which they deemed idolatrous, were tried by a court martial, and cashiered. They appealed to the King; and his organ, in confirming the sentence, observed that, "if religious principles were allowed to be urged by individual officers as a plea for disobedience of orders, the discipline of the army would sustain an injury which might be dangerous to the state."

But the mental tyranny of war is not confined to soldiers; it extends more or less through the nation, and seeks to bring all ininds under the control of brute force, and brute courage. It is the coarsest, as well as the cruellest of all despotisms, and presents a startling contrast to the character of a civilized, Christian community. Here is the very genius of pagan barbarism lording it over Christendom itself; and with all our pretensions to intelligence and piety, we very much resemble in this custom the ancient Egyptians bowing down to crocodiles and alligators. War is still the undisputed tyrant of Christendom, its recognized demi-god,with his creed of violence, his precepts of crime, and his logic of lead and steel. It treats man as a brute, and tramples his intellectual manhood in the dust.

Look at the influence of this custom on mind in civil and political matters. It forbids the predominance of intellect and knowledge in the affairs of state. Talent, intelligence, every kind of mental culture, it keeps in the lowest possible scale of estimation, or makes them mere handmaids to its selfish and savage purposes.

Statesmen and philosophers, orators and men of science and letters, it throws into the shade, or chains to its car, or crushes beneath its iron hoof. Bold and brawny hands, the qualities of a tiger or bull-dog, seize the reins of government, and inonopolize the political power of the world.

On this point history is decisive. Warriors have generally been permitted to engross the government of mankind; and, with a very few exceptions like Caesar, you will find them, like Attila and Alaric, Tamerlane, Jenghiz-khan and Achilles, a species of human tigers, skilled in little else than the art of bloodshed, devastation and misery. An Alexander or Napoleon may occasionally take with them on their excursions a naturalist to collect curiosities, a historian to record their exploits, or a poet to sing their praises; but the mass of powerful and cultivated ininds, the warrior brings into subserviency to his own aggrandizement, and keeps them in a state of servile, debasing subjection. If you cultivate the arts of peace, talent, knowledge and wisdom will hold the reins of government; but let the people become warlike, and military chieftains would soon drive them all at the point of the bayonet. Review the history of Greece and Rome, of England under Cromwell, of France under Napoleon, of all the republics except our own in the New World; and you will find on this point a superabundance of proof.

In view of such facts, I stand amazed at the disposition of intellectual men to culogize war and warriors. Still more strange is the encouragement which statesmen lend to war; for they are thus cherishing a serpent that will one day wreath his folds around themselves, and strangle them to death. It is only in peace that their worth can be fully appreciated, or their merits duly rewarded; while in war, or under its influences even in peace, Pompey outpeers Cicero, Cromwell takes precedence of Milton, and the hero of New Orleans or Tippecanoe, with only a modicum of talent or knowledge, leaves the first minds of the land far behind them in the race of popularity and power.

4. Another pledge of their special interest in the cause of peace may be found in the character of literary men. They are generally peaceful; most of the influences acting upon them are pacific; and I can hardly conceive it possible for them to carry the spirit of war into the researches of science, the pursuits of art, or the studies of literature and philosophy. All these are plants of peace, and can flourish only amid its baliny breezes, and beneath its gentle dews and genial sunshine.

Look at the man of science or letters. Peace is his very element. He lives in a peaceful retreat; he breathes a peaceful atmosphere; he is surrounded by peaceful associates; his whole life is a current of peaceful labors and enjoyments. Still more so with the youthful student; his studies, his recreations, all the scenes about him are peaceful. It would seem impossible for such persons to cherish a war-spirit; and from them the cause of peace may well expect an unwonted degree of sympathy and support.

5. But mark the subserviency of this cause to the peculiar interests of sc entific and literary men. All their pursuits require peace. War paralyzes, suspends or deranges them all. Peace is the chosen nurse of genius and taste, of philosophy, art and science. They expire in the foul and bloody embraces of war. It sweeps, like a deadly sirocco, across the gardens of intellect and knowledge. You can find no literature, no philosophy, no art or science, except that of human butchery, flourishing beneath its death-shades.

So all history tells us. Recount the names of those whose literary or scientific fame has filled the world; and how few of them won their way to eminence amid the din of war! Where did Newton and Davy make their discoveries, or Locke and Aristotle excogitate their metaphysics, or Pliny, Buffon and Linnæus originate or remodel entire departments of science, or Bacon elicit and embody the great principles of philosophy, or Plato compose his matchless essays, or Demosthenes and Cicero acquire their mastery over the human mind, or Homer himself learn to chant the praises of war in deathless song? On the battle-field, in camps and fleets? No; nearly all the products of their genius, taste and learning were fruits of peace, which war would have crushed in the germ, or nipped in the bud.

Glance at the ravages which this demon of vandalism has made of such products. Whose torch burnt those treasures of knowledge which so many centuries had been accumulating in Egypt? Whose hand seized the noblest monuments of ancient art, and hurled them in fragments to the ground? Whose foot of iron trampled on the statues, and temples, and arches, and columns of Greece and Rome? The richest treasures of learning, the finest works of art, the most splendid productions of taste and genius, war has wantonly destroyed, and seemed to glory in the ruin.

6 War is, also, hostile to the general cultivation of mind. It comes over the mass of society like a thunder-cloud, and conceals the sun of science from their view. It quenches in many the very desire for mental improvement, and absorbs the time and money needed for such a purpose. Where the whole land is a vast muster-field; where every man, not diseased or crippled, is held to military service; where the arrangements for war supersede those for every other object, and keep society in a state of ceaseless commotion or suspense, I see not how any system of common education can be pursued with steady vigor aud success. To this rule there may be exceptions, but no contradiction of the principle. Equally hostile is war to the higher departments ofpit, the Few here pass through a course of liberal studies w the young to one of the learned professions; but the demiration and supinterrupted, would render it quite uncertain to look upon it as the be permitted to reach his goal. Where of society and governtion or impressment prevails; where ev authority of age, all the the very age of commencing his as of religion, all the charms dragged into an army or navy for

settled, and the vicissitudes of war

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