enormous burdens of war, is even now panting for release from its evils, and would hail with joy any effectual antidote or remedy.

4. But nations would shrink from the expense.-We cannot believe it; such a tribunal would cost scarcely a thousandth part of what the war-system does even in peace. England spent for war an average of more than one million of dollars every day for twenty years, and the war expenses of all Christendom cannot be less even in peace than two or three millions a day; while a congress of one hundred members, even with a salary for each equal to that of our own president, would cost only two millions and a half, and a single million would support a congress of fifty members at a yearly compensation of $20,000 each, or nearly sixty dollars a day for every member.

5. But diversities of language, and religion, and manners, and government, and pursuits, would surely defeat the project.None of these would oppose insuperable or very serious impediments to the slight degree of union required in such a confederacy. Not a few of them were overcome in the formation of our own general government; and they were all found in the Diet of Switzerland, where each of the twentytwo cantons is internally as independent as any nation on earth, where the form of government varies from the purest democracy to the stiffest aristocracy, and where the people differ in language, manners and religion.

6. But such a tribunal would be dangerous. To whom or what? Would it trample on the weak? No; it would have no power for such a purpose; but its first care would be to guard them against encroachment and abuse. Would it endanger liberty and popular governments? Called into existence by their voice, it would become of course a servant to their wishes, and a guardian of their rights and interests. Would it interfere with the domestic concerns of states?. It would itself be the surest check upon such interference. Would it become a conclave of political intrigue, and serve only to embroil the nations? History refutes the charge; and the supposition is just as absurd as it would be to expect that ambassadors appointed to negotiate peace, would only foment new wars. Would it become a tool in the hands of some future Alexander or Napoleon to subjugate all Christendom? Such monsters are the offspring only of war; and the peaceful policy inseparable from a congress of nations, would put an end forever to the whole brood. By what process, then, could such a tribunal be thus perverted? With no fleets or armies at their command, with no offices of emolument or honor to bestow, with no right to touch any subject * 2

not submitted to them by their constituents, how could such a body become an engine of conquest, tyranny and blood?

7. Composed chiefly of representatives from monarchies, such a tribunal would, at all events, be unfriendly, if not dangerous, to republican governments.-We see not how it could be; for it would have no power to interfere with the internal affairs of any government, or to sit in judgment on any dispute not voluntarily referred to it by the parties. No nation would be bound by any of its decisions without their own consent; and we might as well say, that treaties with monarchies, and still more such references as we ourselves have repeatedly made to them, must endanger the freedom of our institutions. Such a court, guided by a common code, and responsible to the whole world for the rectitude of their adjudications, could not be half so dangerous as those kings and autocrats whom we have occasionally selected as umpires. Yet who has ever dreamed of the least danger to our government from such references?

8. But the congress, after all, would be powerless. Why? Because it would wear no crown, wield no sword, hold no purse? Such logic mistakes the age. Opinion is now the mistress of the world. Her voice could light or quench the fires of a thousand battle-fields. It changed the government of France in a day, and reformed the parliament of England without bloodshed. It made us free. It once marshalled all Europe in the crusades. It called up the demon-spirits of the French Revolution, and sent hurricane after hurricane of war howling in wrath over the fairest portions of Christendom. All this it has done; and, when embodied in the grand Areopagus of the world, would it then be powerless?

SECT. 7.-MEANS REQUISITE FOR SUCH A MEASURE. Such a tribunal will of course be the work of time and extended concert. The train is already started; but we must pass through a long process to the final consummation. The frequency of national intercourse, and the peaceful methods of negotiation, and of reference in its various forms, for the settlement of national disputes, are rapidly preparing the way for such a result, but can never reach it without the use of special, appropriate means.

We must first rouse the people to demand some such expedient. Rulers can find one, if they will; but they never will, till driven to it by a voice from the people like that of many waters. We must spread before the community a flood of light on this subject; we must paint before them, in burning colors, the guilt and the evils of war; we must show them how easily those at the helm of government could avoid it, if

they would; and we must make them resolve not to bear this load of gratuitous mischief and misery any longer, but insist on some device for the permanent peace of Christendom.

Thus roused, let millions pour their united voices upon the ear of parliaments, congresses and cabinets, till statesmen shall be constrained to take hold of the work in earnest, and push it onward to its full consummation. Let some Burke or Brougham, some Franklin or Jefferson, grasp the grand idea, and hold it up before his own nation, till it comes, like the sun in the firmament, to fill the whole hemisphere of their vision; let the government of England, France or America adopt the project as its own, and commission some of its first minds to press it upon the attention of other governments; let the process go on, till a call, loud as the longings of a crushed and bleeding world for relief from the woes of war, shall come forth to summon the wisdom of all Christendom to a consultation of peace, amity and love. This done, the result would be certain; for the smaller states would rush for safety to the sheltering wings of such a confederacy, nor would any Christian or civilized nation long stand aloof, and brave the scorn of a world.

The work is already begun; and we would urge every lover of his kind or his country to lend it his aid. Petitions have already been presented to the British Parliament; and the attention of our own Congress, and several legislatures, has been repeatedly called to the subject. The project is now before the nation and the world with fair omens of success; and fain would we call upon all ministers of peace, upon all churches of the Prince of Peace, upon all teachers in Christian seminaries of learning, upon all editors as the lawgivers or guardians of public opinion, upon all persons in place and power, upon every one that has a tongue, a pen or a purse for any cause of philanthropy, to co-operate in an enterprise fraught with so many blessings to mankind through all coming time.

SECT. 8.-SKETCH OF PAST ATTEMPTS FOR SOMETHING LIKE AN INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL.

History furnishes no exact or adequate model of what we propose. Something more or less like it, has been attempted under the name of Councils or Leagues, Diets or Congresses; but none of them included what we deem most essential to our scheme, while they all relied on the sword for the accomplishment of their purpose. Our plan, excluding the chiet causes of their failure, obviates nearly all the objections urged against those attempts, of which we will briefly sketch the most important.

1. The Amphictyonic Council, embracing at first twelve, and finally thirty-one states or cities, was established 1497 B. C. Rollin says, "it was, in a manner, the holding of a general assembly of the Grecian States. Its establishment is attributed to Amphictyon, king of Athens, whose chief aim was to unite in amity the several States of Greece, and thus oblige them to undertake the defence of each other, and be mutually vigilant for the tranquillity and happiness of their country. Each city sent two deputies, and had two votes in the Council. They had full power to discuss all differences which might arise between the Amphictyonic cities." "They decided,” says Rees, "all public differences and disputes between any of the cities of Greece; and their determinations were received with the greatest veneration, and were ever held sacred and inviolable." The Council, though not always successful, did much to preserve peace among its members, and continued in spite of its own degeneracy, and the intrigues of Philip of Macedon, more than fifteen centuries!

2. The Achæan League, formed at a very early period, and renewed in 284 B. C., continued one hundred and thirty-four years longer. Although each city," says Rees, "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 their disputes to their arbitration. The Lacedæmonians and Thebans also referred to them an interesting matter of dissension between themselves. Having long retained their liberty, they ceased not to assemble when the necessity of public deliberation required it, and even when the rest of Greece was threatened with war and pestilence."

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 held every ten years an extraordinary general assembly to renew their league, expel refractory members, and admit new ones. This League, commenced between Lubec and Hamburgh, comprised at one time, nearly eighty cities; and in 1730 its regular number was sixty-three, besides forty-four towns considered as allies. A system of international laws was adopted in their general assemblies. While pursuing a pacific policy, they flourished beyond all precedent; but, on becoming so rich, powerful and ambitious as to raise fleets and armies, they provoked the jealousy of other powers, and were eventually reduced to three cities-Lubec, Hamburgh and Bremen.

4. The Helvetic Union began so long ago as 1308, and has sufficed to preserve peace among its members during the greater part of five centuries. "The code of public law between the combined republics of Switzerland," says Rees, "is

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."

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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