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 cominends 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. still wider and more powerful influence. As teachers, editors and authors; as expounders of law, or professors of the healing art; as preachers of the gospel, or guardians of society and government, they will hold in their hands the main-springs of the world, and could, if they would, so far saturate the public mind with a love of peace, and abhorrence of war, as to prevent this scourge from ever returning upon civilized nations. Most earnestly, then, would we commend this cause not only to the cultivated, leading minds already on the stage of public life, but especially to the rising generation of scholars now in our seminaries of learning. Fain would we press its claims on your conscience as well as your self-interest. Its destiny is suspended mainly on you; and your character and circumstances, your future pursuits and interests, your obligations to society and to God, all unite in demanding of you special services for a cause so important in itself, and so indissolubly linked with the welfare of your country and the world. Open your mind then to its claims. Examine the subject for yourselves; you will find it full of unexpected interest. Read and reflect upon it at your leisure. Discuss it in your literary associations. Try your powers upon it both in prose and verse. Make it a topic of frequent conversation, and fully resolve so far to master the whole subject, and so deeply to imbue yourselves with its spirit, that you will feel se f-impelled to its earnest, habitual advocacy, and be well prepared in future life to plead with success the claims of an enterprise so vital to the welfare of all mankind for time and eternity. CHARLES SUMNER.-One of the obstacles to be encountered by the advocate of Peace, is the warlike tone of literature. 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 incarnadined with blood; as the bones of swine, fed on madder, are said to become red. Fain would I offer my tribute to the Father of Poetry, standing, with harp of immortal melody, on the misty mountain top of distant antiquity; to all those stories of courage and sacrifice which emblazon the annals of Greece and Rome; to the fulminations 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 modern 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! DOUGLASS JERROLD.-Now, look aside, and contemplate God's image with a musket. Behold the crowning glory of his work managed like a machine, to slay the image of God, to stain the teeming earth with homicidal blood, to fill the air with howling anguish! Is not yonder row of clowns a melancholy sight? Yet are they the sucklings of glory, the baby mighty ones of a future gazette. What a fine looking thing is war! Yet, dress it as we may, dress and feather it, daub it with gold, huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it, what is it, nine times out of ten, but murder in uniform-Cain taking the sergeant's shilling? But the craft of man has made a splendid ceremony of homicide. He slaughters with flags flying, drums beating, trumpets braying. He kills according to method, and has worldly honors for his grim handiwork. He does not, like the unchristian savage, carry away with him mortal trophies from the skulls of his enemies. No; the alchemy or magic of authority turns his wellworn scalps into epaulettes, or hangs them in stars and crosses at his button-hole; and then, the battle over, the dead not eaten, but carefully buried, and the maimed and mangled howling and blaspheming in hospitals, the meek Christian warrior marches to church, and, reverently folding his sweet and spotless hands, sings Te Deum! And this spirit of destruction is canonized by the craft and ignorance of man, and worshipped as glory! This religion of the sword, this dazzling heathenism which makes a pomp of wickedness, seizes and distracts us even on the threshold of life. Swords and drums are our baby play-things; and, as we grow older, the outward magnificence of the ogre Glory, his trappings and his trumpets, his privileges, and the songs that are shouted in his praise, ensnare the bigger baby to his sacrifice. Hence slaughter becomes an exalted profession; the marked, distinguished employment of what is called a gentleman!! But, man of war! you are at length shrinking, withering like an aged giant. You are not now the feathered thing you werethe fingers of Opinion have been busy at your plumes; and then that little tube, the goose-quill, has sent its silent shots into your huge anatomy, and the corroding ink, even whilst you look at it, and think it shines so brightly, is eating into your sword with a tooth of rust. LEIGH HUNT.-I firmly believe that war, or the sending thousands of our fellow creatures to cut one another to bits, often for what they have no concern in, nor understand, will one day be reckoned far more absurd than if people were to settle an argument over the dinner-table with their knives!-a logic, indeed, which was once fashionable in some places during the "good old times." The world has seen the absurdity of that practice; why should it not come to years of discretion, with respect to violence on a larger scale? Why should not every national dispute be referred to a third party? There is reason to suppose, that the judgment would stand a good chance of being impartial; and it would benefit the character of the judge, and dispose him to receive judgments of the same kind; till at length the custom would prevail, like any other custom; and men be astonished at the customs that preceded it. In private life, none but school-boys and the vulgar settle disputes by blows; even duelling is losing its dignity. Two nations, or, most likely, two governments, have a dispute; they reason the point backwards and forwards; they cannot determine it, perhaps do not wish to determine it; so, like two carmen in the street, they fight it out; first, however, dressing themselves up to look fine, and pluming themselves on their absurdity, just as if the two carmen were to go and put on their Sunday clothes, and stick a feather in their hat besides, in order to be as dignified and fantastic as possible. They then go at it, and cover themselves with mud, blood and glory! Can any thing be more ridiculous? Yet the similitude is not one atom too ludicrous; no, nor a thousandth part enough so. THOMAS CARLYLE.-What is the net purport and upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From these, by certain 'natural enemies' of the French, there are successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied men. Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red, and shipped away, at the public charges, some two thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain, and fed there till wanted. And now, to that same spot in the south of Spain, are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending; till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxta-position; and thirty stand fronting thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the word 'fire!' is given; and they blow the souls out of one another; and in place of sixty brisk, useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anew shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a universe, there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! their governors had fallen out; and, instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot.-Alas, so is it in Deutschland, and hitherto in all other lands; still, as of old, what devilry soever kings do, the Greeks must pay the piper!' AMERICAN PEACE SOCIETY, BOSTON, MASS. |