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boa constrictor, while out of reach of their gripe, or the poison of his breath. But the tyrant of France would have been a tyrant in America, if he had had the power. Considered barely as a general, Washington was, perhaps, surpassed in his own army, and nothing but a difference in success was wanting, to make Arnold a hero, and Washington a rebel. Did time and space allow, I could adduce examples, in civil and religious wars, where heroes have acquired renown, by changing sides and fighting against those principles, which they once defended, showing, that it was a love of war and its accompanying vices, and not of civil or religious liberty, by which they were actuated. It was not receiving the sword of Cornwallis, that has endeared the name of Washington to every American and to every friend of liberty on earth,-a Suwarroff, a Marlborough, or a prince Eugene, would have done the same, but it was the surrendering of his own sword to Congress; an act, too great for the imitation of Napoleon, and, I fear, of Bolivar.

But I detain my readers too long from the

sentiments of Washington on war, and I hasten to give the following extract of a letter from him, to a friend in Europe, then recently married, dated April 25th, 1788, and which has already appeared in the Friend of Peace.

"While you have been making love, under the banner of Hymen, the great personages of the North have been making war under the inspiration, or rather the infatuation, of Mars. Now for my part, I humbly conceive, you had much the best and wisest of the bargain; for certainly, it is more consonant to all the principles of reason and religion, natural and revealed, to replenish the earth with inhabitants, rather than depopulate it, by killing those already in existence. Beside, it is time for knight errantry and mad heroism to be at an end.

"Your young military men, who want to reap the harvest of laurels, don't care I suppose how many seeds of war are sown; but, for the sake of humanity, it is devoutly to be wished, that the manly employments of agrisulture, and the humanizing benefits of confmeree, should supersede the waste of war and

the rage of conquest; that swords might be turned into plough-shares, and spears into pruning hooks, and as the Scripture expresses it, the nations learn war no more.”

In a letter to Arthur Young, the celebrated English agriculturalist, Washington ob

serves:

"The more I am acquainted with agricultural affairs, the better I am pleased with them; insomuch that I can no where find so great satisfaction as in those innocent and useful pursuits. In indulging these feelings I am led to reflect, how much more delightful, to an undebauched mind, is the task of making improvements on the earth, than all the vain glory which can be acquired from ravaging it by the most uninterrupted career of conquests."

NO. 30.

GENERAL WILKINSON'S OPINION OF war.

I have, in this series of my essays, undertaken to give the opinions on peace and war,

of good, great, and influential characters, from the early ages of Christianity to the present day. I mean to close these extracts with my present number, having brought them down to our own times. I might have quoted a great many others, as much to the purpose, but, in some, it was not so easy to disconnect the sentiments from the accompanying matter, which was irrelevant to the subject, and having a great number to choose out of, I have taken only the most obvious and concentrated. I close with the present number, for fear of tiring my readers. Not but that I consider these extracts as forming the best part of my essays, but, because,truth, being ever the same, all writers on the same side of any one subject, are likely to take nearly the same course, and thus there appears a sameness of sentiment, though there may be a great diversity in the characters and talents of the writers. Enough has been presented to the public, to shew, that the good, who are the only truly great, have been always in favor of peace; and that even the great who are not good, frequently give their testimony in favor of peace, when

left to their cool reflections, or cross questioned by an able advocate.

There are many, who dwell on the glories of our late war, and seem glad that it took place, notwithstanding the dectruction of our Capitol by the enemy-of our commerce and fisheries, and the immense expense of blood and treasure. Now allowing them all the glory that they demand, what is it but the pride of a merchant, who boasts of having the handsomest ship in port, but the expenses of which always exceed her income and in the end beggars her owner. To say nothing of the expense of treasure-which would reticulate the face of the country with canals and railways-let us reflect only on the loss of lives. It has been estimated that there per. ished by the enemy, the dangers of the sea, and, worst of all, the sickness of the barrack, * and the camp, about 40,000 men. The white population of the country did not then amount to ten millions or even to eight, but call it ten, and the loss of lives would be four to a thousand. If the total loss is put too high on one side, the number of the white popu lation is too low on the other, so that the cal

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