voice is needed to waken inquiry, and prepare the way for all our other instrumentalities.-2. The press, an engine of vast moral power, we would set and keep at work until, through books, and pamphlets, and tracts, and newspapers, and every class of periodicals, it shall speak in the ear of all reading communities on this subject. 3. We would especially enlist churches of every name. We regard them as societies appointed by God himself for the universal spread of peace; and they should all examine this subject till their views are settled, and then let the world know what they think concerning the incompatibility of war with their religion. They should also train up all under their care in the principles of peace, pray much for its universal prevalence, and hold forth before the whole world the light of their own consistent example. Let them do only these things, and war would soon cease from Christendom forever.-4. We would also solicit the aid of pious parents, of teachers in Sabbath schools, and instructors in all Christian seminaries of learning, Here are the chief nurseries of peace; and in these must one day be trained up a generation of such peacemakers as shall spontaneously keep the peace of the world. 5. Still more do we rely on women. They mould the character of the young; and, if they will infuse the principles of peace into every mind under their care, wars must of necessity cease with the very next generation. 6. The formation of peace societies we do not urge; but, wherever is found a degree of intelligence and interest sufficient to sustain them well, we would encourage` a simple organization.

We insist on the necessity of means. God accomplishes no ends without them; and the means of his own appointment are just as necessary for the spread of peace as for the conversion of the world. Only such means we aim to use; and we would fain keep at work in this cause a system of operations very like those in the temperance reform. Agents, and tracts, and periodicals, and other instrumentalities, must be employed on a large scale; and these will require, not so much money as the leading enterprises of Christian benevolence, but far more than most persons suppose. It would cost some $5,000 to put a single tract, at one cent apiece, in every family of New England alone, and about $30,000 for the whole country, besides a still larger sum to sustain such other instrumentalities as the cause demands. These funds must

come, if at all, from the professed friends of peace; and the Christian community ought to form plans and habits of regularly contributing to this cause, as to kindred enterprises of benevolence and reform.

V. POSSIBILITY OF ABOLISHING WAR. Our argument here is short. No fault of individuals or communities is incorrigible under the means of God's appointment; customs very like war, such as knight-errantry and judicial combats, have already been done away; certain kinds of war have actually been abolished, and even international war has lost some of its worst features, and undergone changes greater than would now suffice for its entire abolition; a vast variety of causes are at work through the world, sufficient under God for its ultimate extinction; and God has settled the question by promising an era when "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

VI. SUBSTITUTES FOR WAR. We would not leave nations without means of protection or redress; and, in recommending pacific expedients, we propose not the sacrifice, but the greater security of their rights, just as the substitution of law, with its courts and prisons, in place of private revenge, has every where increased the security both of person and property. There are better means for such ends than the sword. 1. Negotiation. Nations could, if they would, settle all their differences by amicable agreement among themselves; and, should public opinion require them to do so, war would seldom, if ever, occur. -2. Arbitration. When the parties become too much excited to adjust the matter themselves, they may refer it to an umpire mutually chosen; and this expedient alone, if properly used, would prevent more than nine wars in ten. 3. Mediation. When rulers withdraw from official intercourse, and think they must fight their quarrel out, a third power, friendly to both, may offer its services as mediator; an expedient frequently tried of late, rarely without success, and sufficient, if employed in season, to prevent more than forty-nine wars out of fifty. Christendom is fast coming to adopt these substitutes as her settled policy, and would do so very soon, should the people universally demand it. -4. But the perfection of expedients would be a congress of nations. Nor would such a tribunal be an entirely new experiment; for its principle has been in occasional, successful operation for ages. was adopted in the Amphictyonic Council of ancient

It

Greece; it has been at work, with well-nigh complete success, in the Confederacy of Switzerland, for more than five hundred years; and, in less than two centuries, there have been fifty congresses in Europe, all more or less on the principle of such a tribunal as we propose. The thing can be done, and will be, whenever the voice of Christendom shall demand it.

VII. TESTIMONIES TO THE CAUSE OF PEACE. - A distinguished English missionary in India attributes to us "the honor of inventing two of the most valuable institutions that ever blessed mankind, the Peace Society, and the Temperance Society; and, if every American viewed them as I do, he would join them both immediately." Dr. Reed, the well-known messenger from the churches of England, describes the cause of 66 peace as a field of service worthy of the church, worthy of angels," and calls upon Christians to "glorify their religion by banding together as an army of pacificators." Ecclesiastical bodies, representing nearly every Christian denomination in our country, have borne their testimony to this cause, Congregationalists, both Unitarian and Orthodox, Baptists, Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, Methodists, Free-will Baptists, and Christians. They "commend this cause to the Christian community as worthy of a place among the benevolent enterprises of the age," and regard "the American Peace Society as eminently entitled to the cordial coöperation and support of all the churches of Christ." They deem it "the duty of ministers to preach in favor of the cause of peace, as a prominent part of the gospel, and of Christians to pray for the spread of peace through the world." They think, also, "that the subject of peace, being in its strictly evangelical principles and bearings a part of the gospel, ought to be discussed in the pulpit on the Sabbath, just like the other principles of the Bible;" and that "ministers should continue to preach, Christians to pray, and all to contribute in favor of universal and permanent peace."

Disciple of Jesus! what will you do? Will you correct your own views and feelings? Will you try to rectify those of all the persons under your care or influence? Will you pray? Will you contribute? Will you do all you can ? "Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God."

AMERICAN PEACE SOCIETY, BOSTON, MASS.

A

SKETCH OF WAR:

WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT DOES.

Have

FEW among us know much about the evils of war. you ever visited its camps and fleets, or witnessed its sieges and battles? Have you followed the march of its armies, or looked in upon the anguish of its hospitals? Have you seen its nameless vices, its savage barbarities, its countless hardships, dangers, and sufferings? Did you ever behold it firing villages, and sacking cities, and desolating province after province, and butchering men, women, and children, by thousands? If not, you know little of war; and we wish to furnish you with a brief sketch of its NATURE AND EFFECTS.

I. Mark, then, THE WASTE OF PROPERTY BY WAR. It not only demands for its support vast sums of money, but dries up the main sources of a nation's wealth. Its victims are mostly men in the vigor of life. It cripples almost every species of business. It cuts the sinews of enterprise in every department of gainful industry. Fields lie untilled; factories stand still; the shop and the counting-room are deserted; vessels rot at the wharves; every kind of trade is interrupted or deranged; immense masses of capital are withdrawn from use; the entire energies a nation are turned into the channel of war, and its resources whelmed in this mighty vortex of ruin.

Look at the loss occasioned in the single department of commerce. This main source of wealth war dries up, and exposes to capture an incalculable amount of property on the ocean. Our exports and imports now (1836) exceed two hundred millions of dollars every year; and one half of all this, besides a great variety of products interchanged along our coast, would be liable in war to be seized by the enemy. The imports in the single city of New York amounted, during one quarter of 1835, to thirty-six millions of dollars; and a war suddenly occurring would probably have found afloat on the ocean more than twice that amount destined to the same port, and one or two hundred millions belonging to the whole nation. The commissioners appointed to adjust the demands of British merchants for property destroyed by Denmark alone during the late wars

of Europe, received claims to the amount of about twentyfive hundred millions of dollars! Such estimates as these would-prove that the direct expenses of war, though immense, are a mere fraction, rarely more than a fourth part, of the sum total which it wastes.

But look at the enormous expenditures of war. Those of our last war have been variously estimated; but they could not have been less than forty or fifty millions of dollars every year. Our revolutionary war cost England six hundred millions of dollars; and in the wars occasioned by the French revolution, she spent more than FIVE THOUSAND MILLIONS! The public debt of Great Britain, incurred solely by war, is even now about four thousand millions of dollars; and that of all Europe amounts to nearly eight thousand millions! The wars of Christendom during only twenty-two years cost merely for their support not much less than FIFTEEN THOUSAND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS! Quadruple these sums by the indirect and incidental losses of war, and we shall have an amount that would almost tempt us to suspect figures themselves of falsehood, and facts of deception a sum so vast that the bare interest upon it would be more than enough to defray the necessary expenses of governing every nation on earth, to furnish every family in the world with a Bible, to provide the means of common education for all its children, and to support one minister of the gospel for every thousand souls.

Seldom do the people inquire or imagine how much our own Republic spends for the war-system even in a time of peace. In 1827, our expenditures for war were about nine times as much as for all other purposes. In 1832, we expended for civil offices $1,800,758; for intercourse with other nations, $325,181; for miscellaneous objects, $2,451,203; for the military establishment, $5,446,035; for the naval service, $3,956,320; for revolutionary pensions, $1,057,121; for various other pensions, $127,301; for the Indian department, $1,352,420; for the national debt, $17,840,309; more than thirty millions and a half, in one form or another, for war; seventeen times as much as for the whole civil list, and about ten times as much as for all the other purposes of our government. From 1791 to 1832, the aggregate of our expenditures, with less than three years of actual warfare, was $842,250,891; and merely 37,158,047, a twenty-third part of the whole, were for the civil list, almost the only department that would be necessary, if the war-system were entirely abolished